Today Apple sanctioned a dual-boot Mac/Windows OS Mac, and gives end users the tools to create such a set up. Is this the beginning of the end of Apple? Perhaps, but as all this unfolds, I feel a little bit like Apple's being consumed, via its own choice, by the Borg.

. . .

With today's Bootcamp announcement, we have Apple giving in to an obvious demand. But company reps also made it dead-clear that while they've built this utility and made it super-simple to use, Apple has no interest in selling or supporting Windows. Right. They do not want Mac Mini users calling them up saying, "Windows isn't running very smoothly on my Mac Mini." That's understandable. Why should Apple's support techs get tied up in a Windows mess?

So Apple is simply acting as an enabler, stopping end users from jury-rigging a dual-boot system. But they're not selling Windows. Until, well, they are. As the Borg were fond of saying, resistance is futile and, in truth, I think Apple has little interest in resisting. Two years from now, end users will probably have the option of buying OSX Macs or Windows Macs.

Apple told us that they think Bootcamp will help make the Mac more appealing to those thinking about switching platforms and that it will provide –especially when it becomes part of the Leopard OSX upgrade later this year or next— a safety net for people who switch but still want their Windows and Windows apps. There's already considerable proof that dual-booting can work (we proved it here in our labs), and I have every expectation that this utility will work as promised. Actually, does any one else find it odd that Apple rolled out such a utility so quickly? This obviously shows some forethought and planning. The Borg were known to plan too.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, he can't bring himself to spell "Boot Camp" or "OS X" or any other related term correctly—the true mark of someone who prides himself on his ability to subconsciously rile up the faithful with offhand little maddening details, but which ends up just making him look like an unhip, uninformed fool. I'll bet he spells it "I-Pod", too.

UPDATE: John Gruber's take, naturally, is a whole lot more sensible and demonstrably true. Don't miss it.

The fear that Windows-on-Mac-hardware implies the eventual death or marginalization of Mac OS X is baseless. Sure, third party developers could start using “Just boot into Windows” as their answer to questions regarding Mac support, but this is no more likely to be popular or successful than it was for developers whose OS X strategy was “Just use Classic”.

This is a move of supreme confidence — Apple relishes the comparison between Mac OS X and Windows XP, and Microsoft has shown enough of Vista via its widely-available beta seeds that Apple quite obviously isn’t afraid of that comparison, either.

"Windows is the new Classic." Yeah, I was saying that to people in e-mail before Gruber even posted this. You heard it here first, folks! Heh heh... sheesh.

UPDATE: In keeping with the "Windows is Classic" theme (which, as Gruber points out, would seem to suggest an eventual role for Windows as a fully interleaved, virtualized alternative application mode that works in the same way Classic does—individual layered windows, just no drop-shadows), I wouldn't entirely be surprised if Apple were to sell Windows, or even preload it for business customers, if they should ever decide to really get serious about courting them. But that's really not what Ulanoff is proposing, though the longer one thinks about this the more blurry the line gets.

His choice of words betrays his real hopes and/or fears: Two years from now, end users will probably have the option of buying OSX Macs or Windows Macs. See, he's not envisioning a future with Windows as a ghettoized unsupported alternative to OS X that Apple has made accessible as a generous courtesy; he's envisioning Macs as being something Apple will eventually decide to sell as only Mac OS X machines or only Windows machines, or (as a value-add) both. What's more, he undoubtedly believes that once Apple's sales numbers indicate (as they eventually would) that more customers seem to want Windows than Mac OS X, Apple would make the "sensible" business decision and shelve OS X entirely, making the switch to the Windows PC business that he so relishes imagining. That one little or in his wording speaks volumes.