In a surprising set of announcements Wednesday, Apple announced not only the BootCamp tool to aid users in installing Windows XP alongside Mac OS X on new Intel Mac systems, but also an optional updated firmware that adds BIOS support to the systems. The ramifications of this are not yet clear, but investors' enthusiasm led to a rally of the company's stock in the days since the announcement.
Note: the author of this story owns stock in Apple Computer (NASDAQ: AAPL).
Among other immediate benefits of this announcement, Macintosh systems will now not only run Windows, but also other PC operating systems, such as GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. However, while Apple has made drivers available to aid in using Windows on the systems in an unsupported fashion, Apple has made no similar offering to those interested in running other non-Mac OS X operating systems on the Intel-based Macs.
Although surprising, running Windows on Macs has been a subject of much interest and speculation since the Cupertino-based company announced that it was moving over to the same Intel processors used by Windows computers in June of 2005. The first production models of the new Intel Macs were revealed at the MacWorld tradeshow in January.