When I was in ROTC, our drill instructor told us... Sorry, wrong boot camp. And we didn't really have a drill instructor, since the drilling was done by the uppperclassmen. And there was never something called "boot camp" for ROTC. Anyway... The web is ablaze with the news of Apple's Boot Camp. (Not to mention Wall Street.) When I first heard the news--from my non-geeky wife, no less--I admit feeling a little sour. It's one thing for hackers to find a workaround because Apple's now using the same underlying hardware as the latest and greatest Windows machines, but to actually support it? Blessedly, reason soon took hold. As I went about my day, mulling this over in the back of my mind, I came to look at this development as a good thing. Yesterday afternoon, looking through some of my feeds in NetNewsWire, I saw I reached conclusions similar to those of people I know and trust. Michael sums it up perfectly:

[P]eople would have found a way anyway, so it’s better for Apple to make it work right and take the credit than to pretend it isn’t happening. Amen. This is no third-party hack that could wipe out your entire system. This is a straight-from-the-source solution. (That could wipe out your entire system; but the odds are more in your favor with Boot Camp.) Tom has a couple of theoretical examples of how the dual-boot nature of Intel Macs can benefit Apple. I would have to agree with Erik, however, in that if I were to run Windows on my Mac, I would rather have it in the vein of Virtual PC, where I can switch in and out of the different OS environments with a keystroke. As Welch noted on the MacJournals-Talk list, having to quit everything in one environment and boot in to the other one gets old if you have to do it more than two or three times a day. Even then... As for me, I have a XP box five feet away, on my wife's desk in our study. It's the PC I built for her, and I have my own account on it. The reason I have this iMac is so I don't have to put up with such nonsense such as the USB driver we wrestled with earlier tonight on her machine for an IR receiver. Then again, why would I want to pass up the chance at something like seeing the blue screen of death on my iMac? That's just aces.