No mass market shoo-in for Apple's Boot Camp

The fact is that the Mac user and the PC user remain two tribes forced to coexist in one universe by unfathomable fate.

Journalists get a lot more excited about this kind of stuff than the hard-nosed people who have to make business computing platform choices. A new version of Suse Linux with some GUI improvements? ‘A threat to the Windows hegemony' is the headline then. Transmeta launching the Crusoe processor? Dark days ahead for Intel. The BeOS? Time for everybody else to give up and go home.

Strangely, nobody writes the ‘Media-hyped startup fizzles out' story when these companies and their failing products crash and burn and the hegemony remains stubbornly in place.

So, Apple has software that allows a dual-boot of Windows XP and Mac OS X on the latest Intel-based Macintosh systems. It's a free download so a lot of geeks will try it. Developers who hack for both platforms will probably love it and will be able to save on the cost of a system. A small minority of Mac users with need for occasional Windows apps might use it in anger. And that's about it.

The fact is that whether you subscribe to the school of thought that says Apple kissed goodbye to squillions by not licensing its design or not, the company has long since ceased to be a viable contender or the business desktop.

Its market share is supported by carefully coiffured designers carrying those incredibly annoying portfolio cases that occupy large amounts of real estate on London's public transport system. (A possible new tax, Mr Brown?)

It is the marque of those who know better: the silent, smug minority that ignore the bourgeois taste for Dell and HP, drive a Nissan Figaro, drink coffee from the carton on cold days and fizzy water from the bottle on hot. It is the badge of those who aspire to pioneer status, make their own smoothies and holiday in Vilnius or Rekyavik. It is the antithesis of lager, Sky Sports, logo button-down shirts and package holidays, getting a mate to cut your hair with clippers, and Primark clothes for the kids. The Mac is aesthetic, feminine. The PC is a frustrating bit of good-enough kit for the frustrated masses. It'll do, most of us say and get on with life.

The Mac is a Quark box, an lllustrator machine, a video-editing suite. It is a niche. The PC is for the hordes. Corporate IT types like it because it's standard and you can swap bits in and out from a lot of companies operating at low margins. You can build a stable image and pay 20 grand a year to somebody out of college to man the helpdesk and swap out a board when it goes wrong. It is Ford Mondeo.

Until Microsoft is forced to make Windows cheaper or Apple decides to support Windows, Boot Camp will stay in base camp. After that, you're only looking at reversing decades of cultural opposition. µ