Yesterday's announcement from Apple of their new Boot Camp software that allows Windows XP to be installed on the new Intel Macs was a stunning surprise to many.

A lot of people seem to think that it is spelling the end of Apple or MacOS X, but personally I think it is a very smart move and I bet Apple will gain a lot from this. Personally, I moved to the Mac a few years ago in an effort to get away from the nightmare of using Windows for music applications (or well, pretty much anything else). I even installed the Boot Camp software yesterday on my shiny new Intel iMac, really out of curiosity. Though I would not soil this beautiful machine with a dedicated partition for this other inferior OS I wanted to get away from in the first place. At the same time, I'd welcome some true virtualization software like VMware and the recently released Parallels to run Windows software from within MacOS.

So why is this move good for Apple? At the very least, most people recognize the superior merits of their hardware, but most haven't had the experience of using their software. Like for the iPod, I think a lot more people will now be willing to take the risk of investing in a Mac, since they will be able to use their Windows applications with it.

Apple is confident enough in the quality of their product to make this bold move, and they are betting that most people will prefer the MacOS X user experience over time. Quite frankly, for the average user, having a system that "just works", is well integrated and has a coherent user interface is of incredible value. I am betting that this move will get Apple a lot of new Mac converts from the Windows world. Especially as their Windows partition is slowly but surely disintegrated by malware, while the MacOS system just keeps on rocking.

I am convinced that once somebody has gotten a taste of both Windows and MacOS X for a while, the choice is obviously in favor of Apple. Especially at a time when the upcoming Vista looks more and more like a fiasco in the making. No doubt that the next version of MacOS X Leopard (10.5) that will be released around the same time will make it even more humiliating for Microsoft. And Steve Jobs is taking full advantage of this opportunity by releasing Boot Camp today.

Very exciting times indeed for Apple enthusiasts!