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Who benefits the most from the ability to run Windows on an Intel chip based Mac?

Microsoft, because now they can license their OSes to Mac users who otherwise wouldn’t have purchased them. (MS long since bit the bullet at ‘fighting’ Mac, and has been happy to buy 10% of the shares when Apple was low (pre-Ipod) and sell Mac copies of Microsoft Office.)

Apple, for being able to sell people who would like to have a nice, metal, shiny PowerBook but can’t give up their Windows applications? No more emulation — true Windows support internal to the OS?

The public, for being able to choose their platforms better based on their needs, and flow between them. (We’ll ignore Linux users, who have been using Mac/PC for a long time.)

Antivirus vendors, for being able to sell their products to security conscious Mac users who worry about installing Windows on their otherwise secure OS. (Dual boot and virtual machine environments are really problematic to secure — I hope that the early adopters jumping on the Boot Camp band wagon appreciate that.)

IT people, who get to explain to Mac users what “the command prompt” is. Hopefully, this OS merge will illustrate to both parties how much a good IT professional is worth — better yet if they can do cost recovery on these types of systems.

I guess time will tell. It’s interesting to me that the change in CPU type has broken quite a few software applications that aren’t designed for Intel-chipped Macs. That breaks the “it just works” Mac mentality, as software packages need updates to support this new platform and not all of them are available yet.

I’m also waiting for the Mac commercial where the kid from Ed puts on a shirt and tie like the PC guy from the office wears. The last from Animal Farm rings a bell: “… but already it was impossible to say which was which.”