Myth 8: Mac OS X Red Box Myth
Myth 8: Mac OS X Red Box Myth
Rumors of Apple adding the native ability to run Windows applications in Mac OS X have repeatedly bobbed to the surface of rumor sites over the last decade, but in 2006, the Red Box fantasy belonged to Mark Stephens, writing under the alias Robert X Cringely.
Stephens confused Apple's simple BootCamp tool with a comprehensive new Windows strategy by Apple to add Windows compatibility and then eventually replace Mac OS X with Windows Vista. The Fallout
As usual, blogs lit up in regular flurries of interest about running Windows apps natively in Mac OS X, using a magical library designed to be a better Windows than Windows. The idea was repeated that it would take minimal work from Apple, and deliver new ways for Apple to sell Macs in Windows-centric environments.
The Myth, Unwoven
RoughlyDrafted's Unraveling the Red Box Myth presented three fallacies holding the Red Box Myth together, and disassembled each.
The first was that development of a "Red Box" is either already complete or can be whisked together without much effort, since Apple already has some exposure to Microsoft technologies from existing intellectual property sharing agreements. This simply isn't true.The second is that Apple has the interest, desire, and profit motive to sideline its existing business, and developments already in progress, to devote a massive investment in maintaining a secondary version of the Windows platform, entirely dependent on the whim of Microsoft. This is absurd.
The third is that Apple, by allowing Intel based Macs to boot Windows using the BootCamp tools, has signaled interest in a far flung campaign to out-Microsoft Microsoft at being Microsoft, which includes finding ways to add Windows to Mac OS X--and perhaps eventually replace Mac OS X with Windows--in a bizarre and surreal effort to beat Microsoft at its own game.
After considering the actual difficulties involved, the pointed statements from Apple indicating its complete disinterest, and simply busting open the tired fallacy that success always involves copying Microsoft, the article concluded, "Cringely and an army of wishful thinkers demand that Apple spend up its limited resources making Mac OS X run a limited selection of Windows applications in a strange compatibility box, where they look and feel neither exactly like Windows nor native to Mac OS X. How ridiculous!"
Hiding the Damages
After Apple repeatedly and officially quashed the idea, the meme finally died out, although it occasionally springs back up in rumors that Microsoft will acquire and destroy Parallels, apparently in a misguided effort to prevent Mac users from buying copies of Windows at full retail.
The solution to competing with Windows obviously does not involve driving Windows development. Why Apple Bounced Back explained why just the opposite is true.
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Sunday, December 31, 2006
