What happens when you present someone who doesn’t own a Mac with what could be the most unbelievably important move Apple has made in years?

This utterly clueless statement:

Today’s commentary piece by Charles Cooper, an editor for CNET.com.au sister site CNET News.com, sparked some interesting debate down here in the CNET bunker. Cooper believes that the ultimate result of Apple’s new Boot Camp software (available for download here) will see a raft of current Windows XP users making the jump to Mac OS X. He argues that since Windows users now have the opportunity to sample Apple’s fruits without giving up their trusty Windows applications, many will be tempted to jump ship altogether.

I think he’s missed the boat on this one, and here’s why. Cooper assumes that the existence of Boot Camp alone will be enough to entice significant numbers of Windows XP-based PC users to shell out a few grand for a new Mac — now that’s wishful thinking! In my opinion, not many will even bother.

Dual booting Windows XP and Mac OS X through Boot Camp is superfluous, as you’re forced to reboot each time you switch between operating systems, and the Windows XP partition can’t read any of the files you’ve saved under your Mac OS X partition. So what’s the point of it, when I could just stick with my current Windows XP-based PC and not worry about Mac OS X altogether? Does OS X really offer any applications that would entice me to purchase a new Mac and put up with the tedium of Boot Camp? I doubt it.

As many of you know, I once owned an iBook. Frankly, it was the best computer I’ve ever owned in my life. I used the hell out of it… I beat it up… I lived my daily life on it. I got used to the applications on it. Hell, I even came within a week of buying a desktop eMac to replace my PC. At that point, I was wholly committed to the platform and the hardware.

Then it happened.

I was working on something at the office, and I had to finish it up at home. I grabbed some of the files, threw them on my thumbdrive, and brought them home. I knocked out the Word and Excel stuff with no problem (I actually owned Office for the Mac). Then, I realized something. I didn’t have Access and MS SQL. Without a viable solution, I ended up finishing my work on the PC, much to my chagrin.

A few days later, I found myself at the Apple store where I bought Virtual PC for the Mac, a virtualization app that would let me install Windows 2k in a virtual machine on my Mac, which should be fine to do basic stuff. It wasn’t. In fact, it was painfully slow. Thanks, but no thanks. At that point, I resigned myself to the fact that despite how much I loved the Mac, it was still a windows world, and the solutions for being a part of it weren’t terribly good. If I wanted to be able to function, I would need a Windows notebook.

So I bought one, sold the iBook, and that was the end of it. I’ve never been happy with that decision since, and in the back of my mind, I’ve always thought that if Apple ever really ironed out the interoperability between Windows and the Mac, I would easily buy another Mac.

My story, though long, has a point.

Moses seems to think that Bootcamp isn’t enough to pursuade PC users to make the switch. I wholeheartedly disagree. I would hazard a guess that most people who haven’t made the switch but want to are being held back by the idea that they have to leave their apps behind or need connectivity to some corporate application at the office they won’t have if they go to the Mac.

For me, Bootcamp not only would have saved my iBook, it would’ve kept me a Mac user to the point where all my PC’s would be out the door as quickly as you can say buh bye. In fact, it just still might. So in answer to Moses’ point, yes it’s not only enough, but had something similar happened years ago, it may have saved switchers who ended up switching back.

Bootcamp is nothing short of a turning point for Apple, and make no mistake about it. Them going in this direction is going to revolutionize the world of personal computing. Not just because Apple came up with it and gave it to the masses, but because people who know better are going to flock to it in droves.

Bet on it.

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