I have a confession to make. I don’t dual boot. I don’t use Windows on my Mac. I don’t need to. There’s not a single bit of software I need that is Windows-only. And even though I have Office:Mac 2008, I open Word and Excel documents in Pages and Numbers. (I don’t hate Office, I just find iWork to be a more rewarding experience!)

But, apparently, I’m in a minority, and every other Mac owner on Earth is simply aching to run Windows 7 on their Apple hardware. Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking as much, given the articles doing the rounds on tech sites this past weekend, most of them tersely reporting how Apple has missed its own deadline for providing official Boot Camp driver support for Microsoft’s latest version of Windows.

Here’s what Apple had to say in a (very short) support note published in October last year:

Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year. This support will require a software update to Boot Camp.

The rest of the note was just a list of the nine older models of iMac and MacBook that wouldn’t support the Boot Camp update.

AppleInsider reached out to Apple for comment last week, as 2009 drew to a close. An Apple employee responsible for dealing with Bootcamp enquiries told them:

…it was very unlikely that the update would surface in the next 24 hours, adding that a release sometime early next year would be a safer bet.

MacWorld UK writes a little more dramatically about the missed deadline:

On the same day in October that rival Microsoft launched Windows 7 , Apple promised that it would revise Boot Camp… Apple has still not released a Boot Camp revision to its Software Update service.

Although Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 7 in late October, the company first provided developers with early builds a year before that, and began offering previews to the general public in February 2009.

Apple did not elaborate on why they would not support Microsoft’s newest operating system.

I’m not sure a missed deadline is the same as Apple demonstrating they unequivocally ‘would not’ support Windows 7, but the drama doesn’t end there. Here’s Paul Thurrott’s take, from a blog post entitled “Shame on Apple for not Providing Windows 7 Drivers by Now”:

Previously, Apple promised to provide Windows 7 drivers through its Boot Camp utility […] by the end of 2009. So they’re late. But these drivers can and should have been delivered to customers when Windows 7 shipped, in October. I guess the company was too busy fixing a widely-reported user data deletion issue in Snow Leopard to bother supporting a competing system that just works.

So thanks for nothing Apple. We know you’re scared of Windows 7, but come on.

I might offer a less florid possibility; could it possibly be just a delay? Y’know, like Microsoft experienced when it delayed the release of Windows 95. And Windows 98. And Windows… oh, you get the point. Look, software delays happen and they don’t have to mean anything!

Thurrott’s Apple-fan-baiting aside, I have a serious question; am I so completely out of touch that I’m the only Mac user in the world who doesn’t dual boot? OK, I played with some virtualization tools a while back out of sheer curiosity, and the half-hearted belief that I really might need Microsoft Office (note: I didn’t) but it wasn’t long before they were removed.

A Tad Silly

Mac OS X, iLife and iWork have most my bases covered for personal creativity and productivity. And while I do a lot of online collaboration with a wide circle of colleagues and friends, most of whom are on Windows machines, I’m not exaggerating when I say — it’s simply not an issue. Honestly, there isn’t a single thing I’ve come across in 18 months that absolutely demanded I use Windows.

But apparently, that’s unusual, and most Mac owners in the world not only use Windows, they need Windows and, more than any other version, they absolutely must have Windows 7, so Apple’s missed deadline is nothing short of scandalous.

True? Because if that’s not true, all of that breathless reporting over the weekend about missed deadlines and Apple’s ‘fears’ would prove a tad silly, wouldn’t it?

Actually, I have had one issue since switching to the Mac; my friends don’t use iChat. They’re stuck with Skype or — horror of horrors –Windows Live Messenger for video conferencing and collaboration. I pity them. It’s the one thing I wish Apple would release for Windows. The world would be a better place then, I’m sure.

So, tell me, Mac Majority, is Boot Camp’s (temporarily) absent Windows 7 support really the Big Deal the tech press have made it out to be? Am I truly in some peculiar Mac Minority who don’t install Windows on their Apple hardware? Am I, in fact, missing a far bigger point? Please enlighten me.

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It seems Microsoft’s middle management can’t decide whether or not it ripped-off Mac OS X when it was redesigning its flagship product. This is the result of a bewildering comment from Microsoft Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous in an interview this week with PCR. He’s neither a developer nor a designer, and he didn’t work on Windows 7. But Aldous didn’t let that stop him saying this about Microsoft’s latest OS:

One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 […] is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.

So. Aldous just made it clear; Windows 7 copies borrows its design from the Mac. Only, no, it doesn’t. Not according to a retort yesterday from Windows Communications Manager, Brandon LeBlanc. Writing on The Windows Blog, LeBlanc said:

An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.

The tech press is going bonkers about it, of course, but let’s be honest — when it comes to operating systems, the days when these two giants outright-copied one another and it mattered are far behind us. The common elements of an OS user interface are driven largely by user need/behavior. High resolution color displays and the ubiquity of the mouse and keyboard combo would have led to these similarities irrespective of the company behind them. Put simply, thirty-odd years of OS evolution would result inevitably in functional and aesthetic similarities.

What Are They Looking At?

When people say that Windows 7 “looks like” Mac OS X, I don’t understand exactly what it is they’re looking at.

Mac OS X’s Dock and Windows 7′s Taskbar are similar in function, but not design. The desktop and windows are, again, similar in function — but they don’t look the same.

Windows 7 has gone overboard with transparencies everywhere, to the detriment of ease of use. Mac OS X, on the other hand, introduced transparencies many years ago and has consistently dialled them down in successive OS updates.

Windows was long-criticized for its drab, gunship grey interface. XP and Vista moved gradually away from grey, and now Windows 7’s UI is an explosion of green and blue (or red or pink or purple or whatever godawful theme you choose). Mac OS X, on the other hand, remains a stately, elegant… gunship grey. Not at all like Windows 7. I suspect people mistake Microsoft’s bold-yet-vomit-enducingly-colorful design of Windows 7 with the elegance of Mac OS X.

I’m aware that these observations are subjective. My opinions are just that — my opinions. You might agree with me that it’s wrong to say Windows 7 and Mac OS X look “the same.” You might think I’m desperately uninformed and waste no time telling me as much. (In fact, the predictable result of any article comparing Windows with Mac OS X is the vitriol from commenters apparently unaware they’re reading TheAppleBlog.)

In any case, consider this; here we have two Microsoft execs, one in product sales, one in product design & development. The former sees how customers perceive the Mac to be a superior product, and tries to exploit that perception by ‘connecting’ Windows 7 to it. (“The Mac is great, so by copying it, Windows is great, too.” etc.) The latter has spent years working hard on this new OS and responds with understandable indignation to the suggestion his team copied anything from the competition.

Either way, it’s embarrassing. At a time when they ought to be extolling the wonders and miracles an upgrade to Windows 7 may bring, they’re instead drawing attention to their biggest rival.

I can’t help but imagine an email winging its way through Apple’s Marketing department this week, its subject line reading, “With competition like this, who needs an ad campaign?”

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That’s according to preliminary data released Sunday from a report by Net Applications which breaks down the Internet presence of Mac, Windows and Linux machines for the month of October. Microsoft’s hope that Windows 7 would slow the sure and steady pace of Apple’s growth appears to have been unfounded, at least at this early stage.

Windows still controls the lion’s share of the computer market, of course, with a huge 92.54 percent total share. But that’s down 0.25 percent from September. And yes,  Windows 7 did gain ground during the month, despite being officially available for purchase for only nine days at the end of October, but Net Applications explains that it held more than 2 percent going into the survey, owing to the use of pre-release versions like the beta and the release candidate.

Net Applications also points out, in a separate report, that much of Windows 7′s gain during October (it ended the month at 2.85 percent) came from XP’s market share, so it doesn’t represent the sort of “switch back” users Microsoft was looking for, only upgraders who skipped Vista in favor of the older, more stable OS.

Mac’s share jumped to 5.26 percent, up from 5.12 percent during the previous period. That’s a gain of 2.73 percent overall, which is a good number, but not nearly as high as the 5 percent gain Apple experienced in September. The slowdown might be due to a surge thanks to early adoption of Snow Leopard which is now coming to an end.

Note that Net Applications isn’t taking this data from sales numbers, but from visits to its client web sites, which add up to an impressive 160 million total. That’s a fairly large sample base. Apple 2.0 does point out that this particular methodology tends to favor devices like the iPhone, which account for more frequent web visits due to their ease of use.

The key to the future success of both companies will be converting the large Windows XP user base, which still accounts for 70 percent of all users. Both Apple and Microsoft will be looking to convert those users as they inevitably decide to upgrade. Holiday season numbers over the next few months should give a good indication of who will win out in the competition for those consumer dollars.

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Not to be outdone, Apple is busy breaking records too. At the Web 2.0 Summit this week, Morgan Stanley’s Managing Director Mary Meeker revealed that the iPhone/iPod touch is the fastest growing consumer electronics platform in history. And she had some charts to prove it. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld picked through her 60+ page presentation to focus on three iPhone-relevant slides.

Catchy title, no? But impressive. The iPhone/iPod touch has seen far steeper user adoption than that of other popular consumer electronics platforms, including other iPods.

However, Gizmodo’s Dan Nosowitz very wisely points out:

Comparing one gadget to another in a different category is messy and inconclusive. iPhone adoption is different than, say, Wii adoption for lots of reasons: The iPhone is a phone, a gadget which pretty much everybody has and needs, and it combined the capabilities of a phone with that of an established hit, the iPod. In contrast, the Wii is a videogame system, a category with a totally different demographic, requiring different kinds of software and accessories. They’re just not the same (and I only mentioned a couple reasons), and comparing unit shipments doesn’t necessarily prove anything.

A slightly busier one, this illustrates how, in the two year period following its launch, the iPhone/iPod touch’s mobile internet user base has enjoyed a faster, higher adoption rate (57 million) than NTT Docomo’s mobile internet platform imode (25 million) and even desktop Internet legend AOL (7 million).

Of course, it’s important to remember that Apple benefits (at least a little) from the changing times. Both AOL and imode enjoyed their super-growth in the mid to late 1990′s — the Internet’s Stone Age. While the iPhone platform is undoubtedly sophisticated, it takes advantage of extraordinary advances in hardware and software engineering that, a decade ago, were merely the stuff of geek dreams. Also, let’s not forget that — relative to the Internet’s ubiquity and sophistication today — the mobile and desktop Internet of the 90′s was far more expensive, harder to use and much less rewarding of an experience. Still, these are impressive numbers nonetheless. It’s just helpful to put them into perspective.

If you want a chart that demonstrates just exactly why AT&T’s network is trembling at the knees beneath the strain of millions of data-hungry iPhones, look no further. Schonfeld added two arrows to pinpoint the June 2007 and July 2008 launches of, respectively, the iPhone and iPhone 3G. If you’re an iPhone owner and you don’t spend more time using the thing for email and web browsing than, y’know, actually talking to people, you’re in the minority. iPhone owners love their unlimited data.

You can bet your bottom dollar Steve’s next keynote presentation will extrapolate some of this data (of course, his charts will contain no numbers but look way more sexy).

View or download the entire presentation from Scribd, and tell me in the comments how no one uses the word “Pwns” any more.

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I’m getting a copy (might pick up a burger, too), but for me it’s a legitimate business expense, so the decision, even without an upgrade path (I’ve just been using the Windows 7 RC on my iMac, and don’t have an existing retail license), it makes financial sense for me to have access to a Windows machine. Maybe you’re in the same boat.

The question isn’t really whether Mac users are also Windows users, since recent research on the subject seems to indicate that yes, there is in fact plenty of crossover. I’m wondering whether it might be the case that Apple fans not only buy Windows, but that we might also represent a big chunk of the early adopter crowd for this new incarnation.

Everyone I know who is buying a copy of Windows 7, upgrade or otherwise, uses a Mac. It may not be their primary machine (yes, that does actually happen), but they have one nonetheless. Most of those people are planning on installing Windows 7 on a boot camp partition or a virtualized PC using Parallels or VMware Fusion.

I know you’re thinking that I probably surround myself with like-minded people, and as a result have a lot of Mac-using friends, but that isn’t the case. The majority of people I know are exclusively PC users, and not a single one that I’ve talked to plans on upgrading today, or even in the near future.

As Mac users, we have a tendency to also be gadget addicts. I’ve found we’re more interested in all tech, not just our own, perhaps because we consider ourselves connoisseurs in the area thanks to our impeccable taste. For me, and for many others that I know, that interest translates into a pretty heady case of gadget-lust, one of the symptoms of which is early-adopterese. And also a willingness to acknowledge when a company besides our beloved Apple releases a smart, well-designed product.

Fact is, Windows 7 is a huge improvement on its predecessor. I say that as someone who’s been using preview versions since the first beta was released. It’s not Snow Leopard, don’t get me wrong, but that won’t stop me from being among the first to jump on board. Anyone else making that jump today? If you are, what are your reasons? Do you consider yourself an early adopter with tech in general?

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That opportunity will possibly come in a series of ads contrasting Windows with OS X, at least according to Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek. The expected campaign is expected to take Windows 7 on directly, and will likely “poke fun” at the upgrade process, from backing up data and reformatting drives to reinstalling software.

“Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out. If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?” says Schiller.

The idea is that, rather than upgrade, people will be buying new computers, but the problem with Macs — especially in difficult economic times — is price. To that end, rumors continue to swirl regarding price reductions. Just last week, Google AdSense placements temporarily appeared in several European countries hinting at new iMacs, Mac minis and MacBooks. While only the Mac minis listed lower prices, it’s certain that new MacBooks and iMacs will have speed and storage increases, and the rumor of Blu-ray for the iMac persists.

In the interview, Schiller deflected inquires about new Macs and lower prices, remaining dismissive towards Windows and predicting a poor upgrade rate for Windows 7 compared to Snow Leopard. In the end, Windows is “still Windows.”

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Having looked at the data on Windows release dates, Marshall “found no negative correlation between them and Mac sales.” Further, Marshall suggests that “new OS launches from MSFT may have even acted as a ‘delayed accelerant’ to AAPL’s computing sales.” However, he is also careful to add that “AAPL’s success (or failure) in the computing market is largely idiosyncratic (or company-specific) in nature and not dependent on others in the industry.” Just like a six-figure analyst to have it both ways, but he does have a point, at least about Apple.

While it’s true that the numbers don’t lie, they don’t tell the whole story in this case, either. Not shown on the chart is how the release of Windows 95 was an unmitigated disaster for then-Apple Computer. The company saw Mac market share effectively halved from 1995 to 1996, from around double digits to 5 percent in a year, and it only got worse.

That bump in sales in 1997 was due to the original iMac, as was a good deal of the spike that ran until 2001. And 2001, of course, brought the tech bust, not a worldwide embrace of Windows Millennium Edition at the expense of Apple. While Mac sales were stagnant over the next several years, even as PC sales grew, the basis of the Mac Renaissance we now enjoy can be traced to a few key events.

• Beginning in 2002, the continuous, incremental improvement in Mac OS X combined with the perceived security disaster of Windows XP changed attitudes about Microsoft and Apple.
• The iPod Halo Effect, the idea that the popularity of the iPod encouraged the Mac “curious” to switch, probably started in late 2003 with the iTunes Store and iTunes for Windows.
• The switch to Intel in 2006, along with the “safety net” of Apple’s Boot Camp or third-party virtualization, removed the last perceived obstacle to owning a Mac.

So, the iMac, the iPod and the iTunes Store, OS X, Intel Macs, and now the iPhone; all these “idiosyncratic” products are what have fueled Apple’s comeback, though it’s also fair to say Microsoft’s lack of innovation played a small part in that comeback, too. Looking forward to 2010, it appears that trend will continue. Windows 7 does nothing more than replace lackluster Vista, Microsoft’s mobile strategy is a disaster, and how about a tablet PC with a stylus in the age of multitouch?

Really, the game is Apple’s to lose.

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For a limited time, Microsoft is offering students the opportunity to grab one Windows 7 upgrade to either the Home Premium or Professional versions of the upcoming operating system for only $29.99, the same price that the single-user version of Snow Leopard retails for.

That’s $90 cheaper than the Home Premium upgrade costs at regular retail prices, and $170 off the price of the Professional version. There is a catch, though. You need to have a valid student email address from a U.S. educational institution (college or university) in order to qualify.

AppleInsider claims that there are similar deals in place in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Korea and Mexico, though I could only find a “Coming Soon” notice when I tried to change the country using a drop down menu at the top of the order page. Entering a valid Canadian university email address also got me nowhere.

Microsoft is very much aware that Apple’s student market share is one of the company’s most consistent strengths, despite recent incursions by low-cost netbook machines into that demographic. This deep discounting, and the accompanying 741.com micro-site on which it can be found show that Redmond is willing to go to great lengths to try to recapture some of the youth market.

If you’re planning on taking advantage of this deal using yours or a relative’s student email address to install Windows 7 on your Boot Camp partition, remember that the deal only applies to upgrades, not full versions, so you’ll already need either Vista or XP installed for it to work.

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First, a little background. I flirted with Macs in high-school Graphic Art lessons and then again, very very briefly, in the late 90s when a colleague handed me a PowerBook and said “Here, you could use that if it’s any good, but I don’t know if it even works…” It did work, but to be honest, it really wasn’t any use to me at all. Anyway, even if I had wanted to use the Mac, everyone I knew was working on a Windows PC of some flavor or other, and though the PowerBook had a working copy of Microsoft Office (such as it was in those days) incompatibilities were an ever-present problem.

Here’s an example of a conversation I had, many times, with the one person I knew who used a Mac;

Gloria: Liam, that file you sent me…
Liam: Yes, the Word document.
Gloria: It doesn’t work properly. I’ve lost all the formatting.
Liam: What do you mean, you’ve ‘lost’–
Gloria: It’s a mess.
Liam: Did you open it using Word?
Gloria: Of course I did! Look, will you just paste the text into an email for me, yeah?

I used to think the problem lay not with her computer, but more with her inability to use it. I later saw for myself, however, that she was absolutely right. Word documents created on a Windows PC didn’t fare well in Word on her Mac. Crazy.

The short of it is that I used Windows for everything and I had no compelling reason to want to switch. At home and at work, even on the road with my Windows Mobile devices through the years, I was 100 percent a Microsoft customer. Throughout those years, every experience I had with the Mac was a bad experience. And it was usually, as in the example above, related to the same tedious issue — incompatibility.

By 2005 I’d certainly heard about Mac OS X, though the closest I came to it was reading Paul Thurrott’s reviews and opinions on his SuperSite for Windows. He spoke of a decent OS, but reassured me that I was missing nothing. Then Apple released the iPhone and, despite my aversion to all things Apple, the Geek in me couldn’t resist and I bought one.

The experience on the iPhone was simply amazing, far better than any I’d had on any other device in… well, forever. It made me question my assumptions about the Mac. So in the summer of 2008, I wandered into the Apple Store on London’s Regent Street and spent a half hour pratting-about on different machines. I left with a MacBook. And on that very day, Windows died for me. Leopard was a breath of fresh air.

But let me be clear; I didn’t switch because I felt the Mac was a superior platform. Honestly, I feel that, for the majority of people, it’s no better or worse than Windows at the mechanics of making email, word processing and web surfing possible. I switched because it offered a far superior experience in doing those everyday things. When I think about Windows and where it fails for me, it always comes down to that same issue; experience.

Despite the “XP” in its 2001 OS name, it was only with Windows Vista that Microsoft finally seemed to “get” that user experience matters. Yet, beyond Vista’s eye candy there’s not a lot in the way of a unified, cohesive and organic experience that makes me want to use it as my everyday computing environment. This isn’t blind fanboy-ism talking; I used Vista since its Longhorn days right up until last summer, so I know I gave it a long-enough evaluation!

The user experience in Windows 7, too, has not changed since Vista, save perhaps for the addition of some fiddly new UI gimmicks (Aero Peek anyone?). To me, 7 ‘feels’ just like Vista did. I keep moving around the OS hoping to have an epiphany; “Aha! There’s the cohesive, rewarding experience I was searching for!” — but it just doesn’t happen.

I want to like Windows 7, but after trying various beta builds for the last year and repeatedly doing my best to enjoy it, I found myself feeling relieved whenever I returned to the elegant lines of Mac OS X.

I don’t hate Windows 7. I don’t think it’s shoddy, unattractive or fundamentally flawed. But just as Thurrott would say of Snow Leopard, when it comes to Windows 7 there’s just not much there. Windows 7 is a perfectly capable operating system that looks nice and gets the job done. Ultimately, however, it’s just not very interesting and, for recent switchers to the Mac, it’s too little, too late.

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As more and more households have multiple PCs, the idea of a “family pack” (i.e., a piece of software with multiple licenses for use) makes a lot of sense. Since Apple and Microsoft are set to release new versions of their respective operating systems this fall (Apple’s Snow Leopard in September, Microsoft’s Windows 7 in October), let’s look at the family pack available for each.

Microsoft

Microsoft finally ended all rumors of a Windows 7 Family Pack, announcing that there would indeed be such a product:

The Windows 7 Family Pack will be available starting on October 22 until supplies last here in the U.S. and other select markets. In the U.S., the price for the Windows 7 Family Pack will be $149.99 for three Windows 7 Home Premium licenses.

It’s not that paying $150 for three licenses is a bad deal, it’s just that the paragraph above pretty much constitutes the entire announcement, which is bad because…

• Where is the Family Pack for Professional? What about Ultimate? Sadly, there is no such thing. Why isn’t Microsoft making its other OS editions available in similar “family friendly” offerings?
• It’s only for a limited time (“until supplies last”). This is a software product on disc that comes with a three-user license, there are no “supplies.” The only thing that can run out is Microsoft’s willingness to provide this value to the consumer.

So Microsoft will thwart consumers who desire Professional or Ultimate by requiring full licenses even if they want to run it on all the PCs in their home. This is practically an engraved invitation to pirate the software.

Further, after some as-yet-unnamed amount of time, the Home Premium deal will be withdrawn. Perhaps this is just a maneuver to juice up early interest and sales for PR purposes, and once they can report large numbers of licenses sold they’ll just end the deal.

Apple

Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard will be sold in family packs of five licenses for $49. This is a better deal than Microsoft’s in many ways:

• Obviously, $50 for five license is much better than $150 for three.
• Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t offer “crippled” editions. Their family pack will consist of the full (“Ultimate”, to use Microsoft’s term) version of Snow Leopard.
• There is no expiration date on availability.

Aside from its OS, Apple also offers family packs for their iLife and iWork suites that are incredible values.

Conclusion

While I’m not suggesting upgrade pricing alone would be a reason to switch to a Mac, I do believe Apple’s family packs (which are not new) are an impressive, and important, value. I consider them part of the Apple value equation; a computer is a combination of hardware and software, not just one or the other.

I think Apple’s philosophy on family packs is clear. Put simply, they take the sting out of wanting to run multiple licenses for multiple machines. They provide such an excellent value, the consumer has little issue with legitimizing multiple software copies in their home.

For Microsoft, this is new territory. I’m glad to see there was some truth to the earlier rumors, but it all falls short. While the family pack for Windows 7 is a smart move, Microsoft is misguided to limit it to just the “cheap” edition and to make the offer short-term. Indeed, why not encourage people to legitimize multiple copies, and up-sell Professional, by offering a family pack at the high-end? If the goal was to limit piracy, I believe it will have only a minimal impact there.

Nonetheless, if your decision to use Windows 7 is already made, and Home Premium is what you desire, then I’d certainly recommend snapping up the family pack before Microsoft changes its mind.

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