"Macs should be able to run Windows applications as seamlessly and as fast as they run on current Windows PCs once a small number of technical problems are solved"

'Small technical problems'? What, like linked libraries and ActiveX? Next article please....

Was this survey taken on a beach? Were the participants drunk? Maybe offered a free t-shirt for filling out the survey?

255 college students? Online? Relevance? So 34.42 college students would buy a mac if it could run windows software. I think it is pretty easy to determine the possible increase in Apple's share of the home market.

Silly. That's all...just silly.



Slow news day?

It is possible that, as small as it is, that this survey may indicate some opinion shifts. It doesn't take too much guessing to imagine that if one could run Windows apps inside a Mac, a lot of people would consider it. While a lot of people keep talking about dual booting, if one thinks just for a moment, one would realise that dual boot is not a solution. I want to use Mac OSX. If there is ever a single Win app that I need to access, I DON'T want to shut down all my Mac apps, reboot my computer into Win, use that single Win app, then close it, reboot back into Mac. Virtualisation is the only usable way to go. Something like VMWare, or Virtual PC would work just perfect. A sandbox (where Win can do no damage) consisting of a virtual disk image with Win OS, running in its own window (sized to my choosing), takes care of my Win needs without compromising my Mac experience. If this becomes reality (MS Virtual PC is probably the best candidate), the above survey might prove to be true.

It is possible that, as small as it is, that this survey may indicate some opinion shifts.

I take these things with a grain of salt. I've heard lots of people say "Man, I'd love to get a mac" and still go out and buy PC after PC.

And some may find virtualzation the way to go, but most 'normal' users don't want to be bothered trying to find out whether the apps they want to run will run under VMWare or has to reboot into windows. Nor do they want to deal with virtual disks or trying to figure out how to get that file from Apple mail into Word on the Windows side...

Oh, and it won't help apple too much if users just buy the machines and boot them into windows all the time, either.

"'Small technical problems'? What, like linked libraries and ActiveX? Next article please...."

If you actually read the article, you will see that they are talking about virtualization and dual-boot solutions. So "Active X" (by which I think you mean Direct X) etc. will not be an issue, since an actual copy of Windows will be running.

"Oh, and it won't help apple too much if users just buy the machines and boot them into windows all the time, either."

?!?!?!?

Obviously if they don't want to run OS X, they probably wouldn't buy a Mac in the first place.

And, even if they never booted OS X, it would still "help" Apple a lot because Apple earns most of its profits on the sale of hardware (Macs and iPods). Saying that the extra sales wouldn't help Apple is like saying that Dell makes no money on its own computer sales because uses are just running Windows on all those Dells. That's insane.

Oh, and it won't help apple too much if users just buy the machines and boot them into windows all the time, either.

Yes it will - it means they will sell more computers, probably they wouldn't care if you bought a computer and used it as an aquarium, it would still be a sale, and then what would be the best switcher enticement possible, if you had Windows sat right next to OSX so that you could do a side by side comparison...

Check out WINE. A preliminary version is already working on Mac OS X for Intel. It lets you run Windows binaries directly in OS X using a simulated Windows environment with windows DLLs available. Right now it's very rough and only a few applications will run, but if the compatibility is improved and it's integrated better with the OS rather than using X11 it could be a great solution.

My friend who speaks to and encourages youth, and is a 62 y/o and so mildly set in his ways, is now considering buying a Mac. In fact I have a Mac Mini Intel coming so we can do some tests before buying a MacBook Pro. Oh, though we couldn't do that anyway because they're not available!!! Apple!!! Get your sh_t together. Anyway, the reason he's now prepared to look so much at switching, is the possibility of running his Windows apps at full speed on the Mac. So I would not be so fast to discount this article. I have been trying to get this guy to switch for 3 years, and only now will he consider it.