News Analysis: Now that Macs can run Windows, will developers lose their incentive to write code for Mac OS?Now that Macs can run Windows, will developers lose their incentive to write code for Mac OS?
That's one big question facing the industry today after Apple announced the beta release of Boot Camp, new software that will allow users of Intel-based Macs to run the Windows operating system.
The software is available for download, and the company says it is a planned feature for the next release of its operating system, OS 10.5, known as "Leopard."
While few analysts expect consumers or business users to immediately forsake the Mac OS for a Mactel running Windows XP, the possibility that users will eventually migrate to one operating system may push developers to drop OS code support.
Adobe, one of the mainstays of the Mac development community and the world's fifth largest software vendor, dismissed any concerns that its developers would stop coding for the Mac OS.
"Frankly, it doesn't really affect our plans at all," said Kevin Connor, senior director of product imaging.
Connor said that, from a stopgap perspective, Boot Camp will help people who work in a cross-platform environment.
Adobe has already devoted significant resources to rebuilding its products in UB (Universal Binary) to support both platforms.
As part of that effort, the company publicly committed, and is in the process of, transitioning its development efforts from Metrowerks CodeWarrior to Apple's Xcode.
That's not an insignificant step. In a blog post in March, Adobe Photoshop developer Scott Byer said that switching development environments "always involves more work than you would think in a codebase of this size."
The effort is so large that Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen announced recently that the release of the next Creative Suite of software was being pushed back to April 2007.
But what if businesses rush to run Windows on a Mac? Will Adobe's efforts be for naught?
"I'd be shocked if we saw a scenario where a bunch of people went out, bought Macs, and only ran Windows on them," said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research.
If anything, Wilcox said, Apple will use Boot Camp to entice users to switch to Macs by removing the psychological barrier to adoption. That incentive, in turn, will spur Mac software development.
"It's like floppy disks," he said. "For how long did PC manufacturers keep building floppy drives into their machines? Long after users needed them. But psychologically, you think, maybe I'll still need a floppy drive...It's the same with having Windows on a Mac. People who want to switch think they may still need Windows, but they won't."
This effect may be especially pronounced in the enterprise market, where 21 percent of companies over 10,000 employees use both operating systems.
Indeed, Wilcox said, if Boot Camp entices businesses to begin using Mac applications, that trend may push Windows-only developers to begin coding cross-platform.
Many popular applications, such as Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visio, and AutoDesk's AutoCAD software, only exist for Windows.
Each of those software developers will need to test the Windows apps on Mactel machines running Boot Camp.
A spokesperson for AutoDesk, maker of the popular Windows-only application AutoCAD, said Boot Camp raised some interesting possibilities, but declined further comment.
Employees of small design firms, however, were effusive about Boot Camp's potential for their business.
"Really the value of this is huge for video editors, production companies, media based industries like mine," wrote Mark Kelly of Neon Pictures in a forum discussion.
Even so, switching from one OS to another on the same machine could prove painful for users.
"It's an enormous hassle to shut everything down and boot into an alien operating system to perform a task that can't be accomplished in the native environment," wrote Ed Bott on his blog, Microsoft Report.
Editor's Note: A previous version of this article stated that Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 was available in Windows only. That was incorrect. Adobe announced a Macintosh version in February 2006.
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