Apple Introduces Boot Camp for Intel Macs

Apple released the first public beta of Boot Camp in April 2006, only months after moving the Mac to Intel processors. Boot Camp allowed owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows XP and choose between Windows and Mac OS X when the computer started.

This was possible because the CPU architecture was no longer the main barrier. Earlier PowerPC Macs could not run ordinary x86 Windows code directly. Intel Macs could, but they still needed Apple-supplied drivers for the keyboard, graphics hardware, networking, audio, and other devices. Boot Camp also included a partitioning assistant so users could make space for Windows without manually rebuilding the disk layout.

Boot Camp made the Intel transition more attractive to people who depended on Windows-only software. It also showed how changing processor architecture could affect an entire platform strategy, not just benchmark performance.