Happy 30th Anniversary, Apple. Just weeks after hackers came up with a way to dual-boot Windows XP on an Intel Mac, Apple seems to be figuring that people might as well be doing it right. Previously mum on any work to make Macs run Windows in any way, Apple has spilled the beans and is now making available a utility called “Boot Camp,” an app that takes you through the steps necessary to install XP. It requires you to have a “bona fide installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2” in addition to a blank CD, the latest version of OS X, 10GB of hard disk space–and of course, an Intel Mac.

The software then takes you step by step through the procedure, holding your hand as you burn a customized install disk and then use it to put XP on your new Mac. This differs from the hackers’ setup in a few significant ways: first, it does the hand-holding part, which the hackers hadn’t gotten to yet (they’re probably now throwing up their hands at the weeks of work they put into it and wasted now), making it easy enough for anyone to do the dual-boot setup. I’m no hacker, but I’m a pretty high-level novice, and I’d have had difficulty going through the process. The second difference is that this software is more advanced, with drivers to allow Windows to use Mac hardware (e.g., the different keyboard) effectively.

Boot Camp is still a beta, and is not supported by Apple–you’ll get no phone help if something goes wrong. The instalklation will require the hard drive to be wiped. It doesn’t work perfectly yet, but it appears to be the best deal in town. The software is officially supposed to be part of the next big OS release, Leopard (10.5), due out late this year; presumably it’ll have all the bugs worked out by then.

Like the hackers’ dual-boot solution, Boot Camp does not allow for both operating systems to work at the same time. You have to shut down one OS before you can boot up the other. You can choose to boot XP or OS X by holding down the option (alt) key at startup. Rumors have it that “virtualization software” will also be finalized with Leopard that will allow for Windows to be used simultaneously with OS X, but that is not yet official; in the meantime, a third-party company has announced its own version of virtualization software, and Microsoft is known to be working on Virtual PC for Intel Macs to achieve the same ends.

This is seen as big news for Apple, whose stock rose 6% on the announcement. Analysts are calling this a watershed, saying Apple could explode its market share. I don’t know if Apple will allow official resellers to sell Macs with this option and Windows XP pre-installed, but I’ll bet that if it’s possible, someone will start doing it soon. Many will want to get a Windows Mac for the style, but others will for the performance–the new Intel Macs are reported to be very fast Windows machines.

Then there’s the argument over whether this will kill the Mac, kill Windows, or bring the two into some kind of equilibrium. Some say that software makers will see no reason to port to the Mac OS, making it irrelevant; others say that Windows users will start using OS X and ditch Microsoft as soon as they see how much cooler and easier to use OS X is. Probably the truth will be somewhere in the middle. Even if Apple gets torpedoed as a software company, it will probably succeed as a hardware company. But it’s difficult to imagine the Mac OS really dying off.

For now, it’s simply an exciting change. As for my preferences, the package is not quite there yet–it’ll be there when virtualization comes of age and I can run both operating systems side by side. I don’t want to have to shut down the OS in order to start up a different program–that’s so 1980’s. I remember when you had to do that when there was no hard disk, and each program came on a floppy with the Mac OS on it, or later when SCSI required you to shut down and restart every time you wanted to swap a cable out.

No, I’ll probably wait until next December, when Leopard (to be previewed in August) comes out and the first revision of the iMac is released. By January of next year, I may well have a 20″ iMac sitting on my desk to replace the aging Celeron that sits there today.

Next step: convince my school to buy Macs and not Dells the next time a new purchase is justified. Ah, the day when Macs rule the world is coming nigh! Bwa hahahahahaaa!