Triple Booting Macs

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Following up on my last post on dual-booting Macs, it looks like the OS hacking community hasn't sat still. Not to be outdone by Apple's Boot Camp, OnMac.net has developed a triple loader where you can boot into OS X, Windows or Linux.

This falls more into the “very cool, but um, why would I want to do that?” realm than the “holy Christ on a bike!” type of news like Boot Camp. Furthermore, I suspect that Linux distros on Macs are going to suffer the same fate as Windows - for most people who try Macs, alternative OSes will be something to be transitioned away from slowly and at their own pace as they become used to the vastly superior OS X, or as Jon Gruber put it, Windows is the new Classic.

Once you lower the previously high switching costs to the point where people can sample different OSes like cheeses on a platter instead of having to fully commit to one entire restaurant over another, they'll be better able to judge for themselves whether they like what they taste or not, maybe start trying new fancy custom cheeses that were hand-made with love, rather than sticking with the soulless tired old workhorse mild cheddars that are pumped out of a factory like glue or plastic chairs. Trying new things at your own leisure is so much less stressful than the old way - having to read reviews in the paper and to guess where you might have a good time based on what so-called experts think.

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