By Ed Oswald and Nate Mook, BetaNews
April 5, 2006, 10:52 AM

In a stunning move, Apple on Wednesday officially sanctioned the running of the Windows XP operating system on Intel-based Macs through the release of a software package. Called Boot Camp, the 86MB beta product provides a dual-boot sequence and the drivers necessary to run Windows.

"Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple's superior hardware now that we use Intel processors," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

"We think Boot Camp makes the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch."

Rumors that Apple may have been considering native support of Windows began to circulate after the company joined Windows benchmarking group BAPco last week. Several insiders speculated that the move foreshadowed the release of Windows drivers and confirmation that virtualization would appear in the next version of Mac OS X, code-named "Leopard."

The technologies within Boot Camp would be included in that release, Apple confirmed in a statement.

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It is official!!!

Apple now allows for Windows XP to be loaded on!!

Now I can have a dual boot Mac and have double the fun!!

I wonder if it will run any faster?

Great, now I can spend $3,000 to run Windows!

Seriously though, it is a good idea to have that capability. I was a serious Mac fan back in the early and mid 90's, but soon found that jobs writing code for Windows based PCs were easier to find. It's also cheaper, a lot cheaper to build a PC. I have built my own PCs for 9 years now and it is a much more flexible task on the PC.

I remember back in the day when Apple sold a daughter card with a 486 chip on in to run Windows in a Mac window on the power PC. This incarnation will be much better. It sounds like it anyway.

Yay Apple!

Will osX for intell run on a PC? Thats what Im looking for! I know that the beta for intel based OSX did dont know if the actual production version does...

Someone hacked it to work on a stadard PC, but until Apple has the resources to get it to support the millions of possible hardware combinations, has third-party backing and can see a possible profit you wont see it officially released/supported. (Not hating Apple they probably could).

There are emulators that claim to run osx at 80% of the hosts power (still faster than Apple hardware on a decent mid-range pc) but they look like vapourware.

wow, this is pretty cool. not going to go out and buy a new pc or anything, but it's still cool to hear. compatability is a great step forward on the information highway.