Some quick thoughts

A lot has happened over the past few weeks, and I've been too slammed to write about any of it. Here are some quick thoughts on just a few things that come to mind:

Apple's Boot Camp seems like a pretty slick solution to the Windows on Mac hardware challenge. Particularly since it's just a beta. I expect to see greater integration with the Mac hardware- and presumably with OS X itself (re: cross-OS file sharing and possibly the ability to run both OSes at the same time) with Leopard (10.5). But beyond the technical coolness, the simple fact that Apple has released a Windows "solution" for Intel Macs is the coolest part of the whole thing. Apple is on its way toward successfully defining Macs and OS X as a true next generation total replacement for PCs running Windows (including Vista). Great news for Apple, bad news for Microsoft. John Gruber puts it quite nicely.

Windows Vista's release date was pushed back a few weeks- the consumer version won't be shipping until early 2007, at the earliest. This is not a surprise, per se, but Microsoft had gone through great pains to guarantee a 2006 delivery, and this latest slip is proof that Microsoft is still really struggling with Vista. I think Windows Vista is going to be the last "big" release of Windows that really matters- after Vista, the relevance of future major Windows releases will decline, and other platforms (the Mac, Linux, and possibly something else that Microsoft creates as a replacement) will take over mindshare for a growing majority of consumers. Windows will be around for a long, long time, due to legacy issues and sheer momentum, but it's clearly dying, and Vista is one of its very last big gasps.

This looks cool.

Apple celebrated its 30th anniversary as a corporation on April 1. Very cool. Check out this episode (48) of the This Week in Tech (TWiT) podcast for an interesting conversation with a number of Apple's founders, including Steve Wozniak. It's inspirational to listen to these guys talk about their passion for doing cool, useful things with technology.

And here's a great episode of The Gillmor Gang podcast, with discussion about Microsoft, Vista, problems, and so forth.

Have a great weekend.