This transition was supposed to take a while, but came about much quicker, with the first intel Macs available in January of 2006.

Apple Announces Transition to Intel Chips (2005)My first MacBook Pro was a 17" model and I used it to experiment with using Eclispse to program Java websites running on Apache. At that time myself and another developer, Tim Rolands, were using Microsoft's Commerce Server to create eCommerce websites. We ultimately decided that, while the Java and Apache ecosystem is powerful, scalable, and free, there was just no way to create websites as quickly and as easily as using Visual Studio and .NET. It was really Visual Studio that kept us from moving away from Microsoft technologies.

Then the transition to Intel chips happened. (And I find that part of Apple's history to be very interesting.) Here are some of the events at the time:

  • Apple was close to bankruptcy
  • Steve Jobs had recently returned to Apple
  • Apple began using OSX
  • Microsoft was being sued by the U.S Government for illegally maintaining a monopoly via its Internet Explorer practices

What I find extremely curious about this time, is that Bill Gates and Microsoft BOTH invested in Apple at this time.

And it was only shortly after this investment that Apple announced they would transition to Intel chips.

Furthermore, it was very quickly after that, that Colin Nederkoorn started a bounty for the first person who figured out how to boot windows XP natively on an Intel Mac: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-the-xp-on-mac-prize-was-won/.

Obviously it was in Microsoft's best interest to keep some form of competition around. And Apple has always said that they are a hardware company and not a software company. The only reason they create their own software at all is because they believe software and hardware married together make for the very best experience. If being able to run windows on a Mac increases sales for Apple (a hardware company) it certainly makes sense that they'd allow it!

And that's exactly what happened. Shortly after someone found a way to dual boot a Mac into Windows XP, Apple made the announcement that they were creating Bootcamp and making Windows compatible drivers for their hardware.

And that is when I decided to buy my first, personal, Macbook Pro. A 17" model with 8GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive. And I used Apple's bootcamp to run Windows XP.

Every 3-4 years I was lucky enough to be able to upgrade my machine, moving to the 15" Macbook Pro when Apple discontinued the 17" model.

By dual booting the machine I saw this as a way to own and train on two different platforms for very little increased cost. After all, the Mac came with all the free software I could have wanted. And my company had supplied me with an MSDN developer kit which included every bit of Windows software I could want. And what I found is that Windows ran flawlessly on my Mac.

For details of my latest setup please see my post: MacBook Pro 16".