According to a piece on DailyTech, MacMall has begun shipping MacIntel boxes with Windows XP pre-installed as an option. “According to both MacMall’s website and Apple’s online store, a identically configured 1.83GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro can be pre-installed with Windows XP Professional for $100 — which is actually a discount.” While this is obviously a smart business move on Apple’s part, it does make me chuckle and feel shameless manipulated as a consumer, given Apple’s history of dissing Windows and crowing about their own superior tech. I mean, even the most recent Mac ad campaign (making fun of Intel’s previous customers, i.e. Windows PCs ), talked of drab gray boxes and their drab little tasks. So now they’re selling us the drab little operating system for our Macs? On the chips they used to so vigorously argue where inferior to their own processors?
Hardware Beyond the Hype