Apple to charge for BootCamp?

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 23rd January 2007
Comments (7) Stumble
What happens when your free product gets lots of good press? You start charging.

What happens when your free product gets lots of good press? You start charging.

What happens when you've developed something that's getting tonnes of coverage, love from the press, love from your customers, and is providing a great deal of good will? If you're Apple, you start charging extra for it.

It appears that BootCamp may no longer be quite the same fantastic Mac "extra" that everyone had hoped when the company moved to Intel processors in mid-2006. Oh, it will still allow you a boot loader and still let you boot Windows natively, but one of its greatest features is going by the wayside - it used to be free.

Previous users of the free beta for the program will find that support for new drivers is discontinued at that time, though they'll still be able to use the program in its current form. The new price is expected to be $29.95, which is hardly a rip-off for such a handy program; but still, it doesn't beat free.

For your money, you won't only get continued driver support - Windows Vista is also expected to be fully supported in the retail version. You can expect the change to a pay version of the program around the time of Leopard's release. Of course, there is an alternative - apparently the boot loader is directly integrated into Leopard, so if you get the new OS then you'll have it anyways.

Have you got a thought on the move to pay-to-play-with-Windows? Or is $30 just not a big enough deal to care about when your notebook cost $2300 to start with? Tell us your thoughts in our forums.
Quote DougEdey 23rd January 2007, 07:51
They should include it for free with a system purchase or a tiny miniscule charge of $1
Quote Buzzons 23rd January 2007, 08:36
cant you use VMware to boot Mac in a linux/windows environment anyway? (and vmware is free..)
Quote plagio 23rd January 2007, 08:41
well, isn't vmware virtualization only ? With bootcamp you can boot your mac with windows period.
I quote Doug, it should be included in the OS.
Quote GreatOldOne 23rd January 2007, 09:09
It will come free with the next major release of OSX - 10.5 (Leopard).

I can't understand the fuss being made over it. Is it because it's Apple doing it? Lots of companies put out free beta software, and then start charging for it when the 'full' version is released... :?

Anyhow - If you want to keep using it with Tiger, you can either stick with the free 'beta' version or stump up the reddies for the full version of bootcamp. Like the news article says, $29 isn't a lot - and you'd expect to pay for other utilities of this kind - Parallels costs more than this.

I for one will be buying a full monty copy of Leopard, so I don't care. :p :D
Quote DXR_13KE 23rd January 2007, 16:37
that is a good price for the type of the software, as long as it is not like.... 100$ and then 100£ in the UK i am fine with it.
Quote DarkReaper 23rd January 2007, 18:53
Seems fair enough. $30 is a tiny price when you're dropping 10 times that much on the OS, and once leopard comes with new macs it'll be a moot point anyhow.
Quote belchMELCH 23rd January 2007, 22:45
uh... i dont think they cost that much anymore. dem MacBooks are reasonable. i think i'll get one when the leopard is @ .1 but hey i guess if someone did spend that much on a laptop already then wuts $30US?

if u'r a cheapy like me. hawaii's not a cheap place to live... then of course i prefer free... but i can see if bootcamp is charged seperately if one doesnt purchase Leopard. anyway, i have a vested interest in AAPL stock so...go ahead and add to that revenue. especially since i'm still using a powerbook G4
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