Bill Gates' head exploded yesterday in a tragic puff of smoke after reading that a Windows benchmarking study showed that the new Apple laptop with a dual core Intel processor was faster running Windows XP than, um, well, all the laptops designed for Windows.
A recent contest awarded $13,000 to a couple of people that figured out how to get Windows XP to boot on the the new Apple laptop. Apple claimed it wouldn't work, but we're only talking about shoveling bits around. It does work, although it requires some bit twiddling that most of us won't bother with. But if you know what you are doing, people are reporting it only takes about an hour of fiddling.
HP and Dell officials have to be engaging in some serious handwringing right about now, as their laptops don't run OS X, and never will.
If you could buy a single laptop that runs either Windows or OS X, and that laptop has been consistently ranked as the best hardware made, why would you buy anything else? This very thought has to be giving Michael Dell fits.
Apple's strategy here is probably, gently, gently into the dark night. It might take another year, but at some point, Apple is likely to make it quite easy to install and run Windows on Apple hardware--probably the day before Vista, the next version of Windows, is released in early 2007.
At that point, Apple has redefined the rules of personal computer game.
2008 Update: Of course, now all new Apple laptops and desktop computers can easily run Windows, using Apple's dual boot option or by buying one of several 3rd party programs that allows you to run OS X and Windows simulaneously.