'Boot Camp makes the Mac way more appealing to Windows users who are considering the switch by lowering the barrier to moving to Mac,' he said.

The instructions for installing Boot Camp are involved, though much less so than the original hack, and still include the caveat of correctly identifying the C drive for formatting when doing the Windows install. Unlike the original solution, Apple's software allows users to repartition the drive into Mac and Windows partitions from Mac OS X without having to reformat the hard drive. David Moody, vice president of hardware product marketing, reinforced the idea that users move cautiously.

"Apple strongly suggests users print out the installation instructions and follow them carefully," Moody said.

Boot Camp does not include the Windows XP Service Pack 2 disk needed for running Windows, and Apple does not plan to sell that operating system. Users who want to dual-boot their machines are expected to buy Windows like anyone else. 'We want to make clear that Apple is not going to preinstall or sell Windows," said Croll. "This party is BYOW (bring your own Windows).'

The software is expected to remain in beta through much of 2006, as it will be formally integrated into Mac OS X 10.5, or Leopard, which isn't due out until at least the end of this year.