Apple has no plans to offer Windows XP itself, said Brian Croll, senior director of Mac OS X product marketing. "We want to make it clear that Apple is not going to preinstall or sell Windows," Croll said. "This party is BYOW."

In a statement, Microsoft said it is "pleased that Apple customers are excited about running [Windows], and that Apple is responding to meet the demand."

Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said the decision to offer Boot Camp was really a no-brainer for Apple executives. "Apple is a hardware company -- they build software to sell the hardware," he said. "The question really is, Why not support the installation of Windows on their computers?"

James Niccolai of the IDG News Service and freelance writer Yuval Kossovsky contributed to this story.