April 5, 2006: Apple introduces the public beta of Boot Camp, software that allows users with an Intel-based Mac to run Windows XP on their machines.
Boot Camp will officially arrive in Mac OS X “Leopard,” which debuts at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference a few month later.
As noted in yesterday’s “Today in Apple history,” the legal battles between Microsoft and Appleover similarities between the Windows and Mac operating systems ran throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. Ultimately, Microsoft did not wipe out Apple out as many expected early on. However, it became pretty clear to everyone that Microsoft emerged the victor in terms of mainstream operating systems.
Steve Jobs said so himself in Fortune magazine in 1996, around the time he returned to Apple.
“The PC wars are over,” Jobs said. “Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
By 2006, however, things were changing. Microsoft founder Bill Gates had stopped running the company half a decade earlier. Microsoft got stuck in a relative slump after hitting its peak valuation at the height of the dot-com bubble.
Read more at CultOfMac.com