With Apple's release of Boot Camp, Apple's customers can now run those needed Windows applications on their beloved Apple hardware. While this is a great feature, switching back and forth between OS X and Windows is going to be painful, especially if you need to do it frequently.

An ideal solution for this type of customer, would be something like Rosetta or the Classic environment for Windows applications; basically an Apple version of Wine (or more specifically Darwine) — let's call it 'Rosetta for Windows'.

With Rosetta for Windows, customers could take any Windows application and just run it on their machine, like any native application; It (like Rosetta) would be "The most amazing software you'll never see." The problem is (in all probability) we will literally never see it.
It's not problem of Apple not being up to the task. Given their experience with Rosetta and the Classic environment, they of all companies, would be the most capable of producing Rosetta for Windows. The problem is with the long term effects such a product would present.

Rosetta for Windows? Unlikely

Whenever a development company produces a software product, they must decide which platform(s) they will develop it for. The answer is more often than not Windows, due simply to it's huge market share. With an increasing number of machines running OS X being sold, there is an increasing pressure (albeit still quite small) to also develop for OS X. Rosetta for Windows, would kill any such pressure. Developers will ask themselves "Why make a native OS X version, when the Windows version will run just fine?"

This situation has happened before with OS/2 (anyone remember that OS from IBM?). In order to make OS/2 more attractive, IBM included support for running Windows (3.1 at the time) applications. This was great for consumers, in that they could switch away from the Windows and all it's problems (not that OS/2 didn't have any) without having to loose their beloved applications. However, including support for Windows 3.1 applications within OS/2 was a crippling move in terms of OS/2′s long term adoption. Native OS/2 applications have always been few and far between.

OS/2. Hurt by support for Windows Applications

Having a small number of native applications for any platform, inhibits it's growth and provides a smaller disincentive to switching away from that platform. This is because while consumers may be able to run Windows applications, what happens when they run into problems? More than likely the response from the developer will be "we don't support OS X." Enough of such responses and the next OS the consumer purchases, will probably be one that is supported.

All this combines to form little compelling reason for Apple to make running Windows applications too easy. By keeping it slightly painful (vi reboot or virtual machine), every time an Apple customer looks to buy an application, they will prefer native OS X applications. This increases the the pressure on developers the develop for OS X, decreasing the incentive to switch away from OS X and helps Apple maintain and grow their market share.

With Apple's release of Boot Camp, Apple's customers can now run those needed Windows applications on their beloved Apple hardware. While this is a great feature, switching back and forth between OS X and Windows is going to be painful, especially if you need to do it frequently. An ideal solution for this type ...