As an Apple fan who would like to run a dual boot system on the new Intel based Macintosh boxes, Christmas came a little early.

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

A dual boot system isn’t quite as good as the upcoming virtualization technology that will let users run a variety of operating systems concurrently (not in emulation, but in their own virtual spaces on the same machine). Still, having a dual boot system would give me the opportunity to make one machine into a much more useful tool for development.

I’m all giddy.

Now I just need to buy a new computer…

Read the story.

Update: Fireant Gazette noticed the cool new tool, too. And the Modulator might be coming back into the fold. I can’t help but think that this was a hell of a smart move on Apple’s part.