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Not too long ago, it was considered sacrilege for a journalist to choose a PC over a Macintosh - it was like telling veteran reporters (the guys that served in Nam) that The New York Times was a bunch of liberal alarmist gobbledy-gook, which, of course, it is. And that's just fine with them, just like their time tested Macs.

But then Apple did something to put a stutter into loyalist rhetoric: They released Boot Camp, a public beta software that lets Apple users take advantage of the newly incorporated Intel dual-core processors by enabling Macintosh computers to run Windows XP.

Next we may hear that the Washington Times and the Washington Post shake hands and call it even. Macintosh users will have little to quibble over with PC loyalists - a development that will no doubt drive up sales of Macs, as long as the mouse has the proper number of buttons.

But PC manufacturers may (and should) be a little concerned. Apple beat open sourcers to the punch by providing Boot Camp, which uses those two brains to run the user's choice of Mac OS X or Windows XP, and opens up better and faster graphics capabilities to previously PC-only applications.

PC-makers, like Dell, had little reason to focus on hardware design - the bulky, awkward casing only needed an "Intel Inside" sticker to remind the computer-buying populace that only journalists, animators, and graphic designers had any use for a Macintosh.

Suddenly, dogs and cats are living together, new Macs can run Windows, and Dells become ugly and substandard. If it were the open source community, and not Apple itself, that provided these capabilities, the standard PC-maker could continue its habit of "standard" operations. To a computer salesman, open source equals no support, a chance it may not work right, and little news in the mainstream about its availability.

But Apple did it. And now they're not just prettier, smaller, and better at that short list of industry-specific applications, but they can also run the operating system that kept them out of the larger market for a decade and a half - despite all their product placement efforts (think back to "You've Got Mail" and Meg Ryan in all her Apple-AOL gooeyness).

Though it opens up their market enormously, Apple says that Boot Camp is not tantamount to a Windows endorsement or partnership.

"Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple's superior hardware now that we use Intel processors," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We think Boot Camp makes the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch."

That's exactly the type of rhetoric making Michael Dell scramble to suggest extending his products' capabilities. From latimes.com:

"Then came Michael Dell with the other side of the story. Why not put OS 10 on a far cheaper Dell Windows PC instead of a costly Mac? You'd get the best of both worlds and shell out far less.

In an e-mail to Forbes magazine, Dell said: "If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers."

Apple's response was quick and negative. Apple will not sell OS 10 for installation in non-Apple hardware. It will sell software to run Windows on Macs but not the other way around."

Next up: Plaid accepts Stripes but tells Polka Dots to shove it.

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.