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Apple has released software that enables its new Intel Macs to run Windows XP.

Available as a public beta, Boot Camp lets users restart in either XP or OS X; it is not an emulation environment like Microsoft's Virtual PC, which is not yet - and now may never be - available for Intel-based Macs.

The final version of Boot Camp will be included with OS X 10.5 - Leopard - which, the company also announced today, will be previewed at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in August, as we predicted.

'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

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Camp makes the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch.'

Boot Camp includes a simplified Windows installation environment that provides a simple graphical step-by-step assistant application to dynamically create a second partition on the hard drive for Windows, to burn a CD with all the necessary Windows drivers, and to install Windows from a Windows XP installation CD.

In spite of its efforts to allow a Windows boot, Apple certainly deems Microsoft's efforts at an operating system as vastly inferior. On its Boot Camp web pages, Apple warns that rather than MacOS X's cutting edge boot technologies 'Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries'.

It also adds that a Windows installation will 'be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world'.

In addition, Apple warns that it does not support (or sell) Windows. Any problems with the Windows installation rest with the user.

Even so, it's not the first time Apple has let Windows on to its hardware. Back in the early 90s it released a PowerMac 6100 with a compatibilty card boasting a 486/66 CPU that meant you could boot into DOS.

The public beta of Boot Camp is a free download from www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp.