Leopard's Boot Camp brings 'fast switching' between Mac OS X and Windows

Thanks to you TUAW readers, tips are rolling in on all the tiny and not-so-tiny features that Mac OS X Leopard will be bringing in October. One feature that is definitely not-so-tiny is something I'll dub 'fast switching' between Mac OS X and your Boot Camp Windows installation. While this isn't quite the built-in virtualization that some users were hoping for, it will minimize the startup, shutdown and boot times when switching between the two OSes. Detailed on Boot Camp's new features page, Apple has hooked their safe sleep feature into Boot Camp to allow Mac OS X to save all your open applications and windows, and then boot over into Windows. Once you're done in Windows, you can boot back over to Mac OS X and pick up where you left off - with all your open applications and documents put right back where you left them.

This is a great idea and an interesting compromise between making it a little too easy to run Windows on your Mac, and it also keeps Apple from stepping on the toes of virtualization products from companies like Parallels and VMware.

Thanks, Daniel