One part of the question that hasn't been answered so far is the difference between bootloaders on microcontrollers and microprocessor systems.
Microcontroller
Most microcontrollers have built-in ROM memory that contains their program code. Changing this code usually requires a programmer device that connects to the programming interface of the microcontroller (e.g. ISP on ATMega). But these programming interfaces usually often are not very convenient to use, compared to other interfaces, since they might not be readily available in the given context. So for example, while almost every computer features USB ports, the SPI interface needed for ISP is much rarer, and other interfaces like the PID interface used on ATXMega are only supported by dedicated programming hardware.
So, e.g., if you want to update the software from a regular computer without any external hardware you can use a bootloader that reads from a different kind of interface (e.g. RS232, USB or RS232 over USB like on the Arduino) to program the device over common interfaces.
That said, if you don't need this functionality the bootloader is completely optional. The microcontroller can still run it's code completely without the bootloader.
Microprocessor
On a microprocessor things are a little different. While most microprocessors feature a ROM that is large enough for a bootloader, those ROMs are not nearly large enough to hold a full OS. So the purpose of the bootloader is to initialise hardware, look for a bootable OS, load it and run it. So the bootloader is critical for every single boot.
On x86/x64 systems this bootloader is either the BIOS or the UEFI (basically a newer version of a BIOS).
Sometimes you might even have multiple bootloaders running in a chain. For example if you have a dual-boot system with Windows and Linux you might end up with the following:
- BIOS/UEFI boots up and finds GRUB installed. It then loads GRUB (=Grand Unified Bootloader)
- GRUB finds some kind of Linux and the Windows Bootloader. The user selects the Windows Bootloader.
- The Windows bootloader starts and finds Windows 7 and Windows 10 installed. The user selects Windows 10.
- Windows 10 finally boots.
So in this case there were three pieces of software that can be considered a bootloader. Both GRUB and the Windows Bootloader are mostly there to give the user a more convenient boot selection option than the BIOS/UEFI would give them. It also allows for multiple OSes to be launched from the same hard drive or even the same partition.
TLDR
So while in both systems the bootloader does kinda similar things (helping the user to choose what code to boot) they both differ greatly in how they accomplish that and what they do exactly.