RSSMac Boot Camp to support Windows 7 by year's end
By Tim Conneally | Published October 22, 2009, 7:05 PM
Apple today promised to update its Boot Camp partitioning tool to support Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate before the end of the year.
In a support article posted to Apple's site today, it says the Boot Camp upgrade will be brought to most Intel-based Macs running OS X Snow Leopard. The sole exception at this point is the 2006 line, where Windows 7 will not be supported by the 17" and 20" iMac, 15" and 17" Macbook Pro and 2.66GHz or 3GHz Mac Pro. These units represent the first generation of Intel-based Macs, and represent a transitional period in the Mac architecture.
Users of these particular models who wish to install Windows 7 will have to do so on a virtual machine through software such as Parallels 4.0 or the soon-to-be-launched VMware Fusion 3.0. Parallels 4.0 has supported Windows 7 in its earlier forms for about six months.
Boot Camp currently only supports Windows XP and Vista in its official documentation, but a number of users claim to have already installed Windows 7 with no problem.
This article gave me a sudden thought
Maybe we SHOULDN'T have flame wars between Microsoft and Apple!!
gasp
I wonder if the two companies' fan bases might ever become cooperative
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|But it's so much more fun to call them Apple traitors.
If we give up this old bone, what are we going to go on about? It's not like anyone cares about Endian anymore.
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|the graphics on winxp pro sp3 on vmware via snowleopard suck bad... cant even run 'battlefield heroes' properly! I do not know much about bootcamp since I have never used it and i'm new to mac.. would using bootcamp fix my issue?
btw, I dont use pc/mac for gaming I have ps3/360 for that I'm just trying to see what works best.
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|Bootcamp allows you to run "native" windows drivers...for the most part. Your performance iwll be greatly improved.
I would wait until the new version comes out though unless you enjoy cursing, pounding your fist intot he table, and pulling your hair out.
From what I have heard, Win7 should be a breeze through the new version of BootCamp. Actually looking forward to this one in our graphics dept.
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|perfect!
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|Huh? I finally replaced the last app for which I had to run Windows VM with a Mac version --- no more Windows at all for me, nor do I miss it.
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|Since Vista and 7 are pratically the same, I've already installed 7 on a 21" iMac without any problems.
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|7 is much better than Vista in many ways......
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|i'll stick with vista for now, since "it just works". unless someone throws me a copy of 7 for free :)
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|This comments proves your lack of education or use on the operating system. People who say vista and 7 are the same have never used it.
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|Isn't it ironic that users are buying a mac to run windows? As I've said before, use whatever makes you happy. I favor no particular platform as every platform has its pluses and minuses, but this is highly ironic that people are buying a MAC to run WINDOWS.
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|@FixXxer
The company I work for bought the MacBooks for us because the President liked the look of them (no other reason) and after a few weeks realised that they were not the appropriate machines because the technical software the engineers use were not available in the Mac world. So all machines had to have Windows installed and the technical software, and now all is well. The machine is good other than some functions on the keyboard, which one has to get used to. The mouse pad is a disaster, so everyone now has a Bluetooh or USB mouse to perform their chores. The company could have purchased other machines with more features for less money, but now the President has egg on his face and hopefully will stay out of the IT departments job.
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|I don't think people are buying new iMacs specifically for that reason but if you already have one, hey, why not run both OSes?
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|gwd, great post. Like I said, buying a product for the sake of being different is not always a good move. Education can lead to far more educated decisions in the IT sector and I would hope that decisions like the one you mention are not made as frequently in an attempt to have what APPEARS to be the new hot technology. Test products, see what works and if in the end a particular product works, use it.
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|From the discussions below the irony is truly amazing.
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|This is the only reason why Macs became popular because they can run Windows!!
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|One word, genius!
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|it was not the only reason for me buying one in July, it was a bonus.
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|The RC's have worked fine using VMWare's Fusion. I didn't know you couldn't install them with Boot Camp. Or can you and it just isn't official?
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|I had been using Win7 x86 betas on my MacBook since February, been using Bootcamp with alot of swearing. The drivers were terrible. Actually as I was installing new builds every 2 weeks , when I started to use BootCamp 2.1, things became a bit more stable. Then when I installed my RTM version in July I dumped Bootcamp altogether and installed natively.
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|The funniest thing about that is you can install Windows 7 x64 natively on a MacBook Pro and completely remove OSX. I have done this already, A MacBook with no Mac software, works perfect. Microsoft was smart and added the EFI function in Windows 7 so you don't have to rely on the BIOS. Sorry Stevie, everytime I boot up, I laugh, that I don't need BootCamp and all the problems it causes. Of course I had to put a Windows Sticker over the Apple on the cover. :-).
If any one wants to do this just Google or Bing it. You will be happy.
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|You ever find a place for the iSight driver. That's about the only one that I can't seem to get install correctly without running through the full Bootcamp installer. I try running it individually, it pretends to install (this off the latest Bootcamp driver disc) but iSight still shows as not installed in Device Manager.
Yet if I run through the full Bootcamp driver install. iSight (and all other hardware) shows up working. Would be nice to find out how to get this ONE single driver working alone somehow. You have any luck with this?
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|Pay attention to this person, and avoid BootCamp if you can.
BootCamp's EFI/BIOS emulation is bad, and many of the Apple provided drivers are bad.
And as this user points out, Win7 x64 supprts the Mac EFI without any BootCamp 'EFI Strap/emulation'. (Even Vista x64 can natively run without bootcamp.)
By not using BootCamp you will get a huge bump in performance, and not have the poor battery issues on MacBooks and other 'quirks' people assume are 'Windows issues' and are more about BootCamp and BootCamp drivers.
(Also as the notes from Apple suggest, they may require Mac users to use Win7 x64, as the first generation of Macs were not x64 based Intel CPUs, so this may mean Apple may finally stop doing the EFI emulation crap with the next version of BootCamp finally.)
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|Is there anything really architecturely different between these 2006 MACs and the current ones that would prevent Windows 7 from running since these are Intel Macs? If users have already been able to install Windows on MACs now is Apple planning on actually blocking the install (just speculation you haters :P)? Thats what it sounds like in this article
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|The very first ones were Core, not Core2 chips and as such can't cope with 64-bit.
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|Well the only Windows machine that I have ever had that acted like a decent computer was XP on my Mac Pro. All the OEM products I have had were totally pants and poorly built and supported. I shall not be buying another non-Apple computer.
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|@ Paul Skinner
So only the very first Intel Core Duo Macs released in 2006 are unable to run Win7?
I purchased my iMac in October 2006 but it was right after the Intel Core 2 Duo line was introduced.
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|@gregmir I am fairly confident that that is the case, but we'll see when it comes out I suppose.
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|That doesn't make sense. Windows 7 is released in both 32bit and 64bit. So that's just saying the 64 bit version won't run. But Windows 7 will run on both Single Core and Dual Core chips.
Edit: Ok i read AnthonySPT's post so it makes a bit of sense performance-wise
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