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Apple Fails To Deliver On Windows 7 Boot Camp Promise
SkydiverFL writes "For those fans of Apple's Boot Camp package, it looks like you might be waiting on the next 'end of year' to use Windows 7 on your shiny silver boxes. Back in October of this year, Apple published a rather short, but affirmative promise stating quite simply that, 'Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year. This support will require a software update to Boot Camp.' The support page has no updates regarding the new version. Maybe they're waiting for iSlate?"
There is no need to wait. I installed Windows 7 bootcamp on the day it was released on Technet, and it worked fine with the Vista drivers.
Who cares about dual booting when you can run win 7 in virtualbox?
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My macbook aluminum (5.1) has never had any problem with boot camping windows 7.
Has anyone had driver issues with their windows 7 bootcamp?
If you wanted a Windows laptop why would you pay all that money?
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Um, I was under the impression that it was trivial to install Windows 7 on a Mac even without official boot camp support (per http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/15/using-boot-camp-to-install-windows-7-on-your-mac-the-complete-walkthrough/) whats the difference between the tutorial and what you would do normally?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
New self-cleaning nano-tech glass allows one to avoid doing windows.
running windows 7. what's the issue? everything works great.
I had the RTM installed on a first-gen Mac Pro and everything worked out of the box. Sure the Apple drivers put a startup disk selector in, and fix the clock sync issue but driver-wise what's the point?
"liberty and justice for all those who can afford it"
Jesus Christ, people. It's only the first! Give them a few days before you start your cries of "But they said the end of the year!!!" Or would you like to be the employee stuck working through New Year's Eve and New Year's day to get the update out to a bunch of people who likely won't care if it's a few days late?
Use the Preview button!
oh wait, it wasn't broken, was it?
drat. can't bash. lets post to slashdot anyway!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Huh? Windows 7 works fine here on my Mac. I've had it running since the betas no problem.
If you buy a Mac Laptop, you can run Windows, Linux or OS X, all fully supported.
If you buy a Windows laptop, you can't officially run OS X - and of course it comes pre-loaded with Windows, not OS X.
Considering you also get better quality hardware, it seems reasonable to pay a little more for more choice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why bother? Windows 7 is supposed to be better but I just went through living Hell with my Vista running notebook over the holiday. A forced update screwed up my wireless internet and I had endless problems doing basic things. I finally decided to throw in the towel and use Mac exclusively for all my personal computer use. I've got Vista on two computers, one an expensive desktop, and they are both crap. My Macs run flawlessly. Once again I know they are talking Windows 7 but it seems to only be marginally better. I find it increasingly difficult to play any form of media on a Windows machine and the once elegant file system is now a mess worse than Mac's. I'm not normally a big fan of Apple or Macs but Microsoft has turned me into a believer. I get prompted for upgrades on my Mac maybe once a week where as it's nearly a daily happening with the PCs, not always Windows but some bloody software needs a security update on the Windows machines all the time. Oddly enough third party updates are rare on the Macs. Call the next comment a troll but I'm serious, don't waste the hard drive space on your Mac and just learn to love the Mac. My notebook has been reduced to playing DVDs and half the time when I leave it for a while and it forces me to log in again it crashes the player and I have to reboot it. It's never happened on any of my Macs. Pretty sad when it can't even reliably handle playing DVDs and 90% of the video clips I find on the web won't play on any Windows machine I have. Oddly enough virtually all the clips will play on my Macs.
While it is valid to complain that Apple missed a deadline, I am kind of surprised that Apple even made the effort to create a deadline. I cannot imagine people paying Apple prices to run MS Windows on an exclusive basis. I can imagine them paying such prices to run virtual machines with other OS.
I would rather see Apple point customers toward Parallels or Fusion rather than working on trying to get MS Windows to work as the base OS. What would be even more cool is a kernal that could then be used to run any number of OS in virtual mode.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Oddly, Windows 7 works just fine on my MacBook Pro 15".
There was a Firmware update about 2 weeks ago, which may have been what we were waiting for; but I had no problems with it when I installed it today.
-Runz
I'm confused. I have windows 7 installed in my macbook pro using bootcamp.
From what I heard, OS X uses certain low level functions that control processor speed/voltage within the OS itself versus what conventionally would be done through a BIOS on a normal PC. Apple uses EFI... I know that. Just reading about some of the "dangers" if using a Mac to run Linux... main reason being, you have a likeliness of damaging the CPU if all you run are intensive tasks under Linux. Apple wrote drivers that deal with this stuff under Windows. All in all, Vista drivers will work fine... but I'm just picky about "official bootcamp support" even if it is a gimmick. Apple wouldn't be putting an ounce of elbow grease into it unless there was something important they were writing into it to ensure a smooth experience.
I installed Windows 7 on my Mac Pro the day it showed up on MSDN.
running snow leopard, debian, and win7. what's the issue? everything works great.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I've been running Win7 64-bit Enterprise on my work Macbook 2,1 since August or September. Had to fiddle with it since this machine isn't supported for 64-bit environments, but it worked.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It's readily available in non-Apple form.
Sorry, this story is just plain wrong. Windows 7 works fine under the existing bootcamp. Macs are just glorified Intel machines after all. As long as you expose the bios interface that allows windows xp/vista to run, windows 7 will run fine too.
Sure, there may be a grain of truth in the article. Windows 7 is not "officially" supported by Apple. Neither is linux, and that runs fine on Macs too!
Back in October of this year, Apple published a rather short, but affirmative promise stating quite simply that, 'Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year [CC].
Hang on, it's January.
Maybe they're waiting for iSlate?
iGuess...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Hypocrite Camp and be done with it?
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Here is some info not provided in the rest of the 'I'm posting from Win7" posts here is some helpful information.
First, the Snow Leopard DVD includes boot camp 3.0, which VASTLY improves the use of the touchpad under Windows XP or Vista. It also mostly works under Windows 7.
If you don't have a Snow Leopard DVD, here is a link to the drivers on TPB:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5054638/Bootcamp_Driver_3.0_for_Windows_32bit__amp__64bit_%28from_Snow_Leopard
After installing this updating the sound drivers and video drivers would be advisable since the ones that come in boot camp suck and/or cause crashes.
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us for video drivers. Select windows-7 then 32 or 64 bit depending on which you've chosen.
ac
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false
After this it should be reasonably stable.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
By your logic I don't need a decent CPU or RAM because Windows XP will run on 64 MB of memory and a 233 MHZ x86 CPU.
Things that run decently and don't have minute-long lag is a need.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Do you take arsehole pills or arsehole lessons?
Running slow actually is "not running nicely".
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Some Apple Fanboys are long on BS and short on facts. The "mine works, what's the problem" comments bear witness to the lack of even the most simple research before posting. The mid-2009 MacBook Pro's have a different manufacturer's audio system than earlier MBP's and quite simply, there are problems in Win7. The built-in microphone doesn't work and the audio output volume is too low to be really useable. Someone has created a workaround for the audio out, but not the mic-in. There are other problems, too, but the facts are obviously not too important for the "mine works" folks. Apple sells their systems with Bootcamp as a selling point, then gives a promised date for the drivers, and then doesn't deliver. There has never been an OS in the hands of more people in beta form than Win7. Apple has had over a year to get this addressed. We know why they haven't and it is very small-minded of them. They seem to be having increasing problems with dates. quality, and credibility. This doesn't bode well for the future. The MBP's are reallly nice machines and still a good value for the money when compared with Windows-only laptops, but they would be better if Apple would fulfill their commitments to their customers. Some of us care about things like that.
I've really had no problems on the latest model unibody 15" MBP. I've been running the Windows 7 x64 RTM since it was released. I think the best features added from the actual bootcamp installation are the keyboard/trackpad functions, HFS+ drivers, and backlit keyboard. Drivers aren't really an issue...
So, the version i am running from Snow Leopard, that says "compatible with Windows 7" right there on the setup screen is actually NOT compatible with windows 7.
FTFA:
You cannot run your Mac applications simultaneously
No one notified me of this! Ive been running it like that since I installed it!
You cannot safely resize the Mac or Windows partitions
Got me again! Next time i'll try it, i'll make sure to do it as unsafely as i can.
You cannot easily transfer files between the two partitions (without third-party support)
I'll stop using the hfs driver in boot camp right away (once i learn to disable it. Damn apple making stuff just work).
Seriously, anyone reading CNet for legitimate stories should have his head checked.
nevermind that virtualized directx is like, dx9c, and not complete, and fail, and is slow
just stfu already with ur bold and italic to justify BOGUS argumentation.
why pay premium for apple and then just put windows on anyway?
How does Apple do this, then leap all over Pystar? Am I missing some hypocritical anomaly?
I'm not trolling, honestly.
Can you name some of these apps?
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
I've been running Windows 7 on an Apple with Snow Leopard for months now.
But you say it can't be done...hmmm.
You must be a hit at parties.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Windows 7 x86_64 and Snow Leopard on a Macbook Pro 5,1 here. No issues.
Everything works fine. I used a third party partition manager to set up/move the partitions around and then used the bootcamp drivers. Power savings could be better (2 hours under Win7 vs 6 hours in OS x) but aside from that nit it works just fine for me.
I'm not entirely sure what the issue is.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
big monitor on that rig? LCD back light?
how much ram? how fast?
Firewire 800? Gigabit ethernet? Bluetooth?
how's the wireless?
just asking.
-- Sig under construction...
"From what I heard" is not a source. Nor is it an excuse to spout such nonsense.
I'm going to hurt my CPU if i Linux too hard?
try that preview thingy once and a while.
-- Sig under construction...
It it totally accurate. The "facts" in the article are complete rubbish.
Anyone who has used bootcamp and Windows on a Mac would know that. I can only surmise that the person who wrote the article has never, ever used Windows on Bootcamp.
Installing Windows 7 32 bit is trivial. BUT, installing Windows 7 64 bit (the major difference in the new windows OS) has been made NEAR IMPOSSIBLE by Apple. Perhaps Apple is worried about PRO clients swapping the osx to a decent 64 bit OS. After many days, including having to REBUILD the windows 7 64bit installer AND delete a terminally incompatible driver in DOS during install, we managed to get WIN 7 64bit running on a Mac Pro (1st version), even though Apple STATED THIS WAS IMPOSSIBLE AND WOULD NOT BE SUPPORTED... Even though IT IS POSSIBLE, but not by using any Apple help. And YES, Windows 7 64-bit kicks OSX's ass in every performance department on the same machine.
I have noticed 2 major issues with Boot Camp coming with the "snow leopard" DVD and I started to believe Apple doesn't want users to have good performance on Windows. Or, they don't have slightest clue about importance of these things.
1) The NVidia GPU drivers coming with Snow Leopard DVD (and there are no updates) are _old_. One would think "well, they could prefer stability", no it is not the case either. The stuff offered at NVidia drivers page are WHQL certified by default too. 9400M is especially a GPU/Integrated GPU hybrid, it really needs up to date, latest driver software to function properly.
2) Now, this is not a trivial thing to fix like heading to nvidia and download a driver. SATA on latest gen Mac Mini (and Intel based stuff) is not properly identified to Windows via MBR or "BIOS". There isn't much information there but in case of Intel SATA controller, it is documented and you can take a real big risk of MBR tweaking with some ready to use tools and identify SATA/AHCI situation to Windows, thanks to NCQ like features _only_ available to AHCI (at least under win), 2-3x performance hit may occur. NVidia chipset having Mac Minis who really needs whatever software performance they need (they run 2.5"). I did every documented, undocumented, dangerous trick on book to have 20 MB/sec pathetic speed. Same drive on same hardware hits 60-70MB/sec on OS X.
As Nvidia won't give specs to a chipset nerd or end user, things would really change in case of Apple themselves contacting them. I really believe people who can do crazy things like putting a virtual BIOS on top of EFI etc would manage to change couple of bytes. I started to believe that it is Apple who wants their users,customers to have junk like performance on Windows. Perhaps with the recent Win 7 hype, they are afraid of their customers having good experience with Windows and start to question their brand?
Both MS and Apple acted like Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are just incremental updates (driver wise), under 32bit (not pure 64bit) and WHQL drivers should work properly under windows 7 if they worked fine under Vista.
They were also gave impression of "Windows 7" and "Snow Leopard" specific release of applications aren't needed as long as you don't use features specific to these newest operating systems.
So developers waited for the release OS just to run the latest XCode, Visual Studio, compile 10.5/10.6 and Vista/7 build of their drivers/applications and ship them.
It turned out to be wrong. I follow OS X scene (as Mac user), very pricey and very goodly written pure Cocoa applications had to move to "Snow Leopard" and "Plain Leopard" releases. In theory, it wasn't surely needed but in practice, guy had "your application won't launch" e-mails.
If Apple trusted MS on Windows 7 not needing a very special driver and just couple of tweaks to Vista driver would be enough and if their internal tests failed horribly in Windows 7 final, they may have postponed the official release. If you think half of the boot camp users are die-hard gamers and the other half are engineers running AutoCAD like complex tools... I mean, they can't release an unstable driver and tell people to trust their data to it.
While speaking about data loss, I was also shocked about the Snow Leopard boot camp giving "read access" to HFS+ disks on Vista without any kind of permissions. Is that supposed to be a favor really? Removing drive letter from the HFS+ solves the issue and makes it invisible.
I really want to meet with that naive guy who has idea of getting Windows support from Apple. Especially when something of complex nature occurs.
It won't simply work. It is only Microsoft who can give Windows support and as long as they sell Windows without "Cannot be installed on Macintosh" stickers, it is their job to support those people.
I would rather report Quicktime, Bonjour, Safari Windows version bugs to Apple.
Not a problem at all.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
And long before that I was using an 80Mhz PowerMac 8100/80av with an Orange PC NuBus card, with a 200mhz pentium on the card. Could change environments without a hitch.. It's not new for mac users, confused PC fanboy. GRUB, also, can be a PITA to configure for a novice computer user. The actual "boot loader" that Apple's using has been around since they moved to New World ROM also, back in about 1998 (before GRUB was available), though it only detected Mac OS's (multiple drives, bootable removable media, ...). Can hardly get any simpler than just holding the Option key at boot and then having the firmware automatically scan all available media for bootable systems. Only configuration required is running the bootcamp assistant to install Windows.
No problems here running Windows 7 Professional x64 on a 2007 20" iMac 2.4 (iMac7,1).
I had two tweaks that I had to perform. One tweak was due to a M$ screw-up and the other is a Boot Camp x64 driver compatibility issue.
1. Just set up a Boot Camp partition like you normally do, throw in the Windows 7 disc when prompted. If you see nothing but a black screen that says "Select CD-ROM Boot Type", please see the link below. This is a known issue with some downloadable Server 2008 / Windows 7 media provided by Microsoft in .iso form.
http://sergiomcfly.blogspot.com/2008/04/select-cd-rom-boot-type-when-installing.html
2. Format the BOOTCAMP partition (do not remove it, just format it and the installation process should start)
3. Once Windows 7 is installed and at the desktop, locate your Command Prompt, right-click and "Run As Administrator"
4. Insert your Snow Leopard disc (or other media containing the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers) and run the BootCamp64.msi from D:\Drivers\Apple\BootCamp64.msi
Instead of receiving the error message "Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model." when running the main Setup.exe, the 64-bit Vista drivers will install on Windows 7 x64 just fine. All hardware seems to be properly supported, although I replaced the Apple ATI Radeon HD 2600 driver with a current version from the ATI site for gaming performance purposes.
VMware Fusion 3.0.1 tied into the Windows 7 x64 Boot Camp partition works just fine as well.
Actually, I ran across a nasty bug when I first put Windows 7 on a drive in my Mac Pro.
My system has 4 physical hard drives in it. The first was labeled "OS X Boot" and the 2nd. and 3rd. had labels of "Data 1" and "Data 2". I installed Windows 7 on the 4th. drive. All went well, except when booted into Windows 7, it displayed the OS X drives out of order. (With the latest version of Boot Camp drivers on the Snow Leopard DVD, they provide "read only" support of the OS X HFS+ volumes in Windows.) It was assigning my "Data 1" drive as drive G" while "Data 2" was drive F:, and "OS X Boot" was given letter H:.
I figured "No big deal. I know how to fix it when Windows does this stuff ....", and went into Computer Management and Disk Management under Administrative Tools, and told it to reassign the drive letters in the order I wanted them. It did, as requested, and all seemed to be well.
EXCEPT, on reboot into OS X, I discovered my OS X drives were rendered unbootable/unusable! Windows 7 could see them just fine - but the Mac didn't like them natively anymore! Worse yet, I tried all sorts of disk repair utilities on them and the usual result was being shown that the drives were of an "unrecognized partition type" and options to repair them were "greyed out"! One program, Drive Genius, actually let me verify and repair the volumes - but after running through everything, insisted the drives were "ok" and there was nothing to repair!
Apparently, the Disk Management in Windows actually rewrites something in the partition table when it reassigns drive letters (not just a registry update), and whatever it does changes things JUST enough to screw up OS X from using the HFS+ volumes normally. Apple really needs to update their drivers so they prevent people from being able to write to the drives from Windows' disk management tool, since this is the case. "Read only HFS+ support" should mean just that!
idiots buy macs then want to run windows.
Great thread.
This one sucked in every fanboy on the /.
We have the virtual machine kids fighting it out in one corner.
We had native platform dudes in another.
We had the obligatory mac vs pc vs linux still going at it after 20 years
We even had an appearance from some GPU fanboys.
We have never seen so many replies marked down with Troll and Flame bait.
I could actually picture foam coming from some of the fanboys mouths as they had to respond to every thread they could. And correct the religious misdeeds of the others.
All going at it at once. Who wins? ( ME. I was highly entertained by the carnage. )
what an assinine commentary, obviously written by someone who hates apple because they aren't smart enough to run a unix based operating system
I'm writing this from my MacBook running Windows7 via boot camp. I dual boot it with Snow Leopard. All seems to be working fine and has been since I set it up roughly 2 months ago.
However, I never did like the right-click support on the touch pad for Vista and it's no better in Windows 7. It acts rather odd in windows explorer. Otherwise a great machine. I rarely use the Mac OS, but it's nice to play with on occasion.
"The PC prices will be in a close neighborhood."
This hasn't been true for 5 years, and gets less true every day.
It fun to watch you people get modded up for something that is, essentially, an easily disproven lie.
"Way to spread FUD."
You mean like the "The PC prices will be in a close neighborhood." FUD that HybridJeff already proved was total bullshit?
Why do you insist on pretending your lie is anything else, or even worse, accuse others of dishonesty when you've been proven to be a liar?
trojans, keyloggers and DNS cache poisoning included, no extra charge! now you'll really feel like you're running windows!
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Boot from your install-dvd and run disk repair from there.
Use boot camp only as a repartioner. Use rEFIt for your bootstrapping needs.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I am a Mac user (and have been forever!), but as a web developer / Java coder, I do recommend getting VirtualBox, or VMWare installed with Windows. The ability to develop on the mac, and instantly test on IE, Firefox, Chrome on Windows, as well as Mac browsers, is just THE killer feature.. Im not sure if it will work with the special hardware though :-(
I know it's just "anecdotal evidence", but here goes. I purchased a iMac in mid December along with Windows 7. I used Boot Camp, and it had an explicit option for "Windows 7" My conclusion: TFA is wrong, and Apple delivered Win 7 support on time as promised.
"Pick a reasonable Mac then go to Dell and spec out a similar machine."
Pick a reasonable Dell and then spec out a similar Apple machine.
Apple machines are more. No doubt. And they justify it with more features. But the market has already decided that price wins against features. I own 4 Macs. But they cost more. You can't seriously argue against that.
I have no problem running 32-bit editon of Windows 7 on my MacBook. All the drivers installed nicely, using Vista compatibility mode. On 64-bit edition, however, I couldn't install ANY Apple drivers for some reason and I had to reinstall the whole system to 32 bits.
Not true! My MBP runs Windows 7 Ultimate on BootCamp like a pro. No problems with drivers -- printing, mouse/keyboard control, audio, everything. Works like a charm.
"Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker."
You've got to be kidding, really. Apple absolutely refuses to allow anyone to use OS/X on non-apple hardware and you spin it as a *benefit* of Apple hardware. The only reason you can run other OS's on Apple hardware is that other companies aren't like Apple. That's a real benefit.
That didn't work either.... Disk Utility showed the drive partitions as greyed-out and I had no options except to delete them and re-create new ones.
The last resort was to back up everything I could onto an external USB drive, from inside Windows 7 (since it could still read the OS X partitions it mangled), and do a reformat/reinstall.
Well that's good to know. Did you get a lot of wedgies at high school?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It has another side effect. You lose the trust to the brand itself. Things are very suspicious on G5 land since very interesting things spotted over time... E.g. if you use the GNU core utils instead of Apple utils (/bin/install etc), things go up to "rocket speed" in complex installs.
While I deserve all kinds of punishment (!) to trust their support, my Quad G5 with stock Nvidia 6600 has exactly 50% less OpenGL performance on Leopard (again, paid!) compared to OS X Tiger. Some traced it down to the driver being buggy and needlessly uses "store textures on system memory" emergency fallback. Nevertheless, I said "Well, I jumped to 10.5 too early", reported the bug down to game FPS levels and OpenGL profile reports to them and expected a fix in 10.5.4+ . Guess what? I still got my OS X Tiger partition up and running for games and high perf 3d/video.
If it was a PC and you spotted similar issues on Windows, I am sure they (nvidia, microsoft or even large game company) would be more interested since Apple chose to ignore my bug report. They also suggested me, POWERPC user to "upgrade to snow leopard", as those bugs are fixed in it rather than plain leopard. These idiots see "powerpc" in every line mentioned, they are like joking. Debian/Linux? They responded to my one time only bug report while I state "I can't stand to fan noise so I will remove linux" and actually fixed it.
As owner of 5 macs in just 1 home and especially I spotted those "windows conspiracies" which doesn't really need a Mark Russinovich to see, I try to plan whether I go with AMD or Intel i5 for my new computing platform which will be either *BSD or Windows.
I bet Apple guys suggesting me to "upgrade to snow leopard" (throw working quad G5) didn't see it coming.
With "tablet" coming and iphone, I agree to you... They decided to be a stylish device/expensive computer/music store company. It is not the Apple of 2003 which we have seen amazing advances every single OS X update.
You're alone there, I'm afraid.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Uh...not sure why people are having a problem. I installed 7 the other day on my 2009 17" MBP and it runs fine. I had XP installed, so I booted from the 7 dvd, selected the partition, installed it and then put in my snow leopard disc to install the drivers, worked perfectly.