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?"

Comments

The Vista drivers work fine

[jonbryce]

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.

Re:The Vista drivers work fine

[PatJensen]

This is not true. I also installed Windows 7 off of TechNet at launch, but a lot of stuff is broken. You will not get external audio jack support with Windows 7 OEM drivers on iMac 2009 machines. You will also not get internal microphone or mixer support with Windows 7 OEM drivers on iMac 2009 machines. If you intend on using any Voice over IP applications, Cisco IP Communicator, Ventrilo, Microsoft OCS - install Vista. And, updated sound drivers will not fix your problem. The Intel chipset drivers that ship native to boot camp are what are needed to map the mixer. Windows 7 driver support on iMac's are a sorry state of affairs.

Re:The Vista drivers work fine

[dissy]

You are correct in that the OEM drivers built into Windows 7 do not support Apple hardware.

Just install the drivers off the OS X DVD into Windows 7 and all that hardware will work.

If your complaint is the drivers are not built into Win7, then you are complaining at the wrong company. Apple does not make Windows 7...

Re:The Vista drivers work fine

[thejynxed]

That's "usually" the OS turning off power to the device to save electricity.

You can disable that via the Conrol Panel applet called System, then go to Device Manager (probably a link in the left panel), select Mice and other pointing devices, click on the mouse listed, then on the Power Management tab. Should be a checkbox there you can clear out.

UAC will probably rear it's ugly head when you first invoke the System applet, and possibly when you make a change and hit Apply/OK.

We won't even get into the issues you might get if your mouse was assigned the same IRQ and DMA range as your SATA controller (It isn't pretty).

i just posted this comment on my 27" imac

[rizawbone]

running windows 7. what's the issue? everything works great.

Re:Why bother?

[furball]

PC World's fastest Windows laptop in 2007 was a MacBook Pro

Apple Specific Drivers

[WarpedCore]

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.

Re:Apple Specific Drivers

[dgatwood]

Windows 7 supports EFI natively. You apparently do need Apple drivers to use the internal keyboard and trackpad on laptops, though.

Regarding power management, AFAIK, the worst case scenario would be if the SMC drivers didn't load, in which case after the SMC's watchdog timer fires, the SMC should bring all the fans up to full blast. You're not going to overheat the CPU by failing to load the drivers. You can verify this if you'd like. With your computer idle, unload the fan control KEXT. Thirty seconds or a minute later, the fans should ramp up. When you reload the KEXT, they should spin immediately back down to what you'd expect with the machine idle. At least this is what happens in the G5 towers. I'm assuming the Intel laptops behave the same way.

CPU power management is handled by the CPU, not by any special bits in the chipset, AFAIK, so that should be unaffected no matter what. And the hardware is designed to protect against getting too hot, so at some point, the CPU starts putting itself to sleep to keep the temperature within bounds, and if even that isn't enough, the computer shuts down. AFAIK, most of that happens in hardware, so even a really broken OS shouldn't be able to damage hardware. At the very least, it's pretty unlikely.

Stop with the "Better quality hardware"

[IANAAC]

It's readily available in non-Apple form.

Re:Stop with the "Better quality hardware"

[nabsltd]

Not even close, at least not for the Mac Pro (which I considered for a while until the price realization came).

The 8-core Mac Pro base sells for $3299. I tried to duplicate the hardware, but unfortunately you can't buy some of it at most stores any more as it's older (i.e., nobody sells it anymore because it's junk compared to current hardware).

• $420 motherboard that is considerably better than that on the Mac Pro, as it includes SAS 2.0 RAID and IPMI (similar to HP's ILO). There are many other similar motherboards in the same price range with slightly different feature sets (SLI support, etc.), so you can pick and choose to get exactly what you might need.
• $770 for 2x Xeon 5520, the same CPU as on the base Mac Pro
• $417 for 12 GB DDR3 RAM, twice that of the base Mac Pro
• $75 Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, which is likely better than what is in the Mac Pro
• $30 24x DVD writer, faster and more fully featured than the Apple "SuperDrive"
• $70 GT 220 video card, which is better than the GT 120 included with the Mac Pro (the GT 120 is basically not available for sale any more because it's about 3 generations behind current tech)
• $300 for case and power supply (a generous allowance, for sure)

So, for less than $2100, you can far exceed the specs on the $3300 Mac Pro, and these are nowhere near the lowest prices on this hardware...it's just that Newegg carries everything and their search is very good.

Re:Stop with the "Better quality hardware"

[PixetaledPikachu]

The list of complete models must be limited, or you get the chaos of half-assed support and conflicting drivers which exists in the Windows world. Apple has a reputation for ease of use, and part of the reason for that is having very specific models with very specific parts designed to work together. Once you open the gates to allow anyone to put just anything they want in the machine, you have support issues. It's a closed product with limited options. If Apple products don't suit you, don't use them. Simple as that. But you come across as a maligned Apple-hater when you could just say "Meh, not for me" instead. I would expect better from someone with a low ID.

the grand parent post purpose is to specifically shows that "better quality" as in "apple form" does not have to be as expensive as apple hardware. To that extent, the post is extremely spot-on

Re:Virtualbox

[binarylarry]

Not entirely correct.

Virtualizing the graphics card already has support for all the major VMs (VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels, etc) and it's being actively worked on with support from the big GPU ISVs.

Its Very Doable now

[anethema]

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.

Re:Why bother?

[jim_v2000]

No, that's what you would buy a Vaio for. My screen developed some (50+ in a cluster) dead pixels three months after I bought my laptop, and Sony had someone meet me at work and replace it three days later.

Re:Why do you eschew choice?

[Totenglocke]

Agree. I'm thinking of getting a Macbook Pro, and it's tempting just to run it Windows 7 only. OS X really doesn't have any advantages over Win 7 that I can think of - especially since my friends who own Mac's are always trying to find scripts and programs to download to get OS X to have features that Windows has had for forever (hibernate, keyboard shortcut to lock the screen, things like that).

Re:Why do you eschew choice?

[zblack_eagle]

While I consider my aluminium macbook to be of excellent design and hardware quality, the first generation macbook that I had before this was absolutely atrocious. Random reboots, dying batteries, malfunctioning chargers, wireless that wouldn't connect under bootcamp and an optical drive that required prying a second disc half way in to be able to eject the first disc.

On the topic of the article, Vista drivers work fine, but one thing I did not appreciate was having to (though easily) find a work around to Apple's arbitrary restriction on limiting the installation of x64 drivers to the macbook pros. Not sure what the stupid rationale would've been for that as the drivers work fine and nobody would've chosen to buy a macbook pro just to run Windows x64

Re:Why do you eschew choice?

[Khyber]

Speaking as a former repair tech that still gets the 'honor' of fixing other people's broken new-model macbooks, I'll just say "Look at the actual board vendors." Apple hasn't realy "MADE" their own hardware in years. They just say what hardware they want and let the board makers pack it on and make it work.

Fuck that noise, you're better off trying to piece your own system together. In fact, many companies exist to do just that for you, nowdays, with discrete powerful MXM graphics that you can upgrade. Barebones laptops FTW. And you'll still get a comparable system for about 1/3 as much.

Re:Why do you eschew choice?

[Totenglocke]

You're also ignoring the fact that you have to re-open any files, programs, and possibly websites that were open. Not only does that take time, but it's also a pain to keep track of everything. Hibernate is wonderful, but you'll never even give it credibility because it's the evil Windows that uses it (yes, I realize Linux has it too, but I've yet to see a Linux system wake from sleep or hibernate - I love Linux, but that's always been a problem on every Linux system I've used).

Besides - 2 minutes? My POS laptop can wake from hibernate to everything working perfectly in Win 7 in under a minute. My desktop is even faster.

Re:Why bother?

[HybridJeff]

"A new Mac mini goes for $599 and a MacBook is $999. This is hardly "house and children" figures. Pick a reasonable Mac then go to Dell and spec out a similar machine. The PC prices will be in a close neighborhood."

Ok I'll take that challenge. Im Canadian so priced in CAD.

$649 Mac Mini: http://store.apple.com/ca/configure/MC238LL/A?mco=MTM3NTAwOTE
2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x1GB
160GB Serial ATA Drive

$409 Dell Inspiron http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=di545s_r_1e&c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&kc=desktop-inspiron-545s
2.4Ghz Intel E2220
2GB Ram
320GB HD

The dell also gets you a mouse and keyboard for $140 less. Upgrade any of the parts and you save more versus the apple.

Re:Why bother?

[HybridJeff]

Did some ore playing to match the specs better.

$1,132.00 Mac Mini: http://store.apple.com/ca/configure/MC238LL/A?mco=MTM3NTAwOTE
2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
320GB Serial ATA Drive
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Mouse
Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad

$559 Dell Inspiron: http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=di545s_r_1e&c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&kc=desktop-inspiron-545s
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo E7300 (3MB L2, 2.66GHz, 1066FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 2 DIMMs
320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache(TM)
Dell Mouse / Keyboard

No, actually, they're not

[ifwm]

"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.

Re:Why do you eschew choice?

[mfnickster]

If enough people request it, I'm sure Apple will include it.

They already did-- but they call it "safe sleep," and it's not easily accessible from the System Preferences.

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1.html
http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html