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For Boot Camp Users, New Macs Require Windows 8 Or Newer
For anyone using Windows 7 by way of Apple's Boot Camp utility, beware: support for Windows via Boot Camp remains, but for the newest Apple laptops, it's only for Windows 8 for now. From Slashgear:
This applies to the 2015 MacBook Air, and the 13-inch model of the 2015 MacBook Pro. Windows 8 will remain compatible, as will the forthcoming Windows 10. The 2013 Mac Pro also dropped Boot Camp support for Windows 7, while 2014 iMacs are still compatible, along with 2014 MacBook Airs and 2014 MacBook Pros.
For those who still prefer to run Windows 7 on their Macs, there are other options. This change to Boot Camp will not affect using the Microsoft operating system through virtualization software, such as Parallels and VMware Fusion. Also at PC Mag.
I've always been curious if there is ever going to be a clean way of running straight windows on a macbook air (ideally Windows 10).
The air form factor is fantastic and really is actually cost competitive with what others put out when compared to quality (apple does have volume) despite all those who say you can get a macbook air equivalent PC for $300, I've never found one that works right.
For work reasons though I'm stuck with windows... so I'd love to skip the whole bootcamp thing entirely... but still need the drivers..
Just like how all linux distros only "support" (read: allow) systemD.
The noose is closing. Free computing is OVER.
Secure Boot, Intel AMT/Vpro/VT/(whatever they call it), and 5th columnists like redhat and poettering.
This story will apply to not just Apple laptops, but quite a few new laptops going forward. For hardware (including drivers for all the devices built into the motherboard) it makes economic sense to build and test new drivers that are Windows 7 compatible since there is a large pool of people using Windows 7 on desktops that may buy the hardware as an upgrade. For laptop specific hardware for new laptops there is no upgrade market and all new laptops must be sold with Windows 8.1+. It does not make sense to build and test Windows 7 drivers for these devices since there is no real market to speak of. Be it new Apple laptops or other manufactures laptops, new hardware for laptops just will not have the drivers. Just testing a new driver costs millions of dollars. Apple has dropped Windows 7 support in bootcamp for new hardware. It does not make sense for Apple to invest millions of dollars to write and test drivers for hardware that has no hardware support for Windows 7.
Who cares? People who spent too much for a shitty unupgradeable computer will have to deal with a different shitty overpriced OS. Oh no.
If you want to run Windows 7, you're better off getting cheaper, better, more open hardware than Apple's shit anyway. Why am I supposed to care?
enterprise use is still 7 and most drivers are 7/8 at least from amd / ati / nvidia / intel.
So is apple going out of there way to lock out 7 or just is to lazy to add the 7 drivers as well?
Probably Boot Camp will report that the selected operating system is not supported. So yes, essentially they will lock it out.
could be intel and some other hardware vendors Apple use with their support software that either do not support Windows 8, for some likely off the wall reason
Apple seems to follow Microsoft in versions of Windows they support, Vista was dropped pretty quick, no surprise the same is happening with 7. Though think about it why not push people to install the latest and "greatest" from Microsoft :-)
Well the general case doesn't apply - specifically its the component vendors who are making the parts that go in to the MacBook Air. Its entirely possible that one or two of these who are critical have said "Win8.x only now, unless you pay us lots extra", and Apple's gone "ok , Win8 only it is.
It doesn't matter that many component vendors are still shipping 7/8, what matters is the ones that Apple is using.
The telegraphed this some time ago with the Mac Pro BootCamp drivers being Windows 8 only as well.
> For anyone using Windows 7 by way of Apple's Boot Camp utility, beware: support for Windows via Boot Camp remains, but for the newest Apple laptops, it's only for Windows 8 for now.
Those sadistic bastards.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
From a Windows user to Mac users, my condolences if you're forced to use Windows 8. You'll probably see what Windows users were bitching about. I'd definitely recommend you just skip it and move straight to Windows 10, as it's got most of the cooler features and internal improvement of 8 and much less of the crap.
Oh, and it will fit in nicely with the flat-looking aesthetic that both Microsoft and Apple designers are apparently still madly in love with. You'll note that Apple designers, of course, can still make that look fairly decent, while Microsoft, as you'd expect, just makes it look hideous.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
When has Apple ever cared sweet fuck-all about enterprise?
I actually built a Hackintosh (i.e. running Mac OSX on a custom built PC) machine for dual booting a year ago and had both OSX and Windows 7 running. Installed Win 7 because I like it more than 8 but it was definitely annoying! Win 7 supports UEFI booting, but it still required turning on some legacy modes and was a little harder to set up the dual booting for, while Win 8 would have made this a lot easier as it supports all the latest features.
I would imagine the new Bootcamp requirement is the same. It's simply easier to set up Win 8 for dual booting.
I suspect this isn't about drivers, but more about Window's support for UEFI booting (which Microsoft has been slower to add compared to OSX probably because of legacy hardware compatibility).
My MBP circa late 2009. Nice. Desktop is much better than Yosemite (aka Sodomite by many) by a wide margin, and the hardware is more capable than 2014/15 editions.
A lucky sweet spot given Apple's deteriorating hardware track record.
Apple without Jobs is Apple with Sculley, Again!
The 'Dow Effect' and the temptation to burn through the cash will render Apple at $4.00 per share yet again.
Ha ha
The SE/30 was a pretty good 'workgroup server.'
Except big stinking BS!
Windows 7, windows 8 and windows 10 drivers are interchangeable within an architecture. I run windows 10 on my 2008 MacBook with generic drivers and a few USB peripherals that have 64 but drivers released "only for windows 7" and everything works perfectly. Windows 7 is just vista with a polushed and less annoying UI, windows 8 does decrease on requirements because it optimized a little of the vista mess and windows 10 optimizes furter in some areas and regresses in another, but drivers are not the issue
Not true, you can extract the package and install individual drivers manually. The boot camp assistant will refuse to install windows 8 or 10 on older MacBooks, yet you can install manually, bootcamp driver bundle will refuse to install on an older Mac, yet extract it and install manually. Not much different that when I was building PCs from components in the 90s
Hopefully you can grasp this concept. They would prefer to not run Windows at all. But there are occasions
when they are forced to run an application on this awful OS out of necessity. I am in this group due to CAE apps.
Luckily this is kept to a minimum, and can return to OSX or Linux.
Tell us again how systemd being the default init system is any worse for opensource than the old sysvinit
Many of us require a full-featured real operating system rather than Microsoft's badly designed program loader. But our jobs require us to run Windows software sometimes. So I run Windows in a vm, no reason to that crippled crapware to monopolize my hardware
How dare they miss with Steve jobs vision.
C'mon. Since when has Apple supported software that was more than a few years old? They assume that everybody buys new electronics annually.
I don't respond to AC's.
I used to run Windows through bootcamp on my Macbook Air. The default method of operation, unless this has changed too, is to run Windows in a BIOS compatibility mode. This makes it boot slower, and isn't even needed with modern Windows versions, like 8, that can use EFI.
But now it's more practical to partition it off and install Windows via EFI, and avoid all that nonsense. Faster boot times and far less error prone in my experience.
I love how Mac and Linux users are constantly trying to figure out ways to make their computers run Windows applications, if not Windows itself. Why not just run Windows, period?
Can't speak for the Apple world, but, with Linux, it's mostly the newbies who still want to run Windows applications.
I haven't used Windows nor Windows apps on one of my machines for over 13 years.
I love how Mac and Linux users are constantly trying to figure out ways to make their computers run Windows applications, if not Windows itself.
Why not just run Windows, period?
If you could flip a switch and turn your commuter car into a truck to haul a couch home, why WOULDN'T you?
Take your Us vs. Them ONE OS stuff back to the 90's please. We have computers coming out our butts now, and more platforms, more competition, is welcome.
The key thing here is that noone really wants to run Windows. They perhaps want to run Windows applications. It's all about the ecosystem. Everyone that puts up with Windows does so because of the positive feedback loop that's existed from the days of DOS. Everyone thinks it's the only option so it becomes the only option.
The troll is also ignoring the possibility that somoene might by Apple hardware for it's own sake and merely want to do whatever the HELL they want with their own personal property.
At one time I ran Linux on Macs. It made sense at the time. Apple's hardware was just another PC to me.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So is apple going out of there way to lock out 7 or just is to lazy to add the 7 drivers as well?
If those are the only two choices, then it's that they're too lazy. This isn't the first new model to lack Windows 7 support via Boot Camp. It's the third. It's actually kinda strange that this one is getting so much publicity, since they've been slowly dropping it with new hardware releases for over a year now.
Regardless of his views, his software should be judged on its own merits.
The article oversimplifies the version / support matrix to the point of being meaningless. Treat the article as a content-free "something changed" event and get the real information from the Apple support site.
All that means is you have no idea what you're missing, and you enjoy using badly written programs that have half-assed UIs.
Just as it has always been.
Try installing Windows 9x on a Windows XP-era laptop, or XP on a Windows 7 machine. There will be some cases where it might work, but in general there will be at least a few bits of hardware that don't have appropriate drivers for the older operating system. Hell, why not try installing MS-DOS on a Windows 8 device, just for kicks. (No virtualisation allowed.)
It sounds more like you're bitter that you are stuck with 6 year old hardware. 10.6.8 sucks, and XP was an abomination.
I bet you want $4 AAPL shares so you can actually afford to buy one.
Although Bootcamp is an option, and the price is right, I recommend installing Parallels Desktop 10. Choose your Guest OS or (choose multiple versions of Windows, for example) and be done with it. On modern hardware the VM's are fast. Once you boot an OS (which takes about the same time as booting via Bootcamp) you can suspend and resume, which takes about 10 seconds. Dynamically sized virtual drives makes the task of dedicating a Bootcamp partition size seem primitive. I've yet to run an application that is not compatible including those that require a dongle. Fullscreen or Windowed mode (which is handy for those Patch Tuesdays ... keep working in MacOS). Build a base SystemOS and dedicate VM's to tasks where on Windows machines problems can be expected in a do-everything system. (eg, build an Audio-Only VM). And so on. And Linux is no problem either. I run XPSP3 on a 2013 MacBook Pro without issues; older OS's don't present problems. Parallels can be purchased cheaply by adding it to a hardware order from OWC. And so on.
1. dictates way too much of the system level configuration, then use it to force #2.
2. requires that system daemons and other software adopt its hooks.
All that means is you have no idea what you're missing, and you enjoy using badly written programs that have half-assed UIs.,
Or it means that you have no clue as to what you are talking about, and you are blissful in your ignorance.
ha!
my last gig was at cisco. you would not BELIEVE the amount of silver aluminum laptops that you see walking around the san jose (and world wide) campuses. half, maybe more than half of the employees! and I've heard more and more bay area companies are allowing their employees to select mac or win7 (sadly, linux is still rare for corp world). and some companies are almost entirely mac. a friend of mine was lamenting that all of his group and co-workers use macs and so he was 'forced' to use one as his main system at work. he grew to like it, but he would have picked a pc instead.
when I saw international interns (a ton of them at cisco) almost 95% (just a WAG) were with the silver laptops. it would only be the very odd one out that was using a lenovo or some other brand. I took some classes with the interns and the sea of aluminum on the edu-center classrooms was amazing.
at least in the bay area, apple is a HUGE thing. not sure when it happened, but it has happened.
I don't love mac stuff and I still prefer native linux on my systems, but I'm seeing a lot of mac stuff now in very mainstream corp america.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yeah and they're all user hostile pieces of shit.
FreeDOS works just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Ran it unvirtualized two days ago.
I tried for a day to get Linux installed on my Mac. I thought Boot Camp would be perfect; it repartitioned the drive nicely, but I couldn't get Linux to load. I couldn't delete the Windows partition, couldn't remake it as a Linux partition. Eventually gave up. Is there a way to do this?
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Traditionally, "Bootcamp" has been a conglomeration of two separate things:
1) A compatibility module residing in the system firmware (an EFI module) that provided the ability to boot legacy MBR-based operating systems
2) A set of drivers packaged by Apple that was more or less guaranteed to install all required drivers for your system
The CSM (compatibility module) was recently depreciated and removed from the 2013 Mac Pro, and now several of their laptops as well. That is because Windows 8 (or newer) is capable of booting directly from EFI without the compatibility layer in-between (and therefore an MBR partition).
As far as I know, Apple isn't really even providing driver packages anymore since these operating systems generally support the Macintosh hardware OOTB. This had happened before as well, certain systems like the MacPro1,1 were capable of running Windows 7 or newer (even though Apple didn't list support for those)- you just had to go out and find the drivers yourself, which was fairly easy since nothing in that machine was really proprietary.
So really, the story should be that Bootcamp has been removed from these Macintosh systems, because it no longer exists. There's no more CSM for booting legacy operating systems and the drivers mostly work OOTB. The recent versions of Windows are capable of booting directly on the machine WITHOUT "Bootcamp".
OS X Yosemite still supports my 2008 Mac Pro (with upgraded video cards ATI 5770). There is a cost to trying to support legacy software written 10+ years ago..... The operating system has to jump through hoops and keep old obsolete code for APIs that have long been deprecated - it bloats the operating system, often turns operating system code into spaghetti and limits the operating system moving forward -- it also is ripe as a security threat. Most of the software usually works, there sometimes is one or two applications that were programmed using already deprecated APIs that need to be updated.... but then I seem to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP apps on Windows 7 because of the improvement in security. You even had them creating a virtual XP support to handle old programs - which in itself did not always work.
You clearly have never worked at a company that actually has to support these things.
Sure, in theory they're interchangeable. In practice, have you actually tested it? Are you sure it actually works? Are you willing to commit support staff to the fact that it works? Are you willing to commit cash to refunding people who buy laptops based on the fact that you advertised that it works?
There's only been 3 reasons since Win2000 to actually upgrade
[...]
3. You buy new mobo and find out they didn't bother writing drivers for the older versions of Windows for it.
Bingo. The new MacBook ships with Windows 8 drivers.
Back when Apple switched to x86, it only took a month or so before the people I know who had to go to meetings at Intel were telling me that they were seeing mostly MacBooks at the Intel campus.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Indeed, I have Windows 7 actually refusing to install on a motherboard from 2014. I did not try with the hard disk in MBR mode, but that's because I had already partitionned it in GPT with way more than four primary partitions and installed a linux dual boot (swap, linux OS, another linux OS, a home partition, a data storage partition, room for the Windows partition somewhere in there..)
I guess we're waiting for Windows 10 for that one.. or add another HDD so that Windows 7 can be installed on a MBR one. But here's hoping that we don't have to go to UEFI setup to toggle a setting everytime.
Regular Joes too!
Win 7 is now the new XP as much as MS is trying to be asses about this (hence try to activate a Windows 7 machine to purchase a license and are redirected to a win OS designed for tablets) and paying BestBuy to destroy copies of 7 long before EOL to force people to use a tablet 8 version etc.
MS has a problem. Once they have a good thing they throw it away and start a new and then it takes years to fix. XP worked well. Vista I can see some reasons for a new platform but the new low color icons that look like Windows 2.0 and flat when 7 looked gorgeous doesn't make sense.
http://saveie6.com/
Microsoft introduced many changes in 8 compared to 7 - and Apple assumes new Macbook users will want a newer version of Windows anyway. 2009 is when Windows 7 was released. That's 6 years ago - get over it.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
XP was stable [1] and standard in the corporate sphere for far longer than it probably should have been. I used it. It worked and worked well, and that's all I cared about. OSX 10.6.8 worked too and would still be working on my white MacBook had I not spilled water on it.
Say what you want about Apple and MS; XP and Snow Leopard were stable workhorses. Work got done with them, and in the end that's what counts.
Apple's chosen to drop MBR support, that's all. New versions of Windows don't require it, and dropping MBR support lessens their programmers' and testers' load and lets them concentrate resources on other things of interest to them. God knows they need to address some other things; I'd hope they would make Finder suck less at accessing CIFS shares and be able finally (tandem aliquando) to mount SFTP as a volume, but I doubt it. Fact is, though, that Apple has a history of dropping support for things they see as outdated before anyone else sees them as so: floppy drives come to mind. That pisses off some people who don't want to let go of older things, but they get over it in one to three years and find something else about which to complain while praising Apple for being forward-thinking about whatever they complained about one to three years prior. Is that wrong of Apple? Fine, let it be wrong, but they're at least pushing the state of the art ahead, and someone's got to be the first to drop support for the old. If you want support for the old, run NetBSD instead.
There are two sides to economics: supply and demand, the central and the margins. When a company makes decisions that affect supply, it does so on its understanding (projections, research) of demand. Apple projects that few people will be buying brand new Apple systems and installing old versions of Windows on them. Frankly, they're right. Most people will be happy with OSX, some will install a new version of Windows with Bootcamp, and even fewer will need XP or something old enough to require MBR, and those people will buy VMWare or Parallels, and work will get done. Linux users will boot out with an EFI-capable loader, and they won't even notice that anything's changed. The world will continue to turn, the sun will rise again each day, some agent in the NSA will wonder why he continues to read your worthless e-mail, and the poorest man in France will still live a more "authentic" life than American hipsters who only dream of being a French artisanal bread-maker. Somewhere, a man with 10.6.8 will continue to call the latest edition of the operating system "Sodomite," and an anonymous coward will call him poor, and no one will notice that MBR support has been dropped in the latest version of Bootcamp, and that is all.
[1] I should write, "at least for a version of Windows," to satisfy the MS haters and curry mod points, but I won't, because I never saw it crash on my MacBook. Not even once. And, I'm posting anonymous anyway, so fuck you if you need your perceptions echoed to satisfy your sense of self-righteousness. I don't need your mod points or your love.
It sounds more like you're bitter that you are stuck with 6 year old hardware. 10.6.8 sucks, and XP was an abomination.
I bet you want $4 AAPL shares so you can actually afford to buy one.
What are you talking about Windows 7, XP, and Snow leopard are the best operating systems ever made back when software was good in 2009. Before low quality, agile release every week buggy, and flat low color became cool.
http://saveie6.com/
The key thing here is that noone really wants to run Windows. They perhaps want to run Windows applications. It's all about the ecosystem. Everyone that puts up with Windows does so because of the positive feedback loop that's existed from the days of DOS. Everyone thinks it's the only option so it becomes the only option.
The troll is also ignoring the possibility that somoene might by Apple hardware for it's own sake and merely want to do whatever the HELL they want with their own personal property.
At one time I ran Linux on Macs. It made sense at the time. Apple's hardware was just another PC to me.
I want to run Windows. Windows 7 that is. It is gorgeous with aero, stable, supports .net, and there is no reason for me to change.
http://saveie6.com/
Not to mention MacOSX Lion really did suck and was incompatible with pretty much any Adobe application made before 2007. Snow leopard was the last OS
While PCs continue to ship with legacy BIOS support you should be able to continue booting DOS on bare metal PCs (as you did). However FreeDOS does not yet support UEFI so if/when UEFI only machines come out the grand parent's challenge will become more difficult.
So indefensibility is a criteria? So is believing in a big sky fairy not OK for a developer?
And old-style shell scripts and custom one-off configuration files did not dictate anything? Yeah right...
Stepping in shit does the same. :. Stepping in shit is good, shit should be everywhere.
Xp was kept alive through Vista.... until Windows 7.... Windows 7 has been kept alive through Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 is coming out in a matter of months. This is the new Windows, get use to the new Windows if you want to continue using Windows.... Me, I stopped using Windows in 2007 and never looked back (other than the work computer which is Windows - but it is not my choice). No new machines are being sold with Windows 7, although Enterprise is free to install Windows 7 on Windows 7 compatible hardware - but hardware/laptops not aimed for business may not be supported going forward. Laptop aimed at business will probably not be the leading edge hardware -- at least when it comes to Windows 7 installations. Windows 7 days are past....
I managed to get XP installed on a Windows 8 machine. (Can't recall if I had help.) See: Gateway SX2865-UR348.
I can't recall, but it may involved changing something in the BIOS. I can't remember if I had any driver issues. I am using something installed to change the graphics options though.
It is time to stop selling 7 now. Windows operates on a 10 year lifecycle, split in half. After the first 5 years it goes in to "extended support" meaning patches but no new features. So that's a good time to stop selling it. Also, you don't want to sell a laptop with an OS that will go completely out of support right away and require an upgrade. Again, a reason to stop selling it.
Hence new systems are going 8 only for support.
Also, despite the whining, it is a fine OS. It's only real issue is the start screen is inefficient to us. Not impossible, not insurmountable, just inefficient. You can use a system with it just fine. What's more, it is a real easy problem to fix. Buy Start 8, or get Classic Shell for free and you're done, a classic start menu that works nice.
It makes sense to only support and ship 8 (or rather 8.1) on systems these days.
That's the only reason. A number of people, in particular geeks that are Windows haters in general, have decided Windows 8 is horrible, unusable, etc, etc and thus refuse to upgrade to it. So something like this is a Big Deal(tm) for them. Of course if any of them actually just quit complaining and used it they'd find it works great. The interface is a big uglier with the whole flat style (Window Blinds and ShadowFX fix that if you really care) and the start screen is less efficient than the start menu (Start 8 fixes that nicely) but it isn't a big deal. The OS itself is compatible with essentially everything (between home and work I've tested a lot of stuff on it) and it is fast and stable.
However this is a case of feels over reals so they complain, hence why you are hearing about this.
No, but neither are the box shifters who sell us all this crap. Scanners that stop working on OS point upgrades, drivers for specialised music hardware that never get updated after the model year etc.
However if you are working in a large enterprise which enforces an ecosystem, *your* engineering team will provide that on the basis of much more watertight supplier contracts.
If you work in a large enterprise you will likely buy equipment that is certified to run on the OS that you are running, they will not go out and buy the newest -- hottest hardware which has not been certified to run it and replace the operating system with Windows 7. You will avoid the newest technology that is not certified by the manufacturer to run Windows 7. What the consumer buys and what the enterprise buys will not likely be the same hardware in all cases.
Apple without Jobs is Apple with Sculley, Again!
Cook is saving Apple from Jobs inability to mange?
Just testing a new driver costs millions of dollars.
No, it doesn't. In any case, Apple doesn't supply most of the drivers for their laptops.
Developing complex drivers can cost millions, but the testing isn't nearly as costly. Much of it is automated. Do you think that Intel, AMD and Nvidia spend millions of dollars a month just on testing?
Most of the hardware in a Mac laptop is off-the-shelf stuff, developed by other companies. I haven't checked but I expect it is an Intel chipset. Maybe Apple decided to be dicks and change the hardware IDs, but the driver is still just the standard Intel one. I'm actually struggling to think of any hardware that Apple would develop their own driver for, rather than just making some trivial customizations to someone else's. Maybe the charging system, but that is likely just a fairly high level I2C based driver and only used for monitoring (all the intelligence is in an embedded controller).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Really? Then how come Macs have a reputation for holding their value and are generally considered well built?
In the sense that a Mac Mini is a "workgroup server", I suppose. By enterprise I'm referring to operations with several hundred to thousands+ employees. IIRC their official server tool for managing iOS and OS X devices will start getting really bad performance past ~300 devices and after that they recommend a third-party tool that's $$$.
Windows 8 is a slow, useless, UI nightmare. Why would anyone sane want to use that crap ?
The "Ribbon" and "Metro" are the single worst UI ideas I have ever seen on a computer. Ever.
Windows 8 is utter rubbish. Windows 10 is going to eb more of the same. Microsoft peaked with XP and it's all downhill from now.
Developing complex drivers can cost millions, but the testing isn't nearly as costly. Much of it is automated. Do you think that Intel, AMD and Nvidia spend millions of dollars a month just on testing?
No, they just release them as betas and wait for the bug reports to roll in. Why pay for testers if so many people will test for you for free?
I started writing this post going for funny, but this actually sounds pretty insightful.
You may be seeing it, but trust me, IT fucking HATES Macs, because Apple doesn't give two shits about the enterprise.
The IT department where I work also allows Macs as a "supported" configuration, but "support" is in giant quotes. It's "supported" in that they have a corporate image and install some software to make up for gaps in Mac OS X's enterprise support. They attempt to allow you to use your domain accounts in OS X and it almost works, usually, but thanks to OS X's buggy as hell LDAP support it will randomly fail. The site Office license includes Mac versions, so you get that as well.
And that's it for IT support for OS X. You break it, you fix it. It's still a step up from their Linux support (which is "we don't explicitly ban it") but it's only barely "supported" and it's only barely "supported" because the company isn't willing to spend the money on buying the software required to fill in the gaps in enterprise support for OS X. (Think WSUS and inventory tools.)
As though dozens of voices cried out in terror...and were silenced.
I've worked with one of these, and it is very sweet. Honest PC alternative to a Macbook. I'm no fanboi (I use both platforms), but PC laptops have been flimsy plastic throwaway junk for years, whereas apple builds reliable, solid, throw-it-in-the-bag and go with no McAfee crapware to deal with. The Dell comes with a little McAfee crapware to uninstall, but in every other respect it is the first decent PC laptop I've seen in a long while.
Quality costs. The XPS with 8.1 non-Pro, 8GB RAM, the lower-resolution, non-touch screen, and a decent-size 256 GB SSD (upgrade) will run you $1099 (the "retina" touch-capable screen costs another $300). By comparison, a 13" Air with the same storage, RAM, and non-retina screen (and a slightly faster processor) is $1299.
The XPS 13 feels solid, stupid lightweight, really fast, long battery life, and the non-retina screen looks great (can't vouch for the higher-res screen, but I've heard mixed reviews of Windows 8 scaling up). And it's an actual "lap" top - it don't need no kickstand to hold the screen up. Here's a good review. I would really like to see more PC's built like this.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Same, 10.6.8 is the only OS for getting work done (unless you need old os9 software--I do run Basilsk II to run older software, but it's a pain in the butt because of endian issues). That was the last version of the OS in which they decided not to lock down the software and force people into the walled garden. I run linux in a vm, and have a Maverick partition for when I need to compile on a later version of the os.
> Add in the fact that it can be a tablet or a laptop
The keyboard connection is too flimsy, the weight distribution is wrong, the stand is too far to the rear making the keyboard too close. It cannot be usefully used on the lap. If you do mange to get it balanced then a swipe of the screen could cause disaster.
... horrible trash that are unusable for anything but email and office productivity software ...
Actually a MacBook Air is just fine for software development. At least for iOS and Android development. For Mac OS and Windows app development it would depend on the app. To be honest I normally use a MacBook Pro but on the road I've occasionally used a colleague's MacBook Air. I was pleasantly surprised. For a couple colleagues it is their normal dev system. External monitors and keyboards/mice used at home and their office; used with internal display, keyboard and trackpad on the road and at client's.
To be fair, they could get a server license for OS X for $20 and use any random 10.10-compatible Mac as a server that can push out configuration policies, install some software, etc. It's still weaksauce compared to what AD can do.
It annoys the crap out of us that Apple ties their OS to their hardware, in such a way that we can legally set up OS X virtual servers in VMware, but only if the host computer is made by Apple... and they haven't made honest-to-god servers since 2009.
Windows 8, which runs just fine on my iMac via Bootcamp, is really just a toy for me. It's required to run some games and that's the only reason I have to use it. 95% of all other software I use only runs in Mac OS, so switching to Windows would be rather expensive and ultimately pointless.
At the office I run Windows 7 in Parallels coherence mode because there are certain mission-critical apps I use that requires me to use both systems simultaneously.
So is apple going out of there way to lock out 7 or just is to lazy to add the 7 drivers as well?
No.
There is much more than just writing drivers to support Windows 7. You also need support from Microsoft for where there are issues in Windows causing problems. Windows 7 is currently in extended support, which means that only security vulnerabilities are being fixed, or issues blocking enterprise customers. The fixes during this period are not redistributable, which means that if Apple/Intel is blocked by something, they cannot request and ship a hotfix from Microsoft.
Most modern systems are UEFI based. Win7 _can_ be installed on UEFI, but is painful and not exactly supported. Add new features like D3Cold (device power state that allows really low power when device is idle) that is only somewhat support by Win8+, you start to run into significant blocking issues that essentially prevent OEMs from supporting Win7.
Millions of dollars? If your OS had a decent and open ABI, there is no reason the actual interaction of your code with the system could be traversed and tested in a fortnight. I've never seen any company dumping millions of dollars in a single version of a driver, a few thousands at best (and most driver code for laptop hardware looks like it was never even tested).
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Apple has a beta programme. No excuse.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Most of the hardware in a Mac laptop is off-the-shelf stuff, developed by other companies. I haven't checked but I expect it is an Intel chipset.
If you are right, there shouldn't be a problem just installing Windows whatever on a Mac.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
So with windows 7 still holding over 50% of the market share of operating systems using the internet they decide now is the time to remove support for windows 7 emulation on the Mac? Who are their marketing gurus? What logic was applied to this decision? Was any marketing research applied to reach this conclusion for action? Or was this a fact free, floating, free associating, feel good moment for some executive?
Was this by chance typed on a Plays4Sure device or an Android cut off from updates 18 months out of release?
You may be seeing it, but trust me, IT fucking HATES Macs, because Apple doesn't give two shits about the enterprise.
Nope, it's because they make MicroSoft Certified Bullshit Spreaders redundant.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
If you bought a Mac laptop, you are primarily interested in OSX, but may want to run a few of your old Windows applications and games which are not ported to Mac, or that you don't want to re-purchase. To that end, XP is the current sweet spot. After a good disk cleanup, you can manage the OS and a few apps in a 10GB partition. Windows 7 is a strain with 40GB before installing anything of significance. This is a big hit on SSD laptops with 128 or 256GB of storage. Plus, these old apps/games do not run well with current OS and DirectX versions anyway. One would think Apple will be targeting users who must run windows for a couple of apps before ones that are actually enthusiastic about the prospect and want latest versions and huge bootcamp partitions.