Slashdot Mirror
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..
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?
> 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.
When has Apple ever cared sweet fuck-all about enterprise?
Oh, come off it. Install something like Classic Shell and an average user will barely know the difference between 7 and 8. I have confirmed this empirically with dozens of users.
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.'
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
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 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.
There's really not much wrong with windows 8. It's not as bad as people make it out to be, and the search feature works quite well for running applications - much the same way quicksilver on a mac would work.
The "Angry" people are generally the ones that are completely lost if you take away the start menu. Personally I never used it in the first place so it didn't bother me.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Regardless of his views, his software should be judged on its own merits.
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.
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."
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.
What about wanting to use USB3 or other newer things that Win2k didn't know about?
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.
That's entirely incorrect. You can access the network adapters much the same as you could in any other version of windows - via the network and sharing icon in the control panel. This is the real problem - people line up to criticize something they clearly don't understand.
It'd be like me saying Linux has the shittiest networking ever because I couldn't figure out how to use ifconfig.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
If you knew anything about it, you'd know there weren't search boxes plastered all over everything. It's pretty simple. Press windows key, start typing, select item as it comes up or hit windows key again to dismiss it.
But hey, we get it, you'd rather complain than spend the time to come up with a legitimate gripe.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
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/
Oh yah
Windows 10's icons all sooo modern and crisp compared to 7?
http://saveie6.com/
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/
Oh Windows 8.1 let me count the ways compared to Windows 7
Report Quote Reply
7 is more stable, reliable, not designed for tablets, more compatible with apps, has aero, no dual personalities of metro and non metro apps (I had a grandma call me in frustration Skype looked funny and was missing things. She didn't understand there were 2 skypes with 8??), purple stripe notification center taking up vertical space, no backgrounds in UAC aka closed door syndrome, flat icons, high cpu usage in explorer, crippled task manager which can't show per cpu without a million clicks, and the list goes on and on ...
It is THE WORST OS EVER MADE
http://saveie6.com/
Screw APPLE!
Windows 7 is the best OS ever made. It is still modern and I could list 30 defects in WIndows 8.1 It is a terrible unusable operating system that can't even stay up or be stable on a server grade Asus Sabertooth Mark II board. The UI is schizophrenic and suffers from closed door syndrome in almost everyway from UAC prompts which take away the background, to no aero to show the background. It is loaded with pastel nursery school colors. Even with a start menu program it is just awful and 10 will be even more flat and low color
Like refrigerators there is no reason to change until they break. Xp worked for over 12 years and operating systems are advanced enough to where like cars there is a diminishing return for each update. So they need to move things around and confuse people so the other one looks dated I guess is the new goal.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Hmmm ok, I almost never use Windows - so you're certainly more knowledgeable in that regard. But come on, Apple cannot support a MS OS for ages either... you have to put a deadline on that!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Until you go into Windows Update, or many of the myriad things that have been changed to run in a POS full-screen mode for no f***ing reason.
Windows 8 still has not approached the marketshare of even XP yet. Yes it is that bad. Of all win desktop marketshare Windows 7 is still not even declining yet and it is HUGE like over 60% of the whole market including all versions of Windows and Macs and Linux in there according to statcounter.com. Windows 7 was the default OS until just 2 - 2 1/2 years ago.
XP was kept alive well during the Vista years as Xp didn't even start to die until it was nearly 11 years old in 2011.
The difference is PC users rarely upgrade and MS makes few releases in between. They are trying to be all Apple like with a new release every year now. But 7 will be even more used than XP was by 2020 and will my guestimate by 40% of all Windows users unless MS does a drastic change. They will fight tooth and nail too not to leave
Using a 10 year old operating system is standard procedure in corporate IT and even most home users. Sounds bizaare for Mac users but the PC world is very complacent in comparison. Nothing wrong with that as it works
http://saveie6.com/
Under the covers, Windows 8 is arguably superior to Windows 7 in many ways, such as performance, account syncing, improved multi-monitor support, storage pools, etc. I'd have to give equal marks to stability simply because it's hard to get better than "never crashing". I've actually never seen Windows Vista or Windows 7 crash (except for a case of bad RAM). It's just that they really screwed up the UX in Windows 8, making the mouse + keyboard user without a touch interface a second-class citizen.
I also don't think it's acceptable have to install third-party shells that hook into the guts of Windows with all sorts of undocumented APIs (meaning you have no real idea what it will do to security or stability of the system), essentially giving MS a pass for screwing it up in the first place.
So, no, it's not a terrible OS by any means. I just feel that it's worse than Windows 7.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Wow you have an attitude, and a bad one at that.
If you couldn't run Windows 8 without it crashing, then thats your problem - get better hardware. I have Windows 8/8.1 on several computers, none have crashed once in over a year. The OS is rock solid, even works perfectly with sleep and hibernation modes.
Who gives a shit about the colour scheme - for 99.9% of the time I'm staring at the same application screens I would be in any other versions of Windows, colour schemes don't come into it. Neither does aero, haven't missed it once.
Start screen? I actually like it - I won't say its for everyone, and perhaps it is an acquired taste, but I like it.
UAC? I dont see it until I need to - it doesn't pop up during normal operation, it pops up when it should.
Sounds like you are afraid of change, and are willing to lash out at everyone else because of it.
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....
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.
The average user still doesn't care.
On a side note though most of those things have had their functionality duplicated. Windows update still has a standard control panel page and the only thing that I so far have found forces you to a full screen mode is adding a bluetooth device.
But once it's paired you never need to visit that page again as you have access to it from the standard devices and printers page.
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.
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 $$$.
Spot the guy who doesn't actually keep up with developments but has Dunning-Kruger'd himself into thinking he knows what he's talking about.
Besides much better support for newer devices and software, Win8x has a lot of performance improvements in such things as over-the-network copying (support for SMB 2.x and 3.x), boot and reboot time, RAM usage, &c. You also get better multi-monitor support, vastly better available security (some of it needs rewritten/recompiled programs), and the ability to use >2TB partitions and devices. You'd have to be an idiot to prefer W2K to a modern version of Windows.
Are you one of those neckbeards who insist that Version 7, or perhaps 4.3BSD, was the last real version of Unix?
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.
Pfft. You have a legitimate complaint about the UI being bad for non-touch use, but then you started talking about using "all sorts of undocumented APIs". If they're undocumented, then how in the hell would a third-party (and open source, so review the source and give me a cite) program like Classic Shell use them?
You're full of shit.
You really should upgrade to 8.1, it's free for legit 8 users and Metro apps now have a standard title bar with minimize/maximize/close buttons. For me they usually open as windows instead of full-screen.
Wrong.
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...
It's a bit more than that. I'm no Windows hater. I just really like and work with Windows 7, and I don't like what Windows 8 and onward needlessly take away.
If the only PC I had to worry about was my own, than I'd be more ok with undo'ing all the stupid things that Windows 8+ did with the interface, ClassicShell, Window Blinds, whatever. But at work that's not an option. IT has a reasonable interest in keeping things supported and uniform, and adding and supporting tons of third-party interface stuff is something they just don't want to do. So the staff just have to live with this crappy interface stuff (ribbons, non-expected full-screen metro apps, charms popping up unexpectedly, buttons in the wrong places, colors that draw your attention to the wrong place) that, honest-to-god, slows down their productivity. Some staff don't love learning new PC stuff, they just want to get work done. Why the fuck did Microsoft change all this shit when there was no reason to?
I appreciate that Windows 8 is better under the hood, boots fast, and is mostly compatible (*cough* Adobe *cough*). But my staff and I spend our working lives on the desktop, and Microsoft just up and made things ugly and force everyone to drink it like Victory Gin. Particularly, they take away the means to customize the interface to something more 7-like. If they at least left the option to customize things up beyond what the lame "personalize" control can do so you don't have to rely on third-party hacks and unsigned system files, it wouldn't suck so bad.
That's why it doesn't take a Windows hater to hate Windows 8. I'm testing Windows 10 preview, and it's better 'cause there's no start screen or charms, but man the desktop and icons are getting more ugly with each new build, like they're time-warping back to the late 80's when 16 colors was all you had. WTF!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Right.
V
... 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.
They are trying drastic things but I don't know if people care enough to notice. For example upgrades from 7-> will be free for the first year win 10 is out. Not sure how they are going to map which version you can go to from which version of the predecessor but still that is pretty sweet. At least according to what I heard on Windows Weekly they aren't even going to check if your version of windows is legitimate before allowing the upgrade. Meaning should you care to get a pirated version of windows 7 Ultimate and upgrade all the way up to whatever the equivalent ends up being for win 10 and the win 10 version will be legitimate ie no Win Genuine advantage complaints or whatever. I think MS has realized that people get windows with their computers and those that pirate aren't going to pay you so you might as well give away the software and get the whole ecosystem up to the latest and greatest (and use that to sell the idea of building stuff for the Windows store/hopefully at least get a few dollars from them when they buy a game or something) rather than allowing the latest and greatest look like a failure because people aren't replacing computers every 3 years like they used to.
Next up is they are integrating app stores and XBox with the PC. Only a part of the market I suppose but if you have a decent computer that means if you feel like getting a XBox game but can't be bothered dropping a few hundred on the device for the few games you want to play you'll still be able to get them on the PC (how that plays out in the market we'll see but could be fun). Probably not a huge deal for people that are big into gaming because they probably have a console vs PC preference but for the casual gamer that wants to be able to drop $30 on a game and play with a friend who is playing on their Xbox: not a problem.
I don't touch metro apps myself but Win 8.1 is still a nice, albeit smallish, upgrade vs win 7. As a .Net developer for a starters .Net 4.5 and in win 10 time frame C# 6 are huge improvements for my work. But also just simple things like task manager having more and better displays of what is doing what on the system. I used to have to open up process explorer once a week or so to track stuff down. Now I can do most of that right in task man. Similarly: perhaps a sign of my neurosis but I like progress bars, getting them for file copies and the pausing and restarting functionality is nice.
Anyways, back when Win 8 came out I think I paid about $29 for the upgrade so I could go to a hackaton that was using it which I think is all it was really worth. Now MS has gone to free upgrade model they are essentially going through the pattern that Apple did 3-5 years ago: get the initial sale then keep the customer happy with free upgrades till they decide to replace their machine.
I agree with the aero. Never had a lesser version of Win 7 but my understanding was that the versions that didn't support aero you also didn't get aero snap: that is the only bit I care about. Glass interface was pretty I suppose but it was really the half screen left, half screen right etc that made my day when I switched. You get that in Win 8+ + a better task manager, better windows explorer the option (not for me but some like it) for metro apps etc. The only complaint as someone that didn't like metro was that I had to spend 20 min online searching for the start menu replacement tool I liked the best.
As for color schemes: you don't have to use the stock ones you can customize to your hearts content. There are third party tools to bring back most of the ui all the way back to win 98 style if you want. Would have been nice if MS had given the "classic mode" option out of the box like they have done with every version since 98 but ... oh well we aren't in the 90's any more I don't miss the suspenders and striped Erkle shirts.
? What's not to like? Start menu takes all of 10 min to replace. After that it might as well be win 7 except with a slightly improved explorer and task manager and support for a better version of .Net (which I use in my work).
The POS part was that out of the box you see the start menu and you either like it or not. Those that aren't very technical pretty much just say: "why can't I just get it with the thing I know already?" and the stores for the most part have said: "okay". Heck my 60 year old tenant got a Win 8 laptop and was worried he wouldn't be able to figure it out. A day later is was saying that it was fine/he had no problems. It is the need for getting the device off the store shelves and people playing with it for a day or two that killed the sales of Win 8. People fear change and your Best Buy minimum wage sales guy isn't going to know/be bothered educating customers that they can get they system back to what they want with less effort than they use to get a cup of coffee.
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.
Ah yes ribbon in explorer that take up precious pixels. Why is it on an i7 4770k the cpu usage spikes when you scroll up and down? Don't believe me? Open task manager and ... oh that's right it doesn't support per logical cpu like 7 does so you can't tell if a single threaded app monopolies a core. Resource monitor for that.
You do a search and closed door syndrome start page pops up and it bings resource monitor instead of searches it like 7.
With 7 ms added frost around text in the title bar in darker colors. But that is too skuemorphic and unhip so let's make it blinding white or pastel only etc. Change for the sake of change
http://saveie6.com/
Spot the 12-year-old Xbox Live gamer.
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.
Classic Shell uses DLL injection to get a lot of its functionality to work. This is pretty much the definition of undocumented functionality. You're essentially dynamically inserting code into another process to re-routing function calls to your own code. It allows you to do a lot of really cool things (measuring FPS in any game and displaying it in an overlay, like Fraps), but it's also used by malware writers to do sneaky things (such as hiding itself from the file system or processes viewer).
Undocumented APIs are used by a lot of programmers. It's not all that hard, and many of them are "documented" outside of official channels, like this one: NtCreateThreadEx(), which is used to perform said dll-injection.
I have no doubt that the classic shell programmers did a fine job in getting these things to work, but again, it's impossible to know for sure what the side effects may be. In all honesty, classic shell is probably well-vetted enough that there are probably no major issues with it, but I tend to err on the safe side.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
*applause*
That's how you prove to someone that you're not full of shit, folks.
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).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Heh, I was hoping you'd get a chance to read it after the effort I put into typing all that up. ;-)
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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
Have you actually used the Task Manager on Windows 8? The improvements in the Windows 8 task manager is one of the major improvements over Windows 7 in my opinion.
The default "out of the box" view on the Performance tab shows a single graph summarizing processor load, but clicking on the graph provides several options to customize the graph including an option to display a separate graph per logical CPU core.
This appears to provide just as much information as was available in Windows 7 but in an easier to read format - especially on systems with 8 cores or more.
There is also an option to overlay the amount of time spent in the kernel and in multi-socket systems there is an option to group the graphs by NUMA socket.
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?
Spot the empty tautologies.
Case in point.
Except when it's slower because of malware scanning. The only thing "better" from the user's point of view is the accuracy of the time remaining guestimate. Molehill, not a mountain.
Reboots were quaint 10 years ago, outside of OS updates. And those are scheduled to run in the middle of the night.
Win7's multi-monitor support is just fine.
Dynamic Disks have been supported since 2000 and GPT since 2003. You're only stuck with 2TB if you limit yourself to 512b cluster size.
Hardly. Vastly smaller hardware requirements and no activation crap. The only real improvement for the end user since then has been instant user switching, and that came with XP. Most everything else has been forced obsolescence. Well, there's also Bitlocker, but that came out with Vista.
Win8 is a flaming bag of crap. It is actively hostile to the end user. Win 7 is a no-holds-barred upgrade from 8, in the same way that XP was an upgrade over Vista.
In the same way a flaming bag of crap goes well with your new dress shoes.
But of course it is. It's actively hostile to end users, and tries to herd them back into the Metro interface at every opportunity unless you install a hack like Classic Shell. For no reason other than to satisfy Microsoft's asinine obsession of pushing desktop users into a touch-based UI.
I'm sure that, back in the day, there were people saying that Windows ME and Microsoft Bob were great advancements in the field of computing. They were objectively wrong as well.
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.