Apple boots Windows 7 out of Boot Camp The Cupertino fruit factory has decided to boot old versions of Windows out of the camp, quietly not-announcing that only Windows 8 and 10 will run on the latest flavours of the dual-boot "Boot Camp" utility that ships with this year's new Macs. The new policy means that the recently-announced MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro …
And yet - this also seems consistent with Microsoft's desire to push Windows users away from 7 and earlier. Makes me wonder if there's a behind-the-scenes deal.
Anyway, it's VirtualBox and Microsoft Bob for me. Almost instant startup/shutdown and a very friendly helpful little guide who's only price for his services seems to be full knowledge about myself.
I have to agree with that, it seems as if Windows 7 has got what I call "XP Syndrome" with users being quite satisfied with every element of it and sticking to it.. while MS would rather have us "upgrading" to the newer Windows revisions..
My 10.9.5 "Mavericks" MacBook still supports Windows 7 via Boot Camp, but I also opted to VirtualBox, it's just so much more convenient seeing as Apple also abandoned LINUX support in Boot Camp some while back.
Abandoned Linux support in Bootcamp? That sounds like part of a Microsoft plot too, since Microsoft can't charge punters for using Linux, as it doesn't violate any Microsoft patents. Of course, I can't prove it, but I suspect it. Microsoft didn't kill Linux with their support of the SCO lawsuit, but they'll do anything they can to reduce usage of it on the desktop. Microsoft can't do anything about Linux server use, as it apparently scales higher than NT, I mean Windows Server whatever the version of it is now.
As a Mac Pro user, I have no idea why people use boot camp at all. Why spend the amount of money that you do buying a piece of Apple hardware and then run Windows as the primary OS. If you're doing that, why not just buy a Dell?
Personally I've always used VMWare Fusion, which allows me to spin up XP or Win 7 (which are the only Windows licenses I own, and no I have no intention of buying a Win8 or later license!) ... the Windows guest runs in the background, and I can launch and very few Windows apps I still use on my Mac desktop.
Fusion is nice because it has good support for the other OSsen which I mess about with from time to time - namely FreeBSD and OpenSolaris, and interoperates with the full-blown vSphere ecosystem when upgraded to the pro version.
"As a Mac Pro user, I have no idea why people use boot camp at all. Why spend the amount of money that you do buying a piece of Apple hardware and then run Windows as the primary OS."
Because you're the kind of hipster twat who wants to buck the trend and actually be productive?
>>"Think MS ended mainstream support for Windows 7 in January this year?"
Worth clarifying what is meant by "mainstream support". That ends this year, but MS will continue to supply security fixes and bug fixes until 2020. End of "mainstream support" just means the standard support to end users. You can still purchase extended support packages for quite a while as well. It came out six years ago, but it's not like its suddenly abandoned.
Actually, you can still buy re-conditioned laptops with Windows 7 pre-installed, but finding a Netbook with Windows 7 Pre-installed that isn't the cut down version, is near impossible. Microsoft did whatever they could to kill the Netbook. Apple brought it back and made it prettier, with less ports for external connectivity.
As soon as I heard about this, first thing I thought was, Microsoft paid Apple to insure Windows 7 doesn't run on the new Macbook and MBP. But there's another solution. If you must have 7, buy a re-conditioned Windows Laptop that can run 7 and call it a day. You'll have a dedicated Windows 7 machine and dedicated Macbook. It doesn't really get you off Windows 7 or stop you from running it, but if you must have that new Macbook, not being able to run Windows 7 on it, won't stop you from getting it.
Not letting your device boot into a certain OS. This stinks,
They're not preventing you booting a certain OS, they've just decided not to write drivers for an operating system that was EOLd before the hardware was released. According to the linked apple support article they've not removed windows support from older machines, just not added it to newer machines. Which, considering it's probably a not insignificant cost to develop/test and support such drivers really isn't a huge deal.
and is just another reason, in the list of many, Apple is controlling, and only interested in spinning money.
That's how companies work; they make money. It's okay though, you can buy a laptop from another manufacturer and install what you like.
This is a non-issue where I work. You want to use a Mac, feel free, but it is unsupported by campus IT because of the idiotic restrictions and incompatibilities Apple places on their OS. If it breaks you take it down to the Apple store a half hour away and let the "geniuses" figure it out.
We still have a few holdouts, but that is because of the owners stubbornness. Each has a Windows machine to work on the LAN / WAN.
The primary purpose of an Apple machine is to talk to iTunes so they can sell you more crap you don't need. Actually getting work done comes a hard second.
"Remember the purchase cost is not the TCO."
Too right. Cheap laptop £350, SQL Server £0, Visual Studio £0, Android studio £0, MS Office Enterprise £17. Total Cost £367.
Average since purchase of £73 per year.
Total number of days cheap laptop has been in for repair 0. Number of parts replaced 0. Number of times I've walked into a sterile soulless shop and had to ask to talk to a "genius" 0.
Now, how long does it take a £1000 Macbook to achieve an annual TCO that matches that?
It does look odd, doesn't it? Window 7 is still at 56% of OS market share. And Windows 8.x & 10 are together less that 15%.
Why would they turn their back on the biggest fraction of their potential customers? A fraction which is 10x bigger than that of current Mac OS users?
Sure you can't officially stick OSX on a PC, but Apple are really not concerned about you actually doing it.
I've built a number of hackintosh boxen, and you can even buy them complete in certain EU countries that actually follow them anti-competative laws (eg Germany).
Bootcamp is nice for what it is, and it really shows what a shit job HP, Dell etc do with driver install. Install Windows onto a intel based mac consists of install OS, install combined driver package, reboot. Why the PC manufacturers can't get the equivalent done right, so you need 6-12 driver packages that always seem to be created once and left. Don't get me started on the useless restore disks...
However, most fruity trypes are _much_ better off with VMware, Parellels or other such software, since they won't have to reboot the whole box each time they need to do the 'doze. Plus you get to use the image you want, rather than having Apple force you down MS upgrade path.
As for the designed obsolescence, yeah, Apple is a pain. When they've not actually broken the hardware (connectors, glued battery) they actively break the ability to upgrade without spending. Which is a shame, since I have a few clients who still use macs that are nearly as old as me (mmmm, beige boxen) and a fair few who's G4/5 based machines still chug along just fine.
As for Windows, 2000 and XP still work very well, you can even get XP to use the full memory range (ish), I've yet to find any real issue with 7, and I've yet to find anyone who finds 8.1 (or 8) an improvement.
Maybe we need a Worstall article about how making a really good product is actually bad for a company that is reliant on a constant revenue. The Laserjet problem maybe :)
"It's been said before that the best Windows laptop is a Macbook
Yeah, but that was some time before. Now no option for a power user - 17" screen? Nope. Anti-mirror screen? Nope. Just been looking, and shudder - the upgrade for a MBP seems to be a Dell mobile workstation - twice the ram, twice the processor, 4 GPU options (no idea if they'll fail the same way as the one in the MBP though) - heck it even has a network port to connect to a network!
At the last moment Apple agreed to replace the motherboard in the MBP, so it's staying, but the replacement wouldn't have been a new MBP.
Or maybe they have looked at the number of people this affects - I upgraded to a Mac years ago. Still need a few Windows "legacy" apps but you can run as a VM. Suspect not many people dual boot and when you have to install Windows you may as well install 8.x or later surely. There probably are some people who have apps that only run on 7.x (but probably few) but if someone does not move the market on people would still be running XP.
Oh they are...
Microsoft ended mainstream support for 7 in January this year. Yes they carried on with XP for about 13 years and Windows 7 is "only" 6 years old but you can see the end is coming for Windows 7.
Although I'm sure there are still plenty of people running XP (and connecting to the Internet) - despite knowing the very clear risks!
"those who just migrated to 7 won't jump to 10 soon"
I would assume home users would have gone for 8, business users I doubt would get a free upgrade to 10 anyway. I must admit I will where I can be making sure the free upgrade is taken advantage of.
I thought Windows 7 is not compatible with pure EFI mode, it seems to require INT10 which is only available through CSM. At least, that's what I found on https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824898.aspx although I do not insist that my interpretation is correct.
I guess the deal is that Apple does not want to support CSM any more, which would be required to install Windows 7. Not that I care, I run my Windows as virtual machines on "oversized" PC where hypervisor is Linux kvm.
My understanding was only Windows 7 32-bit needed BIOS emulation due to the weird Apple EFI firmware, and that 64-bit was capable of running natively in EFI mode without issues. I might be mistaken.
In any case, Windows 8 and upwards definitely run natively in EFI mode, so yes, it is probably Apple's way of housekeeping and removing things from firmware they really don't have any incentive to support.
Apple have provided Boot Camp because it's actually been pretty easy for them to do, not because it helps to sell their computers or gain them cash. If their hardware/firmware did not support it then Apple would simply have never provided Boot Camp in the first place - they would not have gone out of their way, make no mistake.
A salesman in an Apple Store isn't going to sell you the thing based on its ability to run Windows. People who buy Macs most of the time don't care in the slightest about Windows, and nobody knows that better than Apple.
Apple are just awful in terms of support.
I need to build a Phonegap app. So, I acquire an old Mac Mini off a mate. Install Snow Leopard, a 3 year old OS, and it can't install the latest XCode. And I also can't upgrade the machine to Mavericks, either.
By comparison: the latest Visual Studio will run on XP, a 14 year old OS. Yes, it'll probably run like a dog on an old XP machine, but you should have that option.
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