Exploring Windows 7 on the Mac: Installation via Boot Camp
Mac users who have a need to run Windows applications or games may have good reason to keep an eye on the development of Windows 7, due for release later this year. Among its features are easier setup and installation.
This series looks at the features Windows 7 offers to Mac users, and what is involved in moving from XP. This segment looks specifically at how Windows 7 differs from Mac OS X in setup and installation, and how Microsoft has made improvements over the experience offered by XP and Vista.
Mac users have a number of reasons to install Windows; some might want to run Windows in a virtual environment such VMware?s Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or Sun?s free VirtualBox to run a custom corporate app (or some other software that only works on Windows), right on the Mac OS X desktop.
Others might want to install Windows natively on their Mac using Boot Camp for full the performance required to run many Windows-only games. And many Mac users are also owners of generic PCs, and want to setup their Windows PC to share files and sync data with their Mac.
Portions of this article will apply to all these users, with a focus on Mac users who install Windows (and Windows 7 in particular) directly on their Mac using Boot Camp. A previous article looked at what is involved in installing Windows 7 within a virtual environment.
Using Boot Camp
While Apple?s Boot Camp Utility (below) is sometimes portrayed as a translation layer that allows Windows to run on Mac hardware, it is really just a two-step preparation tool that first formats the boot drive so that Windows can be installed, and then provides the installed copy of Windows with Apple-supplied driver software to properly access all of the unique hardware on Macs.
Neither of these steps are necessary when running within a virtual environment, as those tools both run Windows from a virtual disk image that sits in the regular Mac OS X file system, and supply drivers for the virtual hardware they emulate, presenting a generic PC environment of standard network, graphics, and other virtual components to whatever version of Windows is installed.
Reformatting the disk with Boot Camp
If your hard drive is full or nearly full, you might have some initial pains preparing for Boot Camp. You?ll need at a minimum 15 GB of free disk space to install Windows 7, and by free we mean really free; if you throw away just enough files to give yourself 15 GB, chances are your drive will still have files scattered around to the point that Boot Camp won?t actually be able to clear out a partition space for Windows.
That?s because Boot Camp doesn?t just allocate for Windows some of your drive?s disk space; it actually reformats the entire disk in place, lopping off a contiguous area of the disk to set up a blank disk partition, and shrinking down your boot volume to account for the difference.
This is a potentially dangerous operation, so make sure you have a full backup of your drive, either using a disk cloner utility or Time Machine to backup to an external USB drive or network server such as Time Capsule.
While we?ve never experienced any problems with repartitioning the disk in place, it makes no sense to perform this high wire act without a net, because any interruption or disk error could result in an invalid partition map and an unreadable volume that very likely can?t be recovered.
Once you identify the amount of space you want to allocate for Windows, Boot Camp moves around your files on disk like Tetris pieces to create a free contiguous area it can partition for Windows. If it runs into too many files that can?t be moved, it will ask you to solve the problem by imaging your drive to another disk and then moving it all back.
That operation, which can be done using Disk Utility, takes some time. You?ll need to first select your drive and create an image of it (below) on another drive (such as an attached USB drive), then put your system in Firewire target mode and restore the image to the disk using another system. Another option would be to boot your system up from your Mac OS X install DVD and run Disk Utility from the disc to restore the image to your boot drive.
It may also be possible to defrag your drive using a disk optimization tool such as iDefrag, which can sometimes move around files that Boot Camp won?t.
Ideally, Boot Camp will be able to find enough room to make those steps unnecessary. Even so, it will take some time (as much as a couple hours) for Boot Camp to complete the repartitioning step. Also, keep in mind that Boot Camp only knows how to start with a drive with one partition, so if you?ve already partitioned your boot disk, Boot Camp will insist you reformat it back to one single partition first.
Once complete, your drive will show up with two usable partitions, the first being your regular Mac boot drive, and the other with a horrible name along the lines of ?disk0s3.? That stands for ?disk 0, slice 3,? where slice means partition. There are two other invisible partitions, slice 0, the partition table, and slice 1, a 200 MB partition allocated to EFI. (Remember when the whole drive was less than 200 MB?) Slice 2 is your original Mac partition.
Making Windows feel at home on the Mac
Windows doesn?t really know how to handle GPT, the type of partition table used by EFI, the boot firmware system used on all Intel Macs (and their equivalent to the OpenFirmware used by PowerPC Macs). However, Intel developed EFI with Windows in mind, so it made the standard backward compatible with MBR, the simpler partitioning scheme used by generic PCs that still depend upon BIOS rather than EFI.
Windows, including the new Windows 7, expects to find a BIOS boot environment and an MBR (master boot record) to identify the disk partition to be used during installation. Boot Camp prepares a dummy MBR in the GPT that identifies the new partitions it created, and the Mac?s EFI firmware pretends to be BIOS for Windows during the reboot process.
That allows Mac users to simply insert a Windows install DVD and directly boot from it; the software thinks its installing on an old fashioned, generic PC when really its running on a state-of-the-art EFI PC made by Apple.
Among other things, the fancy EFI firmware that Macs use support the same kinds of Mac-only features OpenFirmware has long provided, including:
Firewire target mode, which makes the disk?s partitions visible to another system via Firewire
Option boot for selecting a startup disk and partition at reboot
C boot for starting up from an optical drive
BIOS PCs have to manually configure the boot volume, and can?t boot the system into target mode. They also typically only offer experimental-quality USB booting, something Microsoft doesn?t officially support in Windows. That greatly complicates the task of trying to install Windows on an external USB drive, making it something that Apple?s Boot Camp subsequently doesn?t support either.
Brave souls can download an EFI utility and edit their copy of the Windows installer to attempt to install Windows on an external USB disk, but this isn?t a task for the faint of heart. Install Windows to a Macintosh USB drive (without Bootcamp). « Tube Shards
While Windows can?t take advantage of all the benefits of the Mac?s modern firmware, EFI does make it easy to select between Mac OS X and Windows at boot, and also enables the system to select the desired boot device from within either operating system (using Apple?s supplied control panel under Windows), something Windows can?t do when running on a dual-booting, generic PC.
Direct installation of Windows using Boot Camp
The install process of Windows keeps getting more sophisticated. The new Windows 7 beta is now on par with the first releases of Mac OS X. Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft moved its desktop operating system from a DOS-based startup and installer to one using the NT kernel. However, Windows still dropped down into text mode during the installation, just as NeXTSTEP, the predecessor to Mac OS X, once did. The Windows install experience is now entirely graphical from the initial screen (below top) thorough the install progress steps (below bottom), which are presented as if in an active, Aero-styled window (albeit non-functional, as the window is only ornamental).
Apple?s Mac OS X installer boots a pared down version of Mac OS X from the DVD to run its install process. That enables the install DVD to also run some handy and familiar Mac OS X apps prior to the install process, including the full version of Disk Utility for examining, verifying, and formatting volumes. The Windows 7 installer runs as a custom system with some integrated options for performing just a few disk operations.
One is required when installing Windows 7 on the partition prepared by Boot Camp, because Windows 7 demands an NTFS disk partition to begin installing. In the install image below, Windows reports seeing all of the disk partitions, although it thinks the GPT partition 0 is ?unallocated.?
The partition we want to install Windows on is partition 3, labeled BOOTCAMP, but the installer says that?s not possible. To get around this problem, click on ?Drive options (advanced),? which reveals the option to Format partition 3 (below). Click Ok to dismiss the warning that the partition might have something on it (it doesn?t). The format is done rapidly, as the FAT volume only needs a quick NTFS volume format written on it.
Once that step is past, Windows 7 installs itself for about a half hour, then presents some installation options related to setting up an initial user account, automatic system update preferences, and the new HomeGroup sharing features. Windows 7 then sets up networking, allowing you to select a WiFi network and log in. If you allow it, Windows 7 immediately downloads and installs a couple of updates, although they aren?t actually identified until they are being installed.
On page 2 of 2: Easy drivers with Boot Camp; and Installing third party security and Apple apps for Windows.
Easy drivers with Boot Camp
Once you arrive at the Windows 7 desktop, insert your Leopard install DVD and Windows will offer to install the software drivers Apple provides (below top). This process provides over a dozen custom drivers (below bottom) for all of the unique hardware supplied on every Mac, from the trackpad to the audio, network, and graphics adapters to USB and devices such as the iSight cameras built into MacBooks.
This simple one step installer makes installing Windows on a Mac easier than installing it on a generic PC, as most PC makers require you to select and then download a series of driver install files and then typically install each one sequentially, sometimes with reboots in between. If Apple had any interest in selling Macs with Windows pre-installed just like other PC makers, it could certainly do so, and could offer a nicer install experience, to boot.
The Boot Camp drivers Apple supplies are intended for use with XP or Vista, and were delivered prior to the beta of Windows 7. Even so, there are few problems being reported by Mac users playing with the new beta. You should also install the updated drivers supplied in Boot Camp Update 2.1 for Windows Vista 32 or Boot Camp Update 2.1 for Windows Vista 64 (depending on the 32 or 64-bit version of Windows 7 you installed). You might also need to run the Troubleshoot Compatibility wizard in Windows 7 to get the system to recognize the Apple supplied drivers. And of course, remember that Windows 7 is still in beta and that Microsoft warns against using it for anything apart from testing purposes.
In our limited testing, Windows 7 appears to have fewer problems with device drivers compared to Vista at its launch. The new beta had no problem identifying a generic USB hard drive that Vista had choked on, and it had no problem identifying an iPod that Vista had earlier refused to work with. In some cases we did have to tell Windows to search for a driver for certain devices (including, oddly, the video card driver), but it seemed to work pretty well in identifying what was needed after the initial push.
Installing third party security and Apple apps for Windows
Once Windows is installed, you?ll want to activate anti-virus and anti-malware software. Microsoft provides Windows Defender for malware, but you?ll need to obtain an anti-virus tool. In addition to the beta software and paid version of AVG that Microsoft links to, you can also install a free, basic version of AVG.
You?ll probably also want to install Apple?s familiar Safari browser, which will provide the option of installing Apple Software Update mechanism. That will ask to update itself, and then will recommend installing QuickTime (below). Once you install that, Apple will recommend Bonjour (for local discovery of printers and Mac and AirPort file shares) and iTunes, which will recommend installation of the MobileMe sync setup control panel for Windows.
The download recommendations supplied by Apple?s Software Update drove Windows-centric pundits completely bananas as they fretted in anguish about Apple?s use of the popularity of iTunes to spread its other free software to Windows users. Mac users will probably just find the recommendations useful, particularly if they want their Windows setup to use the same familiar apps and to sync their data with their Mac via MobileMe. In addition to Apple?s optional Windows apps, Boot Camp also installs a control panel in Windows for various settings unique to the Mac, including setting a boot drive preference, and options involving F-keys and an infrared remote, and an option to restart after a power failure.
While Apple?s software for Windows offers Mac users a familiar experience while working in Windows, Microsoft itself has made many of the elements in Windows 7 more similar to the Mac OS X desktop than ever before. The next segment will take a look.
This series looks at the features Windows 7 offers to Mac users, and what is involved in moving from XP. This segment looks specifically at how Windows 7 differs from Mac OS X in setup and installation, and how Microsoft has made improvements over the experience offered by XP and Vista.
Mac users have a number of reasons to install Windows; some might want to run Windows in a virtual environment such VMware?s Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or Sun?s free VirtualBox to run a custom corporate app (or some other software that only works on Windows), right on the Mac OS X desktop.
Others might want to install Windows natively on their Mac using Boot Camp for full the performance required to run many Windows-only games. And many Mac users are also owners of generic PCs, and want to setup their Windows PC to share files and sync data with their Mac.
Portions of this article will apply to all these users, with a focus on Mac users who install Windows (and Windows 7 in particular) directly on their Mac using Boot Camp. A previous article looked at what is involved in installing Windows 7 within a virtual environment.
Using Boot Camp
While Apple?s Boot Camp Utility (below) is sometimes portrayed as a translation layer that allows Windows to run on Mac hardware, it is really just a two-step preparation tool that first formats the boot drive so that Windows can be installed, and then provides the installed copy of Windows with Apple-supplied driver software to properly access all of the unique hardware on Macs.
Neither of these steps are necessary when running within a virtual environment, as those tools both run Windows from a virtual disk image that sits in the regular Mac OS X file system, and supply drivers for the virtual hardware they emulate, presenting a generic PC environment of standard network, graphics, and other virtual components to whatever version of Windows is installed.
Reformatting the disk with Boot Camp
If your hard drive is full or nearly full, you might have some initial pains preparing for Boot Camp. You?ll need at a minimum 15 GB of free disk space to install Windows 7, and by free we mean really free; if you throw away just enough files to give yourself 15 GB, chances are your drive will still have files scattered around to the point that Boot Camp won?t actually be able to clear out a partition space for Windows.
That?s because Boot Camp doesn?t just allocate for Windows some of your drive?s disk space; it actually reformats the entire disk in place, lopping off a contiguous area of the disk to set up a blank disk partition, and shrinking down your boot volume to account for the difference.
This is a potentially dangerous operation, so make sure you have a full backup of your drive, either using a disk cloner utility or Time Machine to backup to an external USB drive or network server such as Time Capsule.
While we?ve never experienced any problems with repartitioning the disk in place, it makes no sense to perform this high wire act without a net, because any interruption or disk error could result in an invalid partition map and an unreadable volume that very likely can?t be recovered.
Once you identify the amount of space you want to allocate for Windows, Boot Camp moves around your files on disk like Tetris pieces to create a free contiguous area it can partition for Windows. If it runs into too many files that can?t be moved, it will ask you to solve the problem by imaging your drive to another disk and then moving it all back.
That operation, which can be done using Disk Utility, takes some time. You?ll need to first select your drive and create an image of it (below) on another drive (such as an attached USB drive), then put your system in Firewire target mode and restore the image to the disk using another system. Another option would be to boot your system up from your Mac OS X install DVD and run Disk Utility from the disc to restore the image to your boot drive.
It may also be possible to defrag your drive using a disk optimization tool such as iDefrag, which can sometimes move around files that Boot Camp won?t.
Ideally, Boot Camp will be able to find enough room to make those steps unnecessary. Even so, it will take some time (as much as a couple hours) for Boot Camp to complete the repartitioning step. Also, keep in mind that Boot Camp only knows how to start with a drive with one partition, so if you?ve already partitioned your boot disk, Boot Camp will insist you reformat it back to one single partition first.
Once complete, your drive will show up with two usable partitions, the first being your regular Mac boot drive, and the other with a horrible name along the lines of ?disk0s3.? That stands for ?disk 0, slice 3,? where slice means partition. There are two other invisible partitions, slice 0, the partition table, and slice 1, a 200 MB partition allocated to EFI. (Remember when the whole drive was less than 200 MB?) Slice 2 is your original Mac partition.
Making Windows feel at home on the Mac
Windows doesn?t really know how to handle GPT, the type of partition table used by EFI, the boot firmware system used on all Intel Macs (and their equivalent to the OpenFirmware used by PowerPC Macs). However, Intel developed EFI with Windows in mind, so it made the standard backward compatible with MBR, the simpler partitioning scheme used by generic PCs that still depend upon BIOS rather than EFI.
Windows, including the new Windows 7, expects to find a BIOS boot environment and an MBR (master boot record) to identify the disk partition to be used during installation. Boot Camp prepares a dummy MBR in the GPT that identifies the new partitions it created, and the Mac?s EFI firmware pretends to be BIOS for Windows during the reboot process.
That allows Mac users to simply insert a Windows install DVD and directly boot from it; the software thinks its installing on an old fashioned, generic PC when really its running on a state-of-the-art EFI PC made by Apple.
Among other things, the fancy EFI firmware that Macs use support the same kinds of Mac-only features OpenFirmware has long provided, including:
Firewire target mode, which makes the disk?s partitions visible to another system via Firewire
Option boot for selecting a startup disk and partition at reboot
C boot for starting up from an optical drive
BIOS PCs have to manually configure the boot volume, and can?t boot the system into target mode. They also typically only offer experimental-quality USB booting, something Microsoft doesn?t officially support in Windows. That greatly complicates the task of trying to install Windows on an external USB drive, making it something that Apple?s Boot Camp subsequently doesn?t support either.
Brave souls can download an EFI utility and edit their copy of the Windows installer to attempt to install Windows on an external USB disk, but this isn?t a task for the faint of heart. Install Windows to a Macintosh USB drive (without Bootcamp). « Tube Shards
While Windows can?t take advantage of all the benefits of the Mac?s modern firmware, EFI does make it easy to select between Mac OS X and Windows at boot, and also enables the system to select the desired boot device from within either operating system (using Apple?s supplied control panel under Windows), something Windows can?t do when running on a dual-booting, generic PC.
Direct installation of Windows using Boot Camp
The install process of Windows keeps getting more sophisticated. The new Windows 7 beta is now on par with the first releases of Mac OS X. Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft moved its desktop operating system from a DOS-based startup and installer to one using the NT kernel. However, Windows still dropped down into text mode during the installation, just as NeXTSTEP, the predecessor to Mac OS X, once did. The Windows install experience is now entirely graphical from the initial screen (below top) thorough the install progress steps (below bottom), which are presented as if in an active, Aero-styled window (albeit non-functional, as the window is only ornamental).
Apple?s Mac OS X installer boots a pared down version of Mac OS X from the DVD to run its install process. That enables the install DVD to also run some handy and familiar Mac OS X apps prior to the install process, including the full version of Disk Utility for examining, verifying, and formatting volumes. The Windows 7 installer runs as a custom system with some integrated options for performing just a few disk operations.
One is required when installing Windows 7 on the partition prepared by Boot Camp, because Windows 7 demands an NTFS disk partition to begin installing. In the install image below, Windows reports seeing all of the disk partitions, although it thinks the GPT partition 0 is ?unallocated.?
The partition we want to install Windows on is partition 3, labeled BOOTCAMP, but the installer says that?s not possible. To get around this problem, click on ?Drive options (advanced),? which reveals the option to Format partition 3 (below). Click Ok to dismiss the warning that the partition might have something on it (it doesn?t). The format is done rapidly, as the FAT volume only needs a quick NTFS volume format written on it.
Once that step is past, Windows 7 installs itself for about a half hour, then presents some installation options related to setting up an initial user account, automatic system update preferences, and the new HomeGroup sharing features. Windows 7 then sets up networking, allowing you to select a WiFi network and log in. If you allow it, Windows 7 immediately downloads and installs a couple of updates, although they aren?t actually identified until they are being installed.
On page 2 of 2: Easy drivers with Boot Camp; and Installing third party security and Apple apps for Windows.
Easy drivers with Boot Camp
Once you arrive at the Windows 7 desktop, insert your Leopard install DVD and Windows will offer to install the software drivers Apple provides (below top). This process provides over a dozen custom drivers (below bottom) for all of the unique hardware supplied on every Mac, from the trackpad to the audio, network, and graphics adapters to USB and devices such as the iSight cameras built into MacBooks.
This simple one step installer makes installing Windows on a Mac easier than installing it on a generic PC, as most PC makers require you to select and then download a series of driver install files and then typically install each one sequentially, sometimes with reboots in between. If Apple had any interest in selling Macs with Windows pre-installed just like other PC makers, it could certainly do so, and could offer a nicer install experience, to boot.
The Boot Camp drivers Apple supplies are intended for use with XP or Vista, and were delivered prior to the beta of Windows 7. Even so, there are few problems being reported by Mac users playing with the new beta. You should also install the updated drivers supplied in Boot Camp Update 2.1 for Windows Vista 32 or Boot Camp Update 2.1 for Windows Vista 64 (depending on the 32 or 64-bit version of Windows 7 you installed). You might also need to run the Troubleshoot Compatibility wizard in Windows 7 to get the system to recognize the Apple supplied drivers. And of course, remember that Windows 7 is still in beta and that Microsoft warns against using it for anything apart from testing purposes.
In our limited testing, Windows 7 appears to have fewer problems with device drivers compared to Vista at its launch. The new beta had no problem identifying a generic USB hard drive that Vista had choked on, and it had no problem identifying an iPod that Vista had earlier refused to work with. In some cases we did have to tell Windows to search for a driver for certain devices (including, oddly, the video card driver), but it seemed to work pretty well in identifying what was needed after the initial push.
Installing third party security and Apple apps for Windows
Once Windows is installed, you?ll want to activate anti-virus and anti-malware software. Microsoft provides Windows Defender for malware, but you?ll need to obtain an anti-virus tool. In addition to the beta software and paid version of AVG that Microsoft links to, you can also install a free, basic version of AVG.
You?ll probably also want to install Apple?s familiar Safari browser, which will provide the option of installing Apple Software Update mechanism. That will ask to update itself, and then will recommend installing QuickTime (below). Once you install that, Apple will recommend Bonjour (for local discovery of printers and Mac and AirPort file shares) and iTunes, which will recommend installation of the MobileMe sync setup control panel for Windows.
The download recommendations supplied by Apple?s Software Update drove Windows-centric pundits completely bananas as they fretted in anguish about Apple?s use of the popularity of iTunes to spread its other free software to Windows users. Mac users will probably just find the recommendations useful, particularly if they want their Windows setup to use the same familiar apps and to sync their data with their Mac via MobileMe. In addition to Apple?s optional Windows apps, Boot Camp also installs a control panel in Windows for various settings unique to the Mac, including setting a boot drive preference, and options involving F-keys and an infrared remote, and an option to restart after a power failure.
While Apple?s software for Windows offers Mac users a familiar experience while working in Windows, Microsoft itself has made many of the elements in Windows 7 more similar to the Mac OS X desktop than ever before. The next segment will take a look.
Comments
The only problem I had was with the sound. I installed all the drivers from the Leopard disc, but the sound still didn't work. I went to Realtek's website and downloaded the most recent drivers, and that fixed the problem. I'm not sure if this has happened to other people, but it's not that hard to fix.
When exactly did AppleInsider sell out to Microsoft? These Windows 7 beta articles just keep coming.
Yeah, made me wonder too. As if this how-to is relevant to anything Apple.
When exactly did AppleInsider sell out to Microsoft? These Windows 7 beta articles just keep coming.
Never heard of "know thy enemy"?
While Windows can?t take advantage of all the benefits of the Mac?s modern firmware, EFI does make it easy to select between Mac OS X and Windows at boot, ...
Windows Vista and 7 does support the same EFI in their 64bit versions.
The install process of Windows keeps getting more sophisticated. The new Windows 7 beta is now on par with the first releases of Mac OS X.
Windows 7 installation is exactly the same as Vista's since more than 2 years.
This simple one step installer makes installing Windows on a Mac easier than installing it on a generic PC, as most PC makers require you to select and then download a series of driver install files and then typically install each one sequentially, sometimes with reboots in between.
Surprise! PC makers do not ask for installing any drivers. They are already installed! Well isn't this the main reason to buy a PC system with Windows pre installed?
On the other hand: if you install Windows for yourself you also don't have to even start an installation because Windows automatically downloads and installs drivers for almost every device out there. And only Anti Virus apps would need a reboot. Sound, graphics and web drivers do not need a reboot. Because these components aren't part of the kernel.
In our limited testing, Windows 7 appears to have fewer problems with device drivers compared to Vista at its launch.
Ouch. How can this be possible? How can a newer OS be more compatible to old hardware? It's impossible. But what's really the case is that there are more drivers for Vista out there now and Windows 7 does use almost the same driver model. Not the OS has to be compatible but the drivers have to be!
The download recommendations supplied by Apple?s Software Update drove Windows-centric pundits completely bananas as they fretted in anguish about Apple?s use of the popularity of iTunes to spread its other free software to Windows users.
No! Please check your facts. It wasn't a "recommendation" but the default setting. So you always had to disable to install a browser just to get updates for iTunes! Only malware does behave like this. That was the problem and Apple has silently changed it.
Microsoft itself has made many of the elements in Windows 7 more similar to the Mac OS X desktop than ever before.
Oh, please don't go that way. It's so childish and wrong until you provide an objective view of what really was copied by the two companies.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2340311,00.asp
"The five versions available for U.S. customers will be: Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate. But Microsoft will only sell Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional at retail, in a bid to eliminate some of the confusion caused by a plethora of Windows Vista versions. A sixth version, Windows 7 Home Basic, will only be sold in emerging markets, Microsoft said."
One version of Windows would be easier.
Oh my, what an unprofessional article. Sorry to say but it's just the truth. ...
I don't think you are "sorry to say" at all, you are just trolling here.
I won't go through the tedium of answering each of your arguments here because your post was already long enough and I don't see how *any* of your points are valid. You are taking an extremely antagonistic point of view on the article and twisting everything to make it seem like an error of some kind when it's just not.
Just to take your first item (because I know you will just dismiss me unless I argue one of them) ...
Daniel says that "Windows can?t take advantage of all the benefits (of EFI)" and you respond by telling us this is a lie, because the 64 bit version can. Given that some ridiculously small fraction of Windows users even know the 64 bit version exists, let alone use it, this just comes off as spin on your part. Also (technically), he just said that "Windows" (covers all products), doesn't take advantage of "all" of the benefits of EFI which is completely true if you want to get to that level of picky-ness.
it seems to me that you are taking apart this article (with some rather obvious biases of your own), by twisting picky little points that are essentially meaningless. Please troll somewhere else or come up with a much shorter list of complaints that are actually supportable by some kind of hard facts instead of opinion or spin.
I'm not sure why the article seems to make installation sound more complicated that it needs to be. It takes much less time and hassle to install Windows 7 than it does to install XP. I have no prior knowledge of Vista, so I can't speak to that.
Performance has been great so far, all in all, though I haven't done much on it other than play a game and do some browsing.
To clarify the article, Windows 7 takes up about 10 gigs of your drive for itself, so if you want to install X gigs of software after, make sure you partition X + 10, plus a little breathing room, of course.
Also, media makes a difference. I tried unsuccessfully to install W7 for about a week and couldn't figure out why it kept saying that the Windows installation disc couldn't be found when I hit the start install button in Boot Camp. This turned out to be because I burned the install disc on a rather old DVD-R I had lying around. After several loud curses and shiny coasters, I went to the store and got some DVD+Rs and tried again. This time, no problems, booted up like a charm.
I have no intentions of ever buying a non mac as my primary computer, but having the option of running Windows apps in Boot Camp is great and W7 even in beta is the best version of Windows I've ever used (so far).
When exactly did AppleInsider sell out to Microsoft? These Windows 7 beta articles just keep coming.
Must be a slow news day.
When exactly did AppleInsider sell out to Microsoft? These Windows 7 beta articles just keep coming.
As a Windows user who will join the OS X family this year (hopefully for good), I find this article useful to my OS transition. I'll definitely have to use Win XP/7 for some time yet.
All in all, I believe such articles help Apple much more than Microsoft.
Never heard of "know thy enemy"?
Yes, some of us have and for far too long.
What about using VMware Fusion?
Yeah, why bother with BootCamp? I'm not dissing, I just don't get the point.
Just to take your first item (because I know you will just dismiss me unless I argue one of them) ...
Daniel says that "Windows can?t take advantage of all the benefits (of EFI)" and you respond by telling us this is a lie, because the 64 bit version can. Given that some ridiculously small fraction of Windows users even know the 64 bit version exists, let alone use it, this just comes off as spin on your part. Also (technically), he just said that "Windows" (covers all products), doesn't take advantage of "all" of the benefits of EFI which is completely true if you want to get to that level of picky-ness..
Vista SP1 has full UEFI 2.0 support and because that's the newest standard I think it's valid to say that Windows does fully support EFI. And what sense does it make to try to install a 32bit version on to an EFI-system?
The Apple platform is now not different than any other EFI PC platform.
But yeah, i'm just a regular troll...
.....caused by a plethora of Windows Vista versions.
Thank you hillstones, thank you.
Oh my, what an unprofessional article. Sorry to say but it's just the truth.
Well, it is a lot better than the previous article that was subsequently yanked (and for good reason - feel free to re-read the nonsense here) but beside that I tend to agree. I really wish these articles would stick to the objective (in this case, how to install Windows 7 on a Mac) rather than consistently wandering off into Microsoft-bashing and occasionally throwing in total untruths. For example, while I have experienced the "disk full" issue when using the Boot Camp Assistant, you do not need to make a copy of your disk to get around the problem; simply move your big files to an external disk temporarily and it works.
Basically, I already have a Mac and in that respect Apple has already "got me" - you don't need to write about how crap you think Microsoft and Windows is. Just stick to the point of the article and they'll be much better.
Installing Windows on a Mac isn't always the same as installing on a PC and has to do with APPLE hardware. Though I think more thought should have been given into drivers and not spinnng Windows as worse or trying to catch up to OS X.
Second of all, the poster above is correct in the Windows Vista SP1 and later recognize EFI. Will we see PCs with EFI, I do not know.
But the spin is redicoulous. The installing of Windows is easier in my opinion than OS X. Vista and Windows 7 alike. In OS X if you have a blank (due to replacement of hard disk) you have extra steps that call for opening Disk Util where as with Windows its seamless in the fact that you can choose to install to a blank unpartioned disk and Windows will do that for you. With Windows 7 that is your only big question besides agreeing to a license agreement (same as OS X). You provide your product key when you start Windows 7 for the first time or anytime before activation. I'm just saying the Apple could make is simpler as well, including allowing resizing and partition manipulation like Windows does without wanting to delete partitions.
Windows 7 Drivers were hardly touched on, which is important. I find Apple lack of a great experience for its hardware with Windows is laughable especially back when Vista came out on several newsreports said the Macbook Pro was the best laptop for Vista. WRONG.
#1) The right click on the mouse is lacking. Yes it exists with two finger right clicking but the driver sucks and things I wish to do two finger scrolling instead when I place two fingers on my trackpad. I am not moving my fingers up and down on my White 2.4Ghz Macbook. I have complained alot to Apple. You can also see the hundreds of complaints on Apple Support Forums.
#2) WiFi & Bluetooth. Again, a half effort from Apple. There is no way to turn these devices into "Airplane Mode" or Off without going into device manager. Luckily Windows Vista and later have a method to turn of WiFi, but not Bluetooth. Sure it might be easy to blame on Windows, but Microsoft has historically allowed manufactures to develop their own solutions alot of which rely on hardware switches. It wouldn't be hard for Apple to make their Macs the best Windows computers by allowing a software switch that doesn't rely on the device manager. The device manager is used for permenantly disabling hardware, debuging, or updating drivers and as such turning off Bluetooth or Wifi there will cause your settings to be erased.
#3) Automatic Screen Brightness. Unlike most PCs, if I unplug my Macbook when in Windows the screen brightness does not automatically adjust like it does in OS X. Wouldn't be hard at all for Apple to implement something so elementary, but its another aspect of half effort for them
Now there is more but those 3 bug me the most. Sure 2 & 3 are excusable but a cripple mouse when right click is extremely important in Windows is not. Several have complained. I have pointed out that my computer was adveristed on TV and Apple.com to run Windows and having a right click that does not work properly is not running Windows. I guess they are suppose to get back to me on making a new driver.... uh huh.
Oh, please don't go that way. It's so childish and wrong until you provide an objective view of what really was copied by the two companies.
Microsoft are just bringing back the Windows 1.0 dock. That great piece of innovative software that stole from the work Apple had produced for the Mac (which built on the Xerox Parc research effort) and made it worse.