Apple's Boot Camp drops support for Windows 7 with latest MacBook models
Apple has dropped Boot Camp support for installations of Windows 7 on the recently refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lineup, meaning users will have to switch to third-party virtualization software, upgrade to Windows 8 or wait for Microsoft to release Windows 10.
According to a Support Pages document posted on Apple's website, Boot Camp running on early-2015 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air -- all of which went on sale earlier this month -- is only compatible with Windows 8 and above.
It appears that Apple is moving away from Windows 7 as new Mac hardware is released, a trend started with last year's Mac Pro. The company did much the same when it ended Boot Camp support for Windows XP and Vista when the second-generation MacBook Air debuted in 2010.
For users invested in Windows 7, third-party virtualization software like Parallels Desktop 10 and VMWare Fusion 7 offers support for legacy Windows releases on Apple's latest OS X 10.10 Yosemite operating system. Unlike Apple's dual-boot solution, virtualization software is much more flexible and can weave together features from both installed operating systems to crete a seamless, integrated user experience.
Alternatively, Microsoft in January announced it would offer a free upgrade path to Windows 10 for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 users, a move echoing Apple's decision to make OS X upgrades free. Microsoft's next-generation operating system is slated to come out later this year.
According to a Support Pages document posted on Apple's website, Boot Camp running on early-2015 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air -- all of which went on sale earlier this month -- is only compatible with Windows 8 and above.
It appears that Apple is moving away from Windows 7 as new Mac hardware is released, a trend started with last year's Mac Pro. The company did much the same when it ended Boot Camp support for Windows XP and Vista when the second-generation MacBook Air debuted in 2010.
For users invested in Windows 7, third-party virtualization software like Parallels Desktop 10 and VMWare Fusion 7 offers support for legacy Windows releases on Apple's latest OS X 10.10 Yosemite operating system. Unlike Apple's dual-boot solution, virtualization software is much more flexible and can weave together features from both installed operating systems to crete a seamless, integrated user experience.
Alternatively, Microsoft in January announced it would offer a free upgrade path to Windows 10 for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 users, a move echoing Apple's decision to make OS X upgrades free. Microsoft's next-generation operating system is slated to come out later this year.
Comments
I kind of understand. For Apple to waste its time and resources creating Windows drivers for a "competing" OS on new hardware, it could make better use of its time elsewhere.
I use VMware for my multiple Windows OS'es. It's a perfect setup for me and drivers provided by VMware have been flawless to say the least. Bootcamp makes little sense to me. Virtual machines are the way to go.
As much I hate Windows, I really needed some of the programs. For certain VPNs, Parallels doesn't work out too well.
Have you considered VMware Fusion? They are the big-iron when it comes to Virtual Machines. I use various VPN's in my Windows vm's and never had any problems.
Have you considered VMware Fusion? They are the big-iron when it comes to Virtual Machines. I use various VPN's in my Windows vm's and never had any problems.
I've been using Parallels since v3 and have never had any issues with the various VPN clients I've used (Nortel, Cisco, and AT&T). That said, I'm likely switching to Fusion this time around because I'm tired of paying Parallels $100/year for updates ($50 per Mac - VMWare's licenses are, allegedly, good for up to three machines).
Also, who uses Boot Camp? The only fathomable reason I can think of is gaming...
I have Vista Enterprise on my Mac Pro at the moment. Did that back when I only had 4GB of RAM and a VM was tight. I also play games on it.
I've been using Parallels since v3 and have never had any issues with the various VPN clients I've used (Nortel, Cisco, and AT&T). That said, I'm likely switching to Fusion this time around because I'm tired of paying Parallels $100/year for updates ($50 per Mac - VMWare's licenses are, allegedly, good for up to three machines).
You should try out VirtualBox (free). It doesn't work so great on my 2010 Mac mini (despite the fact I have 8GB RAM), but it runs acceptably on my 2013 MacBook Air. I guess Oracle hasn't optimized it for older CPUs.
That said, I gave up running VirtualBox. I'm now using an Amazon EC2 virtual machine instance (running Windows Server 2012 R2) for free (at least the first year), connecting with Microsoft Remote Desktop. Thus I basically use none of my RAM, none of my CPU cycles, and none of my own disk space. After the year-long trial expires, I'll have to pay for my usage, but it looks like it'll be less than a buck a month. I only use Windows to run Quicken.
You should try out VirtualBox (free). It doesn't work so great on my 2010 Mac mini (despite the fact I have 8GB RAM), but it runs acceptably on my 2013 MacBook Air. I guess Oracle hasn't optimized it for older CPUs.
That said, I gave up running VirtualBox. I'm now using an Amazon EC2 virtual machine instance (running Windows Server 2012 R2) for free (at least the first year), connecting with Microsoft Remote Desktop. Thus I basically use none of my RAM, none of my CPU cycles, and none of my own disk space. After the year-long trial expires, I'll have to pay for my usage, but it looks like it'll be less than a buck a month. I only use Windows to run Quicken.
I've used VirtualBox on Linux hosts to run some corporate Windows apps, and that's certainly an option on the Mac, but when I've looked at performance charts, VirtualBox performs miserably for the kinds of tasks I care about (file transfer speeds are abysmal, for example, which tells me launching of apps and running development tools, including large project compilations, would likely be unsatisfactory).
Still, it's worth looking into considering the cost, or lack thereof
I still prefer to install Win7 over Win8, so I'm sorry to see this go even if my usage was only with VMs. However, I had been considering a new MacBook specifically for work (assuming ti can charged whilst driving around via the 12-volt) that would use BootCamp. Having no Win7 option may be a deterrent to buying a new MacBook (not that my scenario is going to make a difference to Apple's bottom line).
May as well start cutting the relationship now ... Soon virtualization will be the only way to run Microsoft Windows on the Apple MacBook with Apple AX SoC. I think the new MacBook is a proof-of-concept. Once Apple demonstrates that the product is viable they will switch to Apple AX SoC.
How many Mac users run BootCamp to play Windows-only games? I wouldn't be surprised if this is a significant number.You should try out VirtualBox (free). It doesn't work so great on my 2010 Mac mini (despite the fact I have 8GB RAM), but it runs acceptably on my 2013 MacBook Air. I guess Oracle hasn't optimized it for older CPUs.
That said, I gave up running VirtualBox. I'm now using an Amazon EC2 virtual machine instance (running Windows Server 2012 R2) for free (at least the first year), connecting with Microsoft Remote Desktop. Thus I basically use none of my RAM, none of my CPU cycles, and none of my own disk space. After the year-long trial expires, I'll have to pay for my usage, but it looks like it'll be less than a buck a month. I only use Windows to run Quicken.
VirtualBox works, but it's a RAM pig for sure (though from what I've seen Parallels is too). But I've got 10GB on my Pro, and often if I find I've run out it's because VirtualBox has hogged about seven gigs despite running only one VM.
I still prefer to install Win7 over Win8, so I'm sorry to see this go even if my usage was only with VMs. However, I had been considering a new MacBook specifically for work (assuming ti can charged whilst driving around via the 12-volt) that would use BootCamp. Having no Win7 option may be a deterrent to buying a new MacBook (not that my scenario is going to make a difference to Apple's bottom line).
7 is just too slow for me these days. Windows 10 really is a nice operating system, I'm looking forward to it.
May as well start cutting the relationship now ... Soon virtualization will be the only way to run Microsoft Windows on the Apple MacBook with Apple AX SoC. I think the new MacBook is a proof-of-concept. Once Apple demonstrates that the product is viable they will switch to Apple AX SoC.
How many Mac users run BootCamp to play Windows-only games? I wouldn't be surprised if this is a significant number.
Well, I used BootCamp initially for Access and Visual Studio. Now I just keep it around for games.
I was sad to see that Microsoft stopped offering XP on MSDN though, I wanted to install it on my MBP just to use for a program called FORScan.
I've used VirtualBox on Linux hosts to run some corporate Windows apps, and that's certainly an option on the Mac, but when I've looked at performance charts, VirtualBox performs miserably for the kinds of tasks I care about (file transfer speeds are abysmal, for example, which tells me launching of apps and running development tools, including large project compilations, would likely be unsatisfactory).
Still, it's worth looking into considering the cost, or lack thereof
Since you finally described what you do with your Windows virtual machines, now we have a better idea of the criteria of what we can recommend to you.
You might as well check out Amazon EC2. The free one-year trial instance is rather resource constrained, I think 1GB RAM and a small amount of disk space, but network connectivity is okay since it's the virtual machine in the cloud connecting to the Internet (your personal Internet connection speed is pretty irrelevant).
My guess is that Amazon offers the free one-year trial of a resource-limited virtual machine to hook developers into dabbling with projects in their cloud, with the hope that you might use their services for a production system.
I'm definitely not Amazon's target audience. I fire up consumer personal finance software a few times a week on my (currently) free VM instance. I don't need to maintain the virtual machine software, all I do is run Windows Update to install Microsoft updates (which download very quickly since I'm using Amazon's bandwidth, not mine). That in itself will probably be worth the dollar/month I'll pay when my free trial is over.
Doesn't VMware do the trick? Or are you meaning any VM doesn't work out too well?
I always instal the latest Windows OS in a VMWare VM on one of my Mac Pro's external TB RAIDs just so i can test everything. I have all Mac OS X Intel (pre intel I use PPC Macs or earlier) and Microsoft versions except 95. It is quite a trip down nostalgia lane to run these versions now and then on a 'snow day'. I have to say Windows 7 always seems the most straight forward version to me to come out of the bowels of Redmond. What is it about 10 you look forward to? I confess I haven't been paying attention to MS for a while now.
Since you finally described what you do with your Windows virtual machines, now we have a better idea of the criteria of what we can recommend to you.
You might as well check out Amazon EC2. The free one-year trial instance is rather resource constrained, I think 1GB RAM and a small amount of disk space, but network connectivity is okay since it's the virtual machine in the cloud connecting to the Internet (your personal Internet connection speed is pretty irrelevant).
My guess is that Amazon offers the free one-year trial of a resource-limited virtual machine to hook developers into dabbling with projects in their cloud, with the hope that you might use their services for a production system.
I'm definitely not Amazon's target audience. I fire up consumer personal finance software a few times a week on my (currently) free VM instance. I don't need to maintain the virtual machine software, all I do is run Windows Update to install Microsoft updates (which download very quickly since I'm using Amazon's bandwidth, not mine). That in itself will probably be worth the dollar/month I'll pay when my free trial is over.
Thanks, but I'm quite familiar with the setup I need. Basically I need a Windows environment that I can VPN out of and install corporate apps on. My company issues HP or Dell laptops, but I choose not to use them because I don't want to have to have one machine for work and another machine for play. With Windows running in a VM, I can carry my personal laptop with me and get my 'work' done as well as my non-work stuff. Plus, having my VPN session contained within the VM means that I have access in the host environment to all the stuff that's normally blocked on the corporate network (like IMAP mail, Facebook, IRC, etc).
I don't believe the Amazon solution would work because I do want offline access. It would offer once brilliant solution however - most of the time I use a Mac Mini at home (partly because I have two large monitors hooked up to it), but sometimes I need to be mobile so I have a VM hosted on my 15" MBP. In order to keep my environments in sync, I have my documents folder mapped out to Dropbox. That doesn't solve the solution of my chat history (using a proprietary internal chat client) or my Outlook PST files. I've tried hosting those on Dropbox but ended up with a lot of sync issues. If Microsoft would simply use mbox format like every.other.mail.client out there... Anyway, hosting a remote solution like Amazon's would keep everything in sync, but would require me to be online all the time. Plus I'm sure it would be a huge violation of my company's security policy to host proprietary and private data in the cloud. As it is I'm pushing it by storing documents on Dropbox.
Hopefully Microsoft is paying Apple to drop support for older OSes to push their new ones.
You misinterpret Apple. They drop support for older versions of OSX. Why would they perpetually continue maintain support for a secondary OS?