Apple Fails To Deliver On Windows 7 Boot Camp Promise 279
SkydiverFL writes "For those fans of Apple's Boot Camp package, it looks like you might be waiting on the next 'end of year' to use Windows 7 on your shiny silver boxes. Back in October of this year, Apple published a rather short, but affirmative promise stating quite simply that, 'Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year. This support will require a software update to Boot Camp.' The support page has no updates regarding the new version. Maybe they're waiting for iSlate?"
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
Works fine on a Mac Pro (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do you eschew choice? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you buy a Mac Laptop, you can run Windows, Linux or OS X, all fully supported.
If you buy a Windows laptop, you can't officially run OS X - and of course it comes pre-loaded with Windows, not OS X.
Considering you also get better quality hardware, it seems reasonable to pay a little more for more choice.
Bootcamp a gimmick (Score:5, Interesting)
While it is valid to complain that Apple missed a deadline, I am kind of surprised that Apple even made the effort to create a deadline. I cannot imagine people paying Apple prices to run MS Windows on an exclusive basis. I can imagine them paying such prices to run virtual machines with other OS.
I would rather see Apple point customers toward Parallels or Fusion rather than working on trying to get MS Windows to work as the base OS. What would be even more cool is a kernal that could then be used to run any number of OS in virtual mode.
Lost a little of my soul, but no other issues (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a Firmware update about 2 weeks ago, which may have been what we were waiting for; but I had no problems with it when I installed it today.
-Runz
Re:Bootcamp a gimmick (Score:5, Interesting)
I always saw bootcamp as a gimmick to encourage MS Windows users to switch to Apple Hardware. If one buys a mac, and really can't stand OS X, one can always go back to MS Windows. Or if MS Windows must be run occasionally, then Bootcamp is an effective way to do so.
I use BootCamp for playing games (I still play a lot of UT2004) and for doing CAD (Autodesk Inventor and PCB design). All those really benefit from direct booting into windows. Plus the fascist copy protection in the CAD programs makes it difficult to run in parallels. I do use parallels for light CAD work and such, and I just boot from the BootCamp partition using parallels. IT's the best of both worlds.
I need windows around to do things like PCB design, because there are no viable Mac alternatives. There is a lot of scientific packages are just plain don't exist on the Mac. With the Mac I have OS X for my daily stuff and much of my engineering design work, and occasionally use Windows for the few things I can't do on the mac. All on one quiet machine.
Windows 7 works fine on my mid 2009 17" MBP using the vista drivers. I run XP though, as I don't need or want the extra features of "7" and the smaller footprint of XP makes it nicer for my needs.
Sheldon
Re:Lost a little of my soul, but no other issues (Score:2, Interesting)
BZZZZT (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, there may be a grain of truth in the article. Windows 7 is not "officially" supported by Apple. Neither is linux, and that runs fine on Macs too!
Wait, (Score:4, Interesting)
So, the version i am running from Snow Leopard, that says "compatible with Windows 7" right there on the setup screen is actually NOT compatible with windows 7.
FTFA:
You cannot run your Mac applications simultaneously
No one notified me of this! Ive been running it like that since I installed it!
You cannot safely resize the Mac or Windows partitions
Got me again! Next time i'll try it, i'll make sure to do it as unsafely as i can.
You cannot easily transfer files between the two partitions (without third-party support)
I'll stop using the hfs driver in boot camp right away (once i learn to disable it. Damn apple making stuff just work).
Seriously, anyone reading CNet for legitimate stories should have his head checked.
Re:Bootcamp a gimmick (Score:1, Interesting)
For lighter-weight PCB design, I use Osmond Quartz. If you're doing pre-level design stuff, it may or may not be up to snuff for what you're doing; I wouldn't know, I'm not at that level - but it may worth checking out. The bit where I really hit problems was building a library of parts - I had difficulties using the available libraries, so I built my own for many of the parts I use. I believe there are pay versions of the software available with more features.
I don't have a lot of experience with this stuff - in fact - Osmond is what I taught myself PCB design for (using it in building amplifiers and effects pedals) and I don't know what you're doing - so it may be totally unusable for your needs; but I just happened to stumble across it, and it worked quite well for some things. I know I haven't gotten into all it's features yet.
Re:The Vista drivers work fine (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend with a 2008 MacBook Pro that absolutely could not, for whatever reason, get Windows 7 to run correctly on Bootcamp. He would start it up and be able to get to the login screen, but his MBP would report the keyboard and touchpad as something non-generic and require a driver that doesn't yet exist for Window 7. He could force-install a generic driver but the exact same thing would happen the next time Windows restarted because it detects a less than ideal driver and replaces it.
Last I checked he was running 7 inside VMware instead, but he'd rather run it without a host OS under Bootcamp. As has been said lower here, it's not about the ability to run Windows 7 on Bootcamp, it's Apple's support of it. What's disappointing is they've had a lot longer than the GA of Windows 7 to put together this "update" and still haven't done it.
Boot camp can't be trusted (Score:3, Interesting)
I have noticed 2 major issues with Boot Camp coming with the "snow leopard" DVD and I started to believe Apple doesn't want users to have good performance on Windows. Or, they don't have slightest clue about importance of these things.
1) The NVidia GPU drivers coming with Snow Leopard DVD (and there are no updates) are _old_. One would think "well, they could prefer stability", no it is not the case either. The stuff offered at NVidia drivers page are WHQL certified by default too. 9400M is especially a GPU/Integrated GPU hybrid, it really needs up to date, latest driver software to function properly.
2) Now, this is not a trivial thing to fix like heading to nvidia and download a driver. SATA on latest gen Mac Mini (and Intel based stuff) is not properly identified to Windows via MBR or "BIOS". There isn't much information there but in case of Intel SATA controller, it is documented and you can take a real big risk of MBR tweaking with some ready to use tools and identify SATA/AHCI situation to Windows, thanks to NCQ like features _only_ available to AHCI (at least under win), 2-3x performance hit may occur. NVidia chipset having Mac Minis who really needs whatever software performance they need (they run 2.5"). I did every documented, undocumented, dangerous trick on book to have 20 MB/sec pathetic speed. Same drive on same hardware hits 60-70MB/sec on OS X.
As Nvidia won't give specs to a chipset nerd or end user, things would really change in case of Apple themselves contacting them. I really believe people who can do crazy things like putting a virtual BIOS on top of EFI etc would manage to change couple of bytes. I started to believe that it is Apple who wants their users,customers to have junk like performance on Windows. Perhaps with the recent Win 7 hype, they are afraid of their customers having good experience with Windows and start to question their brand?
Re:Why do you eschew choice? (Score:3, Interesting)
And that is what sleep mode is for....
Sure, hibernate would be nice, just never needed it.
Instant wake from sleep is more than enough.
re: There are still bugs .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I ran across a nasty bug when I first put Windows 7 on a drive in my Mac Pro.
My system has 4 physical hard drives in it. The first was labeled "OS X Boot" and the 2nd. and 3rd. had labels of "Data 1" and "Data 2". I installed Windows 7 on the 4th. drive. All went well, except when booted into Windows 7, it displayed the OS X drives out of order. (With the latest version of Boot Camp drivers on the Snow Leopard DVD, they provide "read only" support of the OS X HFS+ volumes in Windows.) It was assigning my "Data 1" drive as drive G" while "Data 2" was drive F:, and "OS X Boot" was given letter H:.
I figured "No big deal. I know how to fix it when Windows does this stuff ....", and went into Computer Management and Disk Management under Administrative Tools, and told it to reassign the drive letters in the order I wanted them. It did, as requested, and all seemed to be well.
EXCEPT, on reboot into OS X, I discovered my OS X drives were rendered unbootable/unusable! Windows 7 could see them just fine - but the Mac didn't like them natively anymore! Worse yet, I tried all sorts of disk repair utilities on them and the usual result was being shown that the drives were of an "unrecognized partition type" and options to repair them were "greyed out"! One program, Drive Genius, actually let me verify and repair the volumes - but after running through everything, insisted the drives were "ok" and there was nothing to repair!
Apparently, the Disk Management in Windows actually rewrites something in the partition table when it reassigns drive letters (not just a registry update), and whatever it does changes things JUST enough to screw up OS X from using the HFS+ volumes normally. Apple really needs to update their drivers so they prevent people from being able to write to the drives from Windows' disk management tool, since this is the case. "Read only HFS+ support" should mean just that!
Re:The Vista drivers work fine (Score:3, Interesting)
The 32-bit version of Windows 7 was a success.. for some reason, that installer allowed me to press any key and begin the process. I am writing from Windows 7 on my mac right now, and I used the snow leopard disc to install my drivers. All went fine as such.. but the ATI x1600 video card driver sucks.. and the Omega ATI drivers are not ready for Vista/7 yet, so I have done some driver updates myself after the snow leopard package.