Apple's Boot Camp 'will support Windows 7' by year's end, company states

Jonny Evans
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October 23, 2009
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Apple will introduce support for Windows 7 within Boot Camp by the end of the year, the company has confirmed.

In a short tech support document posted to the Apple site, the company said, "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.”

The company also confirmed, "This support will require a software update to Boot Camp." Apple did not reveal a schedule for the Boot Camp update.

Apple also warned of nine Mac models that just won’t be able to run Windows 7 in Boot Camp. (Though we’d note the most likely guest OS may be Windows XP, for all those migrating to the Mac from Windows in preference to an upgrade to W7, but anyway...)

The Macs unable to run Windows 7 are:

        iMac (17-inch, Early 2006)
        iMac (17-inch, Late 2006)
        iMac (20-inch, Early 2006)
        iMac (20-inch, Late 2006)
        MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2006)
        MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2006)
        MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2006)
        MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2006)
        Mac Pro (Mid 2006, Intel Xeon Dual-core 2.66GHz or 3GHz)
 

Comments (11)

Canada Chas (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 3:26am

mac pro Dual core? More than enough power for Windows 7? I wonder why?

Canada Chas (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 3:27am

mac pro Dual core? More than enough power for Windows 7? I wonder why?

9to5mac Noob (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 3:33am

to make people buy new hardware :/

Canada Chas (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 3:27am

mac pro Dual core? More than enough power for Windows 7? I wonder why?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 4:32am

I think every device on the list has more than enough power to run Windows 7, it's almost certainly to do with assigning internal staff to the machine specific stuff (Windows drivers mainly, I'd guess). They'll be much the same as the Vista drivers, I guess, but Apple will want to test them and those machines have probably just fallen out of whatever rolling window they have for support.

I have an early 2006 MacBook Pro, so I guess I'll be VirtualBoxing if I want to access any software within Windows 7.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 4:55am

I've got Windows 7 Professional running just fine on my MacPro1,1

It's just Apple's too lazy to gather drivers together, but all the important drivers are already on the disc. Just put in the Win 7 disc reboot holding option, and upgrade. You don't need the bootcamp software at all.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 5:01am

You can do it from a clean install too.. I've got Win7 working perfectly under boot camp on my MBP. Don't see what apple have to do to 'add' support, except possibly 64bit drivers (I've seen the SL beta drivers that had 64bit support, but they weren't really usable - the ability to read HFS drives under windows was nice though).

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 5:10am

I have the mentioned Mac Pro and have been running Windows 7 on it for months without issue.

joaojotta (not verified) | October 23, 2009 - 2:19pm

iMac (20-inch, Early 2006) ?
Wrong. I've got one and it runs Windows 7.

Mystech (not verified) | October 24, 2009 - 12:19pm

MacBook Pro A1150? I think it was made in 2006, and seems pretty robust.

Samir (not verified) | October 25, 2009 - 10:18am

http://thetechnologycafe.com/apple-mac-os-x-now-supporting-windows-7-boo...