Windows 7 support by the end of the year?


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I have been waiting for this before i wanted to setup mine to work on it. I have a Early 2009 MacBook (Aluminum Unibody) however I was waiting for the bootcamp support before i Attempted it.

Everything works fine in Bootcamp for me under Windows 7.

******! You're using old outdate Windows Vista drivers. There are no officially supported Windows 7 bootcamp drivers yet.

On new 13 inch Macbook pro, sleep is sometimes messed up when the lid is closed, the audio drivers don't function correctly (there's more sound output from the left audio channel than the right, no stereo and the sound is very poor quality), the SPDIF output light is also also always on, and additionally the trackpad is also often horribly over sensitive.

All is not quite as sweet as you assume it to be. These are among a few of a great many very well documented faults.

Edited by bmaher
Swear filter evasion
******! You're using old outdate Windows Vista drivers. There are no officially supported Windows 7 bootcamp drivers yet.

On new 13 inch Macbook pro, sleep is sometimes messed up when the lid is closed, the audio drivers don't function correctly (there's more sound output from the left audio channel than the right, no stereo and the sound is very poor quality), the SPDIF output light is also also always on, and additionally the trackpad is also often horribly over sensitive.

All is not quite as sweet as you assume it to be. These are among a few of a great many very well documented faults.

10.6 has Windows 7 drivers. P.S you can use Vista drivers for 7. Quit spreading the FUD.

Edited by bmaher
fixed quote
Apple engineers are on holiday at the moment (probably) so it'll have to wait til the new year.

Seriously, can they say that? I mean can they say something as definite as that and then just not bother? Is that how Apple works?

Anyway I am using 10.6x. My MBP came with it installed - and the lasted boot camp drivers. No official Windows 7 drivers there. I have no clue why you're talking about 'fud'. These are real faults, why would anyone even go to the trouble of making them up?

Edited by jebus197
******! You're using old outdate Windows Vista drivers. There are no officially supported Windows 7 bootcamp drivers yet.

On new 13 inch Macbook pro, sleep is sometimes messed up when the lid is closed, the audio drivers don't function correctly (there's more sound output from the left audio channel than the right, no stereo and the sound is very poor quality), the SPDIF output light is also also always on, and additionally the trackpad is also often horribly over sensitive.

All is not quite as sweet as you assume it to be. These are among a few of a great many very well documented faults.

Whether they be Windows 7 drivers or Windows Vista drivers - it works - flawlessly. 99% of Vista drivers work fine with Windows 7 anyway.

Everything works, I have no errors, and the only really important driver (performance wise), the graphics driver, is automatically updated via Windows Update anyway.

Also...

Thread Cleaned.

Please keep it civilised and please don't evade the swear filter.

Whether they be Windows 7 drivers or Windows Vista drivers - it works - flawlessly. 99% of Vista drivers work fine with Windows 7 anyway.

Everything works, I have no errors, and the only really important driver (performance wise), the graphics driver, is automatically updated via Windows Update anyway.

I am very glad everything works for you. But the point I was trying to make is that this isn't the case for everyone - and in this case they clearly don't work completely effectively for me.

Also Windows Vista drivers are still Windows Vista drivers. Just because they work (although again, they don't work all that well for me) doesn't mean by any measure that they have been optimised for Windows 7. There are still likely to be several improvements to be gained from using fully dedicated drivers.

Whether they be Windows 7 drivers or Windows Vista drivers - it works - flawlessly. 99% of Vista drivers work fine with Windows 7 anyway.

Everything works, I have no errors, and the only really important driver (performance wise), the graphics driver, is automatically updated via Windows Update anyway.

Also...

Thread Cleaned.

Please keep it civilised and please don't evade the swear filter.

I didn't evade it. I edited it myself. Lol. Since when is **** swearing anyway?

Anyway sorry for being frustrated, I just don't get it when people idiotically deny any possibility of a fault with a sytem purely on the basis of what seems like some kind of obsessive brand loyalty. What makes it especially dumb and frustrating is that these faults are real and are not made up, or 'fud' at all.

Edited by jebus197

The Vista boot camp drivers may "work" with Windows 7, but there's obviously room for improvement, as my 2 year old lower-spec'd HP boots and runs 7 faster than my brand new MBP. There's also the hyper-sensitive touchpad driver. Many times I'll accidently click something when I'm meaning to scroll. And they need to update the drivers to allow Windows 7's power management to do its job better - as it is it can't even control screen brightness...

Everything seems to work fine here. Windows 7 Ultimate 32Bit. I got the latest drivers from the NVIDIA site. However I had a nightmare installing it because when it rebooted it didnt turn the screen back on. It just sat there black screen. I eventually got it sorted just guessed when to press next on the windows install lol. It rebooted fine though.

As I said, I think you guys are possibly missing the point slighly. The point of the thread, and my question isn't that 'it works for you', it's that there are plenty of cases, especially with some of the newer MBP's where the old Windows Vista drivers don't work all that well at all.

Also the point is that they are mostly all still Windows Vista drivers, hence not optimised for the new Windows 7 kernel etc. Thus at some point or other, you will still be missing out on performance.

Moreover the starting premise of the thread was simply that Apple seemed to be taking their own dear sweet time in holding themselves to a promise they made shortly after Windows 7 was officially released.

There's still clearly some time for them to do this, but it does seem odd that they are cutting it so fine.

Edited by jebus197
Seriously, can they say that? I mean can they say something as definite as that and then just not bother? Is that how Apple works?

Anyway I am using 10.6x. My MBP came with it installed - and the lasted boot camp drivers. No official Windows 7 drivers there. I have no clue why you're talking about 'fud'. These are real faults, why would anyone even go to the trouble of making them up?

Well maybe they planed to release before Christmas but some major bug appeared they ran out of time and rather than release a pile of crap come back in the new year.

The Boot Camp drivers work in Windows 7. They work just fine, in fact, considering that it's not the OS the hardware was designed for. However, the drivers are designed for Vista, and my understanding is that 7 offers some new things, like better power management, multi touch support (via the trackpad), etc.

I'm hoping that the reason Apple is taking their time is because they're taking advantage of all Windows 7 has to offer. They showed some promise with the improved drivers included with Snow Leopard.

The Boot Camp drivers work in Windows 7. They work just fine...

But the point is they don't work well in all cases! Look up the issues I have described on any notable Apple forum and you will find more than plenty examples of these.

However you are correct that Windows Vista drivers have also not been optimised for Windows 7, so overall performance is unlikely to be on the same level as a sytem running fully dedicated drivers.

Vista drivers works fine on my MacBook Pro 13"... but the tap click is too sensitve, the optical light is always on and Im using a modified sound driver to get max. volume. Then the line-in doesn't work... I would be glad if they improved the trackpad driver alot, and released it soon...

I installed Windows 7 x64 without Bootcamp, erasing everything the disk had, natively alone, at an Aluminium iMac.

I also installed drivers natively from each hardware manufacturer missing ( one :p )

All that was missing, a stupid Bluetooh stack Apple uses and a Special Key, in iMac keyboard for eject.

Everything, even iSight Camera was instantly recognised by Windows 7 + Windows Update.

I just installed Bluetooth Stack from Vista, and the stupid button.

I updated even Drivers that Windows 7 recognised such as Realtek Audio, Marvel Yukon Gigabit and Broadcom Wireless.

PC..errrrm the Mac now runs superb/splendid Windows 7 x64 native, alone.

No need to wait for Apple SuperDuper Engineers...

P.S. to install I had to alter the original win7 iso, so Apple's stupid EFI co-operates with UEFI 2.x that Windows 7 x64 support, or else both Windows/EFI boot were halted.

Lol, I give up! It's completely irrelevant that "it works for you." Clearly if you read the links I supplied above you will find that this is not the case for everyone.

Many of the drivers for the newer Macbook Pros cannot be downloaded directly from the manufacturers site. This includes trackpad and audio drivers (and chipset drivers too - which will almost certainly have a direct impact on performance).

I also have to run hacked audio drivers to get 'full' volume, although the sound quality is still nothing short of terrible and there is higher volume coming from the left speaker than the right speaker.

Again I genuinely can't see the point of posting comments saying 'it works for me.' If it does, then great, what this means is that you're not affected. It probably also means you're running a slightly older version of a Macbook.

Moreover working drivers and 'optimised' drivers are not the same thing. Working Vista drivers may appear to work, but they are not optimised for Windows 7, hence performance overall is likely to suffer.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3920

Note: The following models will not be supported for use with Windows 7 using Boot Camp.

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)

Does anyone know why this is the case that they are not supported? is it a technical reason or a matter of policy because these products are End of Life? And does anyone know if any technical restriction will be put in place to prevent attempted installation on this hardware in an unsupported manner?

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    • Windows 10 is end-of-life (EOL) anyway.
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