Apple: Official Boot Camp Support for Windows 7 Coming Later This Year

Veri said:
So, erm, what did your comparison of snapshots created over time reveal? I'm assuming, since you're testing fitness for some purpose and you've identified a repeatable issue, that you're actually trying to find out what the problem is. As most parts in your computer are volatile, we can assume that some files on your hard drive, or the organisation of files on the drive, have changed in some way. What did you check?

I'm not asking to be facetious - I really am interested in informed diagnoses of problems which develop over time. There are so many reports of various systems over the decades "just getting slower until I give up and reinstall" but few attempts to identify exactly what's happening.
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We have 6 test systems all running windows 7 ultimate, these have had various applications installed on them to test viability on the new OS. I kept one of the test systems, flattened it and reinstalled 7 on it. I use this system daily purely for Outlook 2007 (connected to out exchange server) and run Office 2007 word and excel for creating and editing documents.

This system is also used for general browsing and has the Adobe flash plugin installed for both firefox and IE8.

And thats about exciting as it gets.

After 3 months of daily use it was becoming slow to load even the 'explorer'. We set about updating the drivers, as during this time many hardware drivers have become available, but this made no difference.

After reinstalling everything ran as expected. Our systems guys have been looking for a cause to the slowdowns but as of yet have no definite fix. They have disabled auto defrag and a couple of other services as they think this may be part of the issue.
 
Sounds weird to me - I had 7 Beta and RC running nicely on my old MBP Core 2 2.16 Ghz, using the Vista drivers that came with Leopard and a few extra ones from around the web (new ATi drivers, WLAN drivers, etc). Good news is, it all worked (although I had some fun seeking out drivers). Looks like apple can't be bothered testing it to me.
 
irnchriz said:
We have 6 test systems all running windows 7 ultimate, these have had various applications installed on them to test viability on the new OS. I kept one of the test systems, flattened it and reinstalled 7 on it. I use this system daily purely for Outlook 2007 (connected to out exchange server) and run Office 2007 word and excel for creating and editing documents.

This system is also used for general browsing and has the Adobe flash plugin installed for both firefox and IE8.

And thats about exciting as it gets.

After 3 months of daily use it was becoming slow to load even the 'explorer'. We set about updating the drivers, as during this time many hardware drivers have become available, but this made no difference.

After reinstalling everything ran as expected. Our systems guys have been looking for a cause to the slowdowns but as of yet have no definite fix. They have disabled auto defrag and a couple of other services as they think this may be part of the issue.
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From a purely scientific viewpoint this might actually be the issue. It isn't a very good thing to leave suspected things disabled when disabling them in the first place seemed to have no impact on the suspected cause... ;)

Imagine your doctor doing the same when trying to set to a diagnosis.

Disregard after testing a theory but don't leave them disabled or you might never find the real cause (treat the system, not the part).

It would be interesting to read what you'd find out as this seems to be a common problem to the Windows environment.
 
I have a mid-2006 Core Duo (not Core 2) iMac. I've been running W7 RC for months and now the full retail version with almost zero problems (has crashed on the odd occassion coming out of sleep!) but the funny thing is compared to Leopard it's blazing fast which is a great feeling for "old" hardware.

I use it for .Net development (my job) with SQL Server and MySQL and it performs brilliantly. Credit where it's due MS has made good this time with Windows 7. I'm not sure I need any official support.
 
"Mac Pro (Mid 2006, Intel Xeon Dual-core 2.66GHz or 3GHz)"

Why are they not supporting this? I know this model is their bastard child but I have Win 7 x64 running on it. and have no issues other than apple's HFS driver.
 
irnchriz said:
After 3 months of daily use it was becoming slow to load even the 'explorer'.
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I wonder if your system guys (or anyone on your team) tried the Windows 7 "Resource Monitor". ("Task Manager" -> "Performance" -> "Resource Monitor")

It can give a lot of insight into what the system is doing, which tasks are chewing CPU, where memory is, how the network and disks are being used...

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/windows-7-resource-monitor-bigger-better-and-uncut.htm

rm_overview_1.jpg
rm_cpu_1.jpg


There's also the excellent "Procmon" utility at sysinternals (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx) which provides a realtime trace of system call activity (files/registry/...) - although it's harder to understand due to the sheer volume of data it presents.
 
I'm not bashing Windows here, but I have seen this problem occur on systems since 98 even. Slowdowns for no apparent reason after like 6 months of usage. Like a general 30% redux in system efficiency. Now, I havn't used Windows 7 so I can't even comment on it. The problems in the past were due to a variety, well a plethora of different things from memory leaks in programs to TSR programs being bitchy.
The only computer I have ever seen to just work, and keep working, is my mac. I have only been a user of macs for about 2 months now and honest to god I won't go back. After 2 months I have noticed no problems or overt cpu / memory usage in my operating system, OSX (not Snow Leopard). Windows 7 though is getting rave reviews so that is awesome.
As far as your problem with the system slowdown, that is intriguing. I wonder what could be causing it!
 
okay, my computer is supported, but i think not supporting earlier computers is kinda like censoring windows. either way you don't get to use the "highly acclaimed" windows 7 (for once i think this windows will actually work properly), or make you buy new apple hardware. either way apple wins. not good.
 
You know, I qualify to get Win 7 Pro for $29.99 (Education, win741.com)
and i'm staring at the option for 32bit or 64bit saying to myself, Dang I'm glad Apple had the brains to just package it all on one disk. I'd think Microsoft could atleast have made one stall disk and when the installer starts it could check if someone's machine meets the requirements for 64bit THEN pop up a message and say "Hey your machine can handle 64bit, would you like to install that or 32bit?" personally I'm growing very appreciative of how Apple is handeling the transition to 64bit (With the exception of cutting off some machines that technically should be able to run 64bit without any troubles)

P.S. does anyone know what the best hard drive is that I could pop into my MacBook Pro 2007
MacBookPro 3,1 2.4GHZ ? I'm running out of space.
 
slicecom said:
But I've been using Windows 7 on my MacPro in BootCamp for months. How is it not compatible? :confused:
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I think this is a question of "official support" not whether it will work or not. Meaning if you have problems on unsupported hardware, they aren't going to help you. Not sure why they do this, maybe to reduce their QA costs or give people reasons to buy newer machines? I really hope they don't stop you from trying to use boot camp on unsupported hardware (though I'd imagine it would be trivial to work around).

This is just typical Apple I guess. Why didn't they have four finger touch on older multi-touch (until Snow Leopard)? Why doesn't the 1st gen iPhone not have MMS (there are ways to enable it on a jailbroken phone)? I think their reasons for these kinds of decisions are not technical and mostly marketing.
 
I agree completely.

Fuchal said:
Lazy. Apple should have had this today, on day one.

Kind of annoying especially considering my 13" Macbook Pro's audio + webcam don't work properly in ANY Windows at the moment (XP, Vista, or 7) without hacked drivers.
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Windows 7 beta has been publicly available since January and Apple has a working relationship with Microsoft for Office etc. There is no excuse. The also sell the fact that you can run Windows on the Mac. This is inexcusable not to have drivers ready on the release date. This means I (and many others) have to wait months before installing Win 7 on my Mac which I paid a lot of money for. Frustrating. I only want it for games and some occasional applications, but I still need it now. Please don't advise me of workarounds and how to do it, I know that and have done it at work with lab machines, but that is not the point. The point is when are the real supported bits available and they are not.
 
AidenShaw said:
I wonder if your system guys (or anyone on your team) tried the Windows 7 "Resource Monitor". ("Task Manager" -> "Performance" -> "Resource Monitor")

It can give a lot of insight into what the system is doing, which tasks are chewing CPU, where memory is, how the network and disks are being used...

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/windows-7-resource-monitor-bigger-better-and-uncut.htm

rm_overview_1.jpg
rm_cpu_1.jpg


There's also the excellent "Procmon" utility at sysinternals (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx) which provides a realtime trace of system call activity (files/registry/...) - although it's harder to understand due to the sheer volume of data it presents.
Click to expand...

I just tried this and noticed firefox has 29 threads going on at once. That's... a lot.
 
CQd44 said:
I just tried this and noticed firefox has 29 threads going on at once. That's... a lot.
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Computer Management and Resource Analysis are two fields that Vista and 7 really expanded on compared to XP.

There are a few features I really wish Activity Monitor had that Resource Monitor does.
 
Bill Gates said:
What I would like to see is a firmware update offering UEFI 2.0+ compatibility for all 2007 and later Macs to eliminate the need for BIOS emulation altogether.
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Exactly what I'm hoping for! Get rid of this 'BIOS-compatibility-mode', add a slick (chameleon-like) bootloader, and finally make good use of the possibilities that EFI/UEFI offers.

It's probably wishfull thinking on my part. But it would explain excluding several 'older' machines from the bootcamp update, and apple needing more time to develop drivers.

Let's hope for this...
 
Eidorian said:
Computer Management and Resource Analysis are two fields that Vista and 7 really expanded on compared to XP.

There are a few features I really wish Activity Monitor had that Resource Monitor does.
Click to expand...

I agree in that front. Although doesn't Inspect process kind of give us nearly similar information?
 
MSD401 said:
complete bull... Windows 7 runs great on my late 2006 macbook pro..installed no problem... only thing odd is my apple wireless keyboard disconnects frequently when not typing... but I can live with it... I have been to lazy to search for a solution
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Just because Apple doesn't support it doesn't mean it wont work.
 
just a thought

hey, a comment back there got me thinking, does anyone around here feel that computers aren't really getting that much faster, its just that when you get a new one, its really fast, as many of you know. overtime they seem to get slower. that could be a mental thing where you just get used to the speed, but then i noticed that my 2002 iMac g4 that just got wiped clean was booting FASTER than my 3 month old macbook alu! it also opens apps (older ones, but still newer than the age of the hardware, the macbook is running stock) at around the same speed. were talking 700 mhz 256 kb VS 2000 mhz 3 mb processors not to mention all the other specs! i dunno, just a thought.
oh, and the imac listed in my tag is not the one im talkin about.
 
By small company you mean Apple with it's 19,000+ US employees? The largest tax payer in silicon valley? And realize Google and MS, and a bunch of companies are here, and Apple is much larger here than Google or MS, in terms of revenue shared with Santa Clara County.

Apple is HUGE, I didn't even add the other 15,000+ employees overseas.

str1f3 said:
Wow, you are spoiled. You expect a small company to consistently update their OS, their computers' hardware, work on a tablet, update the Apple TV, perfect the iPhone OS, and immediately support a competitor's OS when it's not even an emergency to do so? Is it that much of a pain to wait no more than two months for an update to an OS that you will barely use?

If you ever heard the stories about how hard Jobs pushes his workers, you wouldn't say something so naive.
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Before end of this year

The end of this year is coming close. Did apple itself make this promise, or was it just a rumor?
 
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