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Boot Camp 4.0 for Mac OS X Only Works With Windows 7

Aug. 2, 2011 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Tipped off by a CNET blog post, I see that the latest version of Apple's Boot Camp solution, which lets you dual boot a Mac between Mac OS X and Windows, now only works with Windows 7. Previous versions also supported Windows XP and Vista.

According to an Apple support document, Boot Camp 4.0 works with Mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7 (Lion), and it comes with Lion. But on the Windows side, you can now only use an "authentic, single, full-installation, 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate."

As with previous versions of Boot Camp, the new version comes with the drivers needed to get Windows fully working on your Mac, and newer drivers are periodically made available for downloading as part of the setup process.

I guess the bigger question here is, what, if any, improvements does Boot Camp 4.0 offer over previous versions? Does it perform better, offer better Windows drivers? Apple's list of 250 new features for Lion doesn't even mention Boot Camp, so it's hard to say.

Discuss this Article 3

Waethorn
on Aug 2, 2011
Re: Windows 7 only Not unexpected. Apple, like many other companies, has to have drivers for their hardware, and they're not going to support older versions of Windows that no longer have mainstream support (or will end in 8 months in the case of Vista). They are taking the approach that most OEM's are taking, in that they are supporting what Microsoft allows to be preinstalled on the system. Most OEM's are moving this way, but the difference is that some of the component manufacturers are still producing drivers for their older parts.
MLevin
on Aug 3, 2011
That's nothing, compared to vSphere not supporting Windows 2000. Sort of defeats the purpose...
pjsercel
on Aug 4, 2011
This stands to reason. Apple doesn't like to be hampered by legacy hardware or software. They've structured their business model to allow them to keep moving forward fast. It's important to note, however, that Boot Camp is only one solution for running Windows on a Mac. It does allow Windows to run on the bare metal, but it is a dual boot solution. You either have to run Windows 7 or Mac OS X, they don't run concurrently. for most folks, a better solution is Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion, which let you run Windows virtualized in your MAC OS X session. Parallels and Fusion support all versions of Windows back to Windows 3.11, a large number of Linux distributions, and Mac OS X server versions 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7.

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