Apple must upgrade Boot Camp to support Windows 7

Promises update by year's end for Snow Leopard, abandons nine older Macs

By Gregg Keizer

October 22, 2009 03:46 PM ET

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Computerworld - Apple today announced that it will update its Boot Camp utility before the end of the year to support Microsoft's just-launched Windows 7.

In a short support document posted to the Apple site, the company said it would soon revise Boot Camp, a utility that lets users run Windows and its applications in a separate disk partition on an Intel-based Mac.

"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 document said. "This support will require a software update to Boot Camp."

The document also listed nine older iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro models that will not be able to run Windows 7 in Boot Camp. Although all the machines use an Intel processor, Apple did not elaborate on why they would not support Microsoft's new operating system.

On the list were four iMacs, including the 17-in. and 20-in. models from 2006; four MacBook Pros, including 15-in. and 17-in. notebooks released that same year; and the mid-2006 Mac Pro workstation powered by an Intel Xeon Dual-core running at 2.66GHz or 3GHz.

Owners of those machines have an alternative to Boot Camp in VMware's Fusion 3.0, the virtualization technology set to launch Oct. 27. Fusion 3.0, works on any Intel-based Mac, according to VMware.

Fusion 3.0 will run all editions of Windows 7, including Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. It requires an Intel Mac with Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later, or Snow Leopard, also known as Mac OS X 10.6.

Apple did not set a ship date for the Boot Camp update.

Read more about macintoshes in Computerworld's Macintoshes Knowledge Center.

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