From The Register:
Apple has dropped support for Windows 7 in Boot Camp. From the article:
The Cupertino fruit factory has decided to boot old versions of Windows out of the camp, quietly not-announcing that only Windows 8 and 10 will run on the latest flavours of the dual-boot "Boot Camp" utility that ships with this year's new Macs. The new policy means that the recently-announced MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro machines won't boot into Windows 7 or prior versions.
The change emerged to the world via this post on Apple's support site, dated March 10 but largely unnoticed.
The decision is an inconvenience for sysadmins whose enterprise environments demand older browsers and therefore older versions of Windows, but no disaster because there's still the option to use a desktop virtualisation environment like Parallels Desktop, Oracle's VirtualBox or VMWare Fusion.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @06:26PM
The decision is an inconvenience for sysadmins whose enterprise environments demand older browsers and therefore older versions of Windows, but no disaster because there's still the option to use a desktop virtualisation environment like Parallels Desktop, Oracle's VirtualBox or VMWare Fusion.
If your 'enterprise environment' requires older version of IE, then you don't have much of an enterprise environment. Do your job and get your stuff to run on a modern OS. And don't come back saying "there's no budget for that"... if that is the case, well then, tough luck, you're going to have to deal with that, don't you? Your beancounters will have to bear the responsibility then!
(Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Monday March 23 2015, @06:32PM
A lot of times, you don't always have a choice. I've done work in the medical field before, where you had to use old browsers to interact with the web interfaces on equipment. To do any sort of upgrade on the devices themselves required recertification and testing from the FDA, etc; last time I was working in office (this was 2008-2009), there was an old machine running Xenix to process the reports from lab equipment.
In any environment where you fun certification requirements for one, and lots and lots of outside agencies, you frequently have to do the best you can. I suspect you'd be suprised that a large number of ATMs are still powered by OS/2 Warp, since that's what the banking industry standardized on, and now are only just starting to get replaced with Windows or eCommStation.
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @08:32PM
Agreed. Heck at Kaiser (at least at one location I was at) they use PS/2 keyboards and mice. Supposedly the reason is that they want USB ports completely disabled because they don't want anyone being able to use a USB flash drive to pull sensitive data off a computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:22AM
What's wrong with PS/2?
Other than "we stopped bothering to put it on new PCs" is there anything technically bad about it?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:45PM
Write a mediating server that translates the old web interface to a new web interface? How hard can it be? I certainly cannot imagine it being harder than, say, maintaining cruddy legacy PHP.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:27PM
It means hiring a new dev who knows the new technology and hence gets paid more than a temp, putting a QA resource for complete testing, releasing new web in beta, getting customers to sign-up for this beta by probably giving discount rates and still maintaining the old web for big client who won't change.
Too much work if you ask me. Better to let the market develop and have a competitor which can then be acquired.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NCommander on Monday March 23 2015, @06:33PM
Oh, and as additional note, this site is powered by the truly antique Apache 1.3. It took considerable effort to migrate it to a more modern backend, and we still don't have all the bugs out of it.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @06:35PM
But this isn't an enterprise with disaster recovery and continuity planning.
If your livelihood and survival depends on using IE 6, I would say you have some deeper-seated issues.
It's ok if your boss gives you no budget, but then it's on his head (or whoever else *higher* up he can toss it).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday March 23 2015, @08:05PM
If your livelihood and survival depends on using IE 6, I would say you have some deeper-seated issues.
It's ok if your boss gives you no budget, but then it's on his head (or whoever else *higher* up he can toss it).
You obviously don't work for any kind of big company, do you?
They have no choice. They have various big-$$$ applications which only work on IE6. They can't upgrade because the vendor hasn't made a newer version, or worse, the vendor has disappeared.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 24 2015, @09:25AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:03PM
Samsung?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:20PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by MostCynical on Monday March 23 2015, @09:56PM
No one in management has ever been held responsible for security or safety issues related to software or hardware.
In most medical facilities, there IS NO MONEY.
Any PC is needed, long after it would have been retired in "private" enterprise, and the millions required for replacement PCs, with OSes, special apps, ethernet configuations, etc etc are just not available.
Given the choice of more nurses, surgical equipment and many other things on which hospitals can spend money, PCs, servers, and applications are so far down the list of priorites it just doesn't happen - although sometimes, state-level projects for major upgrades DO include a bit for PC replacment (usually, this means 'additional', as the old ones are needed - many times, a doctor will have to wait until well after their shift was die to end to get access to a PC to write letters, refferals, etc)
Unless youmhave worked in oublic health, youmdon't get how little money there is, and how many things the are that are more important than IT infrastructure.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @11:04PM
Unless youmhave worked in oublic health, youmdon't get how little money there is, and how many things the are that are more important than IT infrastructure.
I can buy the argument that IT infrastructure is far down the list, but I don't buy the argument of "how little money there is".
(Score: 1) by MostCynical on Monday March 23 2015, @11:32PM
Pay salaries
Pay for equipment ("essential" stuff, like bandages, etc)
Pay for electricity, water, gas
Pay for other services, (dentists making dentures, etc)
Lots of money has gone now. No doubt, this stuff is very expensive.
There is not enough money for all this. We need more doctors, nurses, etc.
So there is very little money *left over*
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Monday March 23 2015, @06:38PM
Suuuure... Reality check: My multi-billion-dollar company just upgraded the Oracle system that had us stuck at IE 8 (internally only, at least). Last month.
Apparently, it's easier to design 20/16nm chips than to upgrade a sales system. R&D is also a better place to invest an 8-figure sum.
> Do your job and get your stuff to run on a modern OS.
We accept donations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @06:40PM
Do you take dogecoin?
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:02PM
Seriously?
I've got an old 24 port smart switch here that only works with Win 98 for its web interface (were all the cool stuff can be done). The only other way to access it is via its serial port (no USB dongle has worked so far, so I must do it via a real RS-232 port) And that's for basic stuff like login/password, IP Range and such.
Yes, it's a 3COM. No, Haven't found a more recent firmware.
I'm only playing with it, but what about the CNC machines? the million dollar 6-color press? Medical equipement (there's a reason why Intel manufactured 486 CPUs in 2007, with old processes and masks. CERTIFICATION.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Monday March 23 2015, @06:35PM
This is a premature move as Windows 7 is still in long term support until 2020, five years from now. And even though Windows 10 is looking to become a worthy successor, I highly doubt it will usurp existing Windows 7 installs overnight. Same as with XP. The only scenario would be PC enthusiasts who will want the latest version of Windows for whatever shiny new features it has.
The upgrade to 10 is going to be free for 7 and 8/8.1 users but not corporate/commercial entities (I assume those with Volume licensing agreements) . IT shops, from large to small will not move for a few years.
Though, in the end it's easier to run Windows in a virtual machine and call it a day. So this might not be a big deal for many. The web dev's I know all run 7 and even XP in VM's for testing. No one I know dual boots unless there is some hardware issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @06:45PM
Here's likely the Apple justification: You likely need to buy a copy of the OS to put it on a new computer. You cannot buy a copy of Win7 anymore. Might as well only restrict it on new machines to what's available at the moment.
I just got a Mac (Mid 2014) about a week and a half ago. I dual boot Windows 8 on it for a couple different games that don't run on OSX, but that's my only real use case for Windows on that box. Other than that, it's strictly for development.
-dyingtolive (AC because I can't seem to log in today.)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @08:48PM
-dyingtolive (AC because I can't seem to log in today.)
wouldn't that make you dyingtologin ;-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Monday March 23 2015, @11:58PM
Sure you can. Just buy a copy of Windows 8 Professional and exercise the downgrade rights.
The better question is whether it would be possible to just ditch Boot Camp and just install a sane loader like GRUB that won't care what you are trying to do. And if you can't, why are you buying the sort of bad rubbish that ties you to the whims of a vendor known to be erratic in the first place? Especially in an Enterprise environment where Windows 7 is still the rule and not the exception. Seriously, you buy Apple you know you are agreeing to follow their 'vision' and not your own, or you should. After all these years it is really hard to plead ignorance so anyone should pity ya why? No, I'm all Mr. T and not pitying the fools.
(Score: 1) by basicbasicbasic on Monday March 23 2015, @08:28PM
..and so very much an Apple move. For whatever reason they have a love of forcing users away from older technologies as fast as they can, way before other PC manufacturers do it - like getting rid of "legacy ports" upon their computers. I suppose because they no longer to have spend a disproportionate amount of money on the small percentage of users who use/rely on those technologies.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 23 2015, @11:03PM
> ..and so very much an Apple move.
And one which I'm sure has MS executives dancing on their boardroom table. They're encouraging people to give money to the opposition?
Has there been some dodgy dealings, and Apple/Microsoft are like the depublicrat party now? If the next generation of Windows Phone (spit!) comes only with an iTunes client and no other music sources, I'll start to get very suspicious.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday March 23 2015, @11:49PM
Though, in the end it's easier to run Windows in a virtual machine and call it a day.
Agreed.
The problem with Win 7 in a VM is its size. It wants 16 Gig for a minimalist install. It takes a week just to read in the virtual machine.
Web Devs just need to run a late-ish model Windows browser, just to make sure all that code they cut on Apple really works, because creative people all use apple, don'tch know.
At my day job, some of us are still cutting code for Windows machines, and we need the full Windows API environment available. Still preferring the safety, and recovery capabilities of a VM, we tend to run on Linux with a boat load of memory and one or more VMs running all the time. Windows 8 in a VM is also a hog, but nobody will stay in Windows 8 once 10 comes out.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:36AM
You may need a faster computer or have the VM running off an SSD. 16 GB isn't really that big, even on a modern SSD. My Windows VM and its snapshots weigh in at 36 GB, there's plenty of room for my other work files and development VMs... I realize now you probably consider it's big because of how much data has to be read from it in order to boot up, but that's the problem with spinning hard drives, and a further argument for going SSD.
I have a Windows 7 VM with different IE versions (8 to 11) in separate snapshots. The VM boots and I'm at the Windows desktop in 20 seconds, so I have zero qualms shutting it down and switching to another IE version snapshot while testing.
That's after the 5 Linux server VMs are already up and running.
This is on a 2013 Macbook Pro, with a PCIe SSD that reads and writes at 700 MB/s. My colleague has an MBP with an even faster drive, he often runs up to 10 Linux VMs. System responsiveness and task switching is naturally a bit slower for him, since Apple maxed out its MBPs at 16 GB of RAM, and even a quad-core will struggle to effectively run 10 virtual + 1 real OS.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:00AM
This is on a 2013 Macbook Pro, with a PCIe SSD that reads and writes at 700 MB/s.
Admittedly, my host hardware is a little long in the tooth.
I've been avoiding SSDs, waiting for better prices bigger sizes and longer longevity. The only one I've ever used in a Windows Surface Pro tablet that my work insisted I needed, and I can't say as I've had any problems with the SSD.
Most of my VMs are on spinning rust.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:46AM
Samsung 840 Pro SSDs come with a 5 year warranty: http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/memory-cards-hdd-odd/ssd/840-pro/MZ-7PD512BW [samsung.com]
Prices are getting pretty reasonable.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:11PM
Is there anything you have to do different when installing your base OS on these drives?
In my case t would be OpenSuse 13.2, (this week anyway).
In the past I seem to recall some settings that needed to be different for SSD drives to keep the OS from wreaking the drive with certain operations.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:56PM
I assume you mean TRIM [wikipedia.org]. This is becoming less relevant as the SSDs handle most of this garbage collection internally these days. Here's a good article discussing the implications, even if it's for Arch not openSuSE and even if it's not 100% up to date: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives#Tips_for_Maximizing_SSD_Performance [archlinux.org]
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:28AM
The problem with Win 7 in a VM is its size. It wants 16 Gig for a minimalist install. It takes a week just to read in the virtual machine.
Compared with...? Boot Camp/dual boot is far less space efficient because you have to create a fixed-sized partition with enough headroom from day one, dedicated to Windows, which is a pain to expand or shrink. The VM uses a regular file which grows as needed and can be moved to and from external storage if needed.
Speed-wise, I'm running Win 7 using Parallels on a 2011 MBP 17" with a SSD - about 15 seconds to boot to the login prompt, then another 5 until the spinner stops. Then, once it is booted, you can use the VM's suspend/resume to restart it in a few seconds. The only problem with Windows on a Mac (VM or dual boot) is that if you use it infrequently, you may then have to wait while Windows downloads three months worth of critical security updates...
Then, there's all the other advantages of VMs for development & testing e.g. snapshot & restore and the ability to access websites on a development server running on the host machine or a Linux VM without exposing anything to the external network. Even if you have a Windows PC, you'll probably end up using VMs for testing, anyway.
No, with the current 'state of the art' for virtualization, the only reason for using Boot Camp is if you need 'bare metal' speed and resources for something like games or high-end graphics apps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @06:54PM
Just curious to what degree it's "not supported". Did they just stop providing Win7 drivers, or did they remove the legacy BIOS boot module from their EFI firmware? If the later, would it be possible to write a generic BIOS compatibility module for EFI?
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday March 23 2015, @10:53PM
Probably drivers, for everything else, you can also use rEFInd [rodsbooks.com] the continuation of the rEFIt boot manager.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Monday March 23 2015, @06:57PM
The decision is an inconvenience for sysadmins whose enterprise environments demand older browsers and therefore older versions of Windows, but no disaster because there's still the option to use a desktop virtualisation environment like Parallels Desktop, Oracle's VirtualBox or VMWare Fusion.
So, no different from buying a brand new Windows machine, then :-)
NB: For the non Apple-ites: Bootcamp is a set of point-n-drool tools and drivers that make it easy to set up a Mac to dual-boot Windows and OS X, which was otherwise complicated in the past because of Mac's early adoption of EFI firmware (which used a BIOS emulation module to run Windows) and GUID disc partitioning. Once that's done, Windows runs natively on the Mac - not virtualised. Scuttlebutt is that now Windows supports UEFI, Apple can drop the EFI/BIOS emulation module.
Virtualisation is probably the best solution to running legacy business software, anyway, because it lets you inter-work with Mac software (Parallels and VMWare make a good effort at letting Windows and OS X apps share files and the desktop) - you only really need Bootcamp if you have to have 'bare metal' performance to run the latest games or serious graphics software under Windows.
Odds are someone will come up with instructions for dual-booting Win7 without bootcamp (unless there's some vital components that lack Win7 drivers - the fancy new trackpads maybe) - Apple only released bootcamp after some hackers (old meaning) worked out how to run Windows XP on the early Intel Macs.
(Score: 2) by snick on Monday March 23 2015, @07:12PM
I'm sure some folks like it, but I never understood the value of bootcamp.
Routinely running a Windows OS on Mac HW seems like the most expensive way possible to get a mediocre result.
Booting back and forth between OSX and Windows would be painful beyond belief. (I did dual boot with windows/linux years ago I constantly wanted something on the other OS)
I currently use native OSX applications whenever possible, VMWare (painful enough) when I really need windows/linux, and (thankfully) don't need to do anything that VMWare can't handle ... and yes, I run hyper-v and haxm inside of VMs. They work fine, thank you very much. There are some (but not all that many) things that absolutely, positively have to run native, and I don't need any of them.
If I did, I'd get a second laptop.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday March 23 2015, @07:57PM
It lets people run one OS for work(-ish) and one for games.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:07PM
The Mac gaming situation has drastically improved over the last few years, I think mainly since Valve released the native Steam client. It's actually good enough now that I recently ditched my Boot Camp partition when I found out that Torchlight 2 had got a native Mac client release.
On Raptr's Feb 2015 list of PC games by hours played, [statista.com] 7 of the top 10 have native Mac clients - League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DOTA 2, CS:GO, Diablo 3, Minecraft and Hearthstone. They account for 48.26% of the total time spent on PC games by Raptr users. Any further down the list and Mac support drops off very quickly, but now the requirement for a boot camp partition to game on a Mac now depends on the selection of games you want to play, not simply the fact you want to play at all.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:43PM
Nice, same for Linux. Things are a *lot* better than they used to be. There are still a lot of games that only support Windows though.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:52PM
I am strongly considering picking up an OS-less gaming laptop (liking the look of Schenker's recently released A305 [mysn.co.uk]) with Linux (thinking either vanilla Ubuntu or Mint Cinnamon) for everyday use and relegating my Mac to video-editing duties only. If the Steam Controller [steampowered.com] works out well when it finally comes out, I will probably build a Steambox as well.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday March 25 2015, @01:14AM
I have a System76 Bonobo that makes both a great dev laptop a a very good gaming laptop. Little bit of a Linux premium, but a nice latop nonetheless.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @07:31PM
7 is so last decade, and nowhere near as fruity as the fruit-flavored rock-candy experience that is 8.1
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday March 23 2015, @10:49PM
It's also obsolete [youtube.com].
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday March 23 2015, @07:48PM
Did Apple do this to avoid having to write Windows drivers for their newer models? Is it even possible to shoehorn in Windows 8.1 drivers in Windows 7?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday March 23 2015, @08:43PM
In most cases, the answer is no. Sometimes you find a driver that will work on 7, but it's not common.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti