Apple is dropping Boot Camp support for Windows 7.

[RampantAndroid]

I think you could do that, but my understanding has always been that you need a minimal OSX install if you ever want to get any firmware updates for the machine. I looked into doing that on my Mac about a year ago (with Linux rather than OSX) and it just didn't seem like a great idea because I would be stuck at my current firmware level.

Not sure if he meant this, but back before Win8 was "supported" you could set up the partition in OSX, skip making the USB key and reboot. All you needed was the USB key with the Win8 installer on it. One wonders if the same can be done in reverse. Fool it into thinking you have Win8 to install, reboot and let the bios just go into the Win7 installer. That way you get Win7 (assuming it works hardware wise) and OSX on the drive.

 

[accguy9009]

No, I wouldn't consider Mac Pros to be consumer devices. I do think you will see Apple follow this same path whenever the newest consumer Macs are released however. The Mac Pro just happens to be the first device with newer hardware that would have required Apple's engineers to think about Windows 7 driver support. I imagine the number of people that actually need to boot their Mac Pros into Windows 7 (as opposed to running a VM for example) is probably such a small number that it really isn't much of an issue. In these days of powerful machines and virtualization, running a dual boot on such a machine seems like a rather tedious solution.

I happen to agree wholeheartedly. Those wanting/needing to run Win 7 on these Mac Pros will do so without Boot Camp

 

[Childs]

No, I wouldn't consider Mac Pros to be consumer devices. I do think you will see Apple follow this same path whenever the newest consumer Macs are released however. The Mac Pro just happens to be the first device with newer hardware that would have required Apple's engineers to think about Windows 7 driver support. I imagine the number of people that actually need to boot their Mac Pros into Windows 7 (as opposed to running a VM for example) is probably such a small number that it really isn't much of an issue. In these days of powerful machines and virtualization, running a dual boot on such a machine seems like a rather tedious solution.

The only people I know who use Boot Camp do it for games.

 

[JAG87]

The only people I know who use Boot Camp do it for games.

Exactly, which is why running Win 7 doesn't make any sense since Win 8 is better for gaming. Those who need old operating systems are better off with VMs.

 

[RampantAndroid]

The only people I know who use Boot Camp do it for games.

I only boot Windows on my macbook to get to things like Visual Studio and my corporation's VPN client that requires authentication - neither of those work on OSX for me. XCode is lightyears behind VS.

Moreover, you probably shouldn't be buying the mac pro for gaming...those are fire pro cards.

 

[Rakehellion]

The GPUs in the Mac Pro are great for games.

 

[Childs]

I only boot Windows on my macbook to get to things like Visual Studio and my corporation's VPN client that requires authentication - neither of those work on OSX for me. XCode is lightyears behind VS.

Moreover, you probably shouldn't be buying the mac pro for gaming...those are fire pro cards.

Its not that they are buying Macs for games, but they have given up their PC gaming machines in favor of simply using just their Macs and using Boot Camp to game here and there. 90% of the time they use their Macs as Macs.