Windows On Mac?1!?!!111

[kaankayis]

I was contemplating on whether or not I should use Windows 10 using Boot Camp on a Mac. I just wanted to know if anyone else had done this, and if it had ran stably. Also, how were your CPU temps/usage percentages, battery. etc.

 

Also, enjoy the picture of Dennis. For good luck.

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

There is nothing inherently unstable or bad about running Windows 10 on Bootcamp other than having to use Windows. I have installed Windows 10 on my 2016 MacBook Pro, mostly for games. I've only had to use it for a specific application that didn't have a Mac version once. 

 

The only stability issues you will face are from Windows itself. Also, if your Mac is a laptop with a dGPU, Windows will only use that GPU, so your battery life would be worse than in macOS, since it can dynamically switch while Windows cannot. 

[Sorenson]

I've ran windows on a couple different macs and haven't really had many issues with it. It doesn't seem to like the high resolutions on the 5k iMacs but on MacBook pros its great. My 2011 MacBook pro was my main gaming machine all the way through college thanks to bootcamp. If you aren't looking to game and have one of the newer 6 cores Macs you might want to try parallels instead. 

[DeaconFrost]

One of our development teams mandates MacBook Pros running Windows 10.  Don't ask, but it makes absolutely no sense and is a complete waste of money, given they don't ever log in to OSX.  That being said, it works perfectly fine.  

[NitroUK]

There is nothing inherently unstable or unsupported about running Windows on a Mac. Apple has even developed a compatibility layer for Windows (which can be accessed through Bootcamp) to ensure that Windows runs smoothly.

[Donut417]

On 7/31/2019 at 10:50 PM, kaankayis said:

and if it had ran stably

It will run. How stable it will be depends on Microsoft and their lack of QA on their updates. 

[rikitikitavi]

On 8/1/2019 at 10:15 AM, DeaconFrost said:

One of our development teams mandates MacBook Pros running Windows 10.  Don't ask, but it makes absolutely no sense and is a complete waste of money, given they don't ever log in to OSX.  That being said, it works perfectly fine.  

I have to ask why - I need to know whats the deal with that

[rikitikitavi]

Have been running windows in bootcamp for years (on 3 different gens of MBPs), mainly for gaming, sometimes for visual studio.

Speaking about mac-specific experience: expect it to run hot, and forget about good battery life. Even light browsing/coding wont give you the battery life you'll get in macOS.

Unless you put it in the most battery-saving mode you can configure, then... then the performance plummets to barely usable (in my case with visual studio).

Balanced battery mode would give me no more than ~3h with visual studio, while lasting ~5h of similar work in macOS.

 

Recently tried trial of Parallels 14 with win10, performance was very weak, while troubleshooting, found out that the current version of parallels has plenty of bad feedback for this issue.

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, rikitikitavi said:

trial of Parallels 14 with win10, performance was very weak

From what little reading I have done on Parallels. It seems its just VM software, so I would expect performance not to be stellar. 

[rikitikitavi]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

From what little reading I have done on Parallels. It seems its just VM software, so I would expect performance not to be stellar. 

True, it won't be stellar, but it can be decent or even good. I had used older versions to play not graphically demanding games and everything worked fine and snappy. It vm'ed xp, 7, 8.1 and 10 good enough. Just youtube parallels reviews to check the performance on such tasks, even gaming. One dude was playing Arkham City and some version of Assassins Creed on vm there...

[GoodBytes]

On 7/31/2019 at 10:58 PM, DrMacintosh said:

The only stability issues you will face are from Windows itself. Also, if your Mac is a laptop with a dGPU, Windows will only use that GPU, so your battery life would be worse than in macOS, since it can dynamically switch while Windows cannot. 

Incorrect. Apple makes Windows drivers, and they have every reason to offer an inferior experience under Windows as a result, including stability issues.

It has been more than once, where Mac user, running Windows, have been blocked from upgrading to the latest version (or enjoy a new release of Windows 10), because Apple doesn't have the drivers, or the drivers are are of inferior quality (system stability issues, or hardware not working right to a point of inability to actually enjoy the system running Windows).

 

You may be able to use non-Apple drivers for a superior OS experience, but depending on the system and hardware, you may have things not working like for example brightness control, or hotkeys from the keyboard.

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

It has been more than once, where Mac user, running Windows 10, have been blocked from upgrading to the latest version (or enjoy a new release of Windows), because Apple doesn't have the drivers, or the drivers are are of inferior quality for the same hardware with official non-Apple drivers.

Provide an example of where a Mac on the supported list for Bootcamp w/ Windows 10 has been prevented from updating to a new version of Windows 10. (I’ll save you the trouble now by telling you that you won’t be able to)

 

All Macs from 2012 and up are fully capable of running the latest build of Windows 10. 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468

 

Driver experience and driver stability are completely different things. Apple provides worse drivers for Windows 10, true, but they are far from unstable. You are the one who is incorrect. 

[GoodBytes]

4 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Provide an example of where a Mac on the supported list for Bootcamp w/ Windows 10 has been prevented from updating to a new version of Windows 10. (I’ll save you the trouble now by telling you that you won’t be able to)

- https://www.windowscentral.com/older-macs-are-unable-upgrade-windows-10-version-1903-least-now

And instead of fixing it, t his is Apple decision:

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/07/03/microsoft-confirms-windows-10-update-block-for-apple-mac-users/#bcdff627e878

Apple is forcing Mac users to buy newer system despite the OS being fully capable for the hardware.

 

When Windows 10 was released, Mac users had to wait for months before Apple releases reliable drivers for it, while  the hardware manufactures that Apple uses in their system, on the Windows side, where well ready.

Similar story as above:

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-windows-10-in-boot-camp-on-unsupported-macs/

 

 

4 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Driver experience and driver stability are completely different things. Apple provides worse drivers for Windows 10, true, but they are far from unstable. You are the one who is incorrect. 

Yet you talk about stability issue on your Mac, while you have none on reality.

 

[DrMacintosh]

27 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Apple is forcing Mac users to buy newer system despite the OS being fully capable for the hardware.

Incorrect. To quote your article:

Quote

Users trying to update certain Mac devices to the latest version of Windows 10 might run into compatibility updates (via WindowsLatest). Specifically, Mac devices from prior to 2012 may run into this issue.

As you can see, the issue only exists for devices from prior to 2012. Apple never supported running Windows 10 on Macs from before 2012! 2012 was 7 years ago.

 

30 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Yet you talk about stability issue on your Mac, while you have none on reality.

Is that a sentence? This doesn’t make any sense. 

[GoodBytes]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Incorrect. To quote your article:

As you can see, the issue only exists for devices from prior to 2012. Apple never supported running Windows 10 on Macs from before 2012! 2012 was 7 years ago.

And yet a 2005 PC (non-Apple) can perfectly run Windows 10

 

 

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Is that a sentence? This doesn’t make any sense. 

It makes perfect sense. You mention that you have stability issues on your Windows 10, yet you do not have stability issues under Windows 10.

 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

And yet a 2005 PC (non-Apple) can perfectly run Windows 10

A 2005 PC was designed with the express intention of running Windows. A 2005 Mac was not. The fact that it even ran Windows at some point in time was a courtesy to the consumer that Apple could have simply decided not to do. 

 

3 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

It makes perfect sense. You mention that you have stability issues on your Windows 10, yet you do not have stability issues under Windows 10.

That still is very difficult to read. I have problems in Windows 10 constantly regardless of platform. But those problems never have anything to do with the drivers that Apple provides to Macs running Bootcamp. 

[GoodBytes]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

A 2005 PC was designed with the express intention of running Windows. A 2005 Mac was not. The fact that it even ran Windows at some point in time was a courtesy to the consumer that Apple could have simply decided not to do. 

Well, technically it would be 2006 at the very least, as in 2005 Apple was not using Intel CPU, of course but let's say 2006 PC to bring things on the same playing field.

Apple Mac hardware is the same on Apple than it is on PC. It may have added stuff, but nothing custom to my knowledge. And these old hardware can run Windows 10 just fine. Sure performance might get hit, and some upgrade might, maybe, be needed all depending on the initial specs of the system, and that is, if you seek a certain level of experience, but regardless it works, even despite not having official Windows 10 certified drivers due to the hardware age.

 

Yet, Apple picks a date, and decides to block those system. That means, that next year or so, they will move the date to 2013, then 2014 macs and so on. And as previously mentioned, Apple is slow to open the doors for support. let alone proper ones.

 

Anyway, the point still stand, that you are at the merci of Apple, and your experience is based on Apple control. Same if they make crappy unoptimized drivers, then sorry, you're performance will be lackluster, it's not Windows fault here, when the same hardware on a PC side doesn't have the same issue.

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

10 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

That means, that next year or so, they will move the date to 2013, then 2014 macs and so on.

They haven’t moved the support date since 2012 to present. Don’t see why that would suddenly change. Also that’s not how drivers work. Something would have to fundamentally change in Windows 10 for a 2012 iMac or MacBook to stop working properly. 

[Zando_]

47 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

A 2005 PC was designed with the express intention of running Windows. A 2005 Mac was not. The fact that it even ran Windows at some point in time was a courtesy to the consumer that Apple could have simply decided not to do. 

2005 macs ran PowerPC chips too lmao. Ofc they can't run windows, it was never built for that platform. I think the Intel Macs came around 2007-2008? 

[DrMacintosh]

26 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

2005 macs ran PowerPC chips too lmao

Yeah, they did. That was my bad. The rest of what I said is still correct though. 

[Zando_]

9 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yeah, they did. That was my bad. The rest of what I said is still correct though. 

Yeah my point was yet more proof that the 2005 macs were specifically designed to not run Windows. 

 

56 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Yet, Apple picks a date, and decides to block those system. That means, that next year or so, they will move the date to 2013, then 2014 macs and so on. And as previously mentioned, Apple is slow to open the doors for support. let alone proper ones.

Not really? Apple tends to drop support for devices when they don't have certain features (like dropping iOS devices older than the 5S because iOS is now 64-bit only, or dropping 2011 Macs because they don't have hardware features needed for some stuff macOS does). So long as the 2012 devices still support basic macOS features I don't see Apple randomly cutting them off. Hell they've pushed out iOS updates for iOS 6, 9, and ofc the current 12 for some security or GPS issues or something, they do a good job of supporting their devices for a long time. You seem to forget something: 

 

Microsoft and Windows do not support any actual devices other than the Surface lineup that they build and sell.

 

Sure your PC from 2005 can run Windows 10 (assuming you either stick with 4GB RAM and run 32-bit windows 10 with an SSD so it isn't bog slow, or hope your platform supports at least 8GB RAM so you can have a decent experience with 64-bit), but it's not Microsoft making that happen, they just have a basic set of features needed for their OS and if the hardware can do that then you can run Windows. Microsoft isn't building a specific OS for a set of custom hardware configs. 

56 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Anyway, the point still stand, that you are at the merci of Apple, and your experience is based on Apple control. Same if they make crappy unoptimized drivers, then sorry, you're performance will be lackluster, it's not Windows fault here, when the same hardware on a PC side doesn't have the same issue.

IIRC Apple actually cut ties with Nvidia because Nvidia's drivers were crappy and Apple wanted to make good custom ones but weren't allowed to. 

56 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Well, technically it would be 2006 at the very least, as in 2005 Apple was not using Intel CPU, of course but let's say 2006 PC to bring things on the same playing field.

Apple Mac hardware is the same on Apple than it is on PC. It may have added stuff, but nothing custom to my knowledge. And these old hardware can run Windows 10 just fine. Sure performance might get hit, and some upgrade might, maybe, be needed all depending on the initial specs of the system, and that is, if you seek a certain level of experience, but regardless it works, even despite not having official Windows 10 certified drivers due to the hardware age.

Yes but also no. Macs have a custom UEFI/BIOS thingie that isn't standard like normal PCs and so there's work they have to do to make Windows run properly with that. They're running their own mobos with standard hardware put on but then their own firmware and SMC and all that. For newer Macs, they do have custom SSDs that aren't used on anything else to my knowledge (essentially a differently keyed NVMe SSD), so they do indeed have custom hardware. 

I have installed some normal Windows drivers on my bootcamp install when I ran that so it seems to work fine?