If you just bought a brand-new MacBook laptop, and you loathe everything about Windows 8—but still need to run a Windows operating system on your MacBook for some reason—then we have a bit of bad news for you. According to the latest support page updates from Apple, owners of its newly refreshed MacBook Pro and Macbook Air laptops will be unable to run anything butWindows 8 via their laptops’ Boot Camp feature.
That means, of course, that you’re stuck with Microsoft’s divisive user interface for Windows 8—that split between its touch-friendly, blocky Start Screen and the common Windows desktop you’re probably used to by now. And if Windows 8 has drawn just too deep of a line in the sand for you to feel comfortable crossing, you’ll just have to wait until Windows 10, which should hopefully work just fine on your new laptop’s Boot Camp.
We say hopefully, for Apple hasn’t mentioned Windows 10 on any of its support pages for Boot Camp, but it only stands to reason that Applewould have way of supporting this summer’s big operating system release on its latest laptops. If you’d like to give it a whirl on your new laptop, you can always try installing the Windows 10 preview using Boot Camp Assistant to get an idea of how it might go.
And, keep in mind, those who own a copy of Windows 7 or 8 will be able to upgrade to a free version of Windows 10 anyway, so Apple’s restriction on Boot Camp for Windows 7 will be a moot point in just a few months. At least, as long as you don’t mind the visual differences between Windows 7 and Windows 10.
Even though Windows 7 was released in 2009, the latest figures fromStatCounter still have it as the most popular desktop operating system worldwide by a considerable margin over its peers. According to the site’s figures, Windows 7’s adoption rate sits at 54.1 percent as of February of this year. StatCounter splits Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (with adoption rates of 4.1 and 14.8 percent, respectively), but they’re still not even half of Windows 7’s share when combined.
