UEFI or old style EFI on new MBP's (2011)

Testing it with Windows 7 DVD would work, but you need to make sure that it is the 64-bit version. Windows supported UEFI starting with Vista SP1; however, 32-bit versions do not support it.

From what I have read in blogs, some people tried it on older MBP's. You need to make sure that Boot Camp is not enabled (if it is, it will do a BIOS boot for anything other than Mac OS X). Once that is set, hold down Option key when booting, along with Macintosh HD it is supposed to show you 2 additional options: Windows and Windows EFI boot. The ones who tried it on older MBP's said that it started booting but froze somewhere through the process, probably due to the fact that EFI is older version (1.x). So my guess is that if UEFI is there, boot will go through and you should get to the part where Windows setup asks you what partition/drive you want to install Windows on.

Since no one has responded, I am seriously contemplating going to one of Apple stores and testing this theory (of course, this will get me kicked out if they catch me). I'm not planning to format the store machines with Windows though, if I get to drive selection screen, I will just cancel out, reboot it back to OS X and might just buy it.

That truly *****. Not sure what exactly you mean by "Mac hardware does not conform to UEFI standards". I always thought that for all intents and purposes, the latest Macs are Intel machines. Of course, Apple customizes EFI with their branding/logos, etc. as well as includes some kind of Fritz Chip/TPM module that ID's them as Macs. This is a mechanism that OS X uses to prevent you from booting/installing it on non-Macs. Every time it boots, it looks for that module, and if it doesn't find it, it will give you an error and refuse to go forward.

With that in mind, does anyone know if Boot Camp included with new MBP's includes AHCI support. Once again, I have a reason for asking that. Previously, BC supported Windows XP, so my guess was that disabling AHCI was done to maintain compatibility as XP does not support it out of the box. There was a way to enable it, either via F6 during setup and providing a disk or installing it in legacy IDE mode, hacking registry and then enabling AHCI mode. However, this would be way too complicated for regular Joe Schmoes, so I see a reason why Apple left AHCI out.

However, as I was reading support articles for new MBP's, I've noticed that Apple dropped BC support for XP. Vista (and obviously 7) detect and support AHCI devices right out of the box, so with that in mind I am wondering if Boot Camp keeps AHCI enabled on new MBP's given that they no longer have to worry about XP users. If anyone owns a new MBP and can check that, that would be greatly appreciated.