Curious about Native Windows on a Mac

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Level 1

8 points

Curious about Native Windows on a Mac

I ran across someone who claimed to have installed Windows directly on a Mac fairly recently. They were insistent that Boot camp was not used. Never having heard of this I did a little searching and found that this indeed has been done going back before 2010. What seems really odd is that it looks like a pain to accomplish and the result is that not everything on the computer works (camera) and it is a dead end in terms of firmware updates to the mac. None of the posts mention why someone might want to do this. In 2009 a guy put up a fairly length discussion of using UEFI https://darobins.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/native-uefi-windows-7-boot-on-mac-mini / Searches of later UEFI versions seem to indicated that some of the obstacles have been overcome.

Here is my question.

Why would someone want to do this? Better performance? Faster boot times? Greater utility with Windows software?

Another question.

Is there something other than UEFI that would do a better job?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), Win 7 running on BootCamp and vmFus

Posted on Jan 16, 2015 2:43 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Jan 16, 2015 2:54 PM in response to pamela.parks

There is no logic behind it other than a few people just like the looks of the Mac better than anything else. Performance-wise there is no difference between the Mac's hardware and that of its contemporaries similar equipped. In fact the non-Apple hardware is usually less expensive. Personally, I don't get it.

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Answer 2

Rudegar

Level 10

180,534 points

Jan 16, 2015 3:37 PM in response to pamela.parks

bootcamp is not an emulation or something running under mac os at all one can install bootcamp and then remove all osx from the mac bootcamp is 100% native running directly on the hardware like any windows build computer

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Jan 16, 2015 3:43 PM in response to Rudegar

Boot Camp isn't really necessary. You can boot the computer from a Windows installer DVD. You can even do the same with Linux. The only really problem comes with the drivers, so you still need to install the Windows Driver package from Apple, but then that's not technically a part of Boot Camp.

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 16, 2015 4:00 PM in response to pamela.parks

Bootcamp with a Hybrid MBR has very severe limitations, but was a good solution till UEFI was finally implemented on Late 2013+ Macs.

UEFI Windows uses a GPT disk, so no MBR, and hence no partition resizing issues. MBR limits the disks to 2TB. GPT imposes no such limitation. Bootcamp uses a CSM-BIOS layer, which is an emulation for support of legacy BIOS systems, and is slower than UEFI.

BC drivers, as Kappy says, are separate from the Bootcamp Assistant software. BCA has it's own limitations in terms of partitioning. Disks of >2TB (including Fusion - CoreStorage) cause BCA significant tissues.

Older Macs (preUEFI) can be manipulated to install Windows (almost), but this causes driver issues, Graphics and Audio are the first ones to suffer. Dual-Gpu macs in CSM-BIOS turn 'off' the integrated GPU and only leave one GPU usable. If Windows ever starts supporting GPU-switching (in W10), it would require UEFI.

There is nothing other than UEFI to work around BC limitations, it is a standard.

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Answer 5

captcart

Level 1

0 points

Jan 30, 2015 8:44 AM in response to Kappy

If that is the case, please provide examples because I have not found any. Especially not that also offer the compact casing with even 8+ battery life (MacBook air has 12). I'm in the market for a new ultra portable computer for school and thus far I have not found anything close to the performance that apple provides in the same compact design. I have used windows exclusively and would like to continue doing so if only there was a pc capable of offering performance in a compact design with a battery that at least lasts throughout the workday. I have read over and over again that Macs are over priced with inferior specs. Perhaps that used to be the case, but considering current examples it appears lovers of PCs have failed to update their data.

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