Having spent about 1 hour installing a clean copy of Snow Leopard and then Lion, followed by a seven hour SNAFU trying to get Vista > Win 7 upgrade to work on a Boot Camp partition, the misery of Windows is fresh in my mind.
In the Apple paradigm, I click on the Lion upgrade in the App Store (it knows I already purchased it). It installs, and we're done – no reboot. Just a video tutorial on new features.
In the Microsoft paradigm, I'm digging up DVD cases to manually type product codes that require me to needlessy recreate my upgrade path and make decisions about things like 32bit vs. 64bit. It's still installing Vista I type this, and the progress bar has been stuck at 75% for about an hour. The user experience: a scaled-up 640x480 installer that has been on the "Completing installation..." step for two hours.
It baffles me why anyone would affirmatively seek out this experience. As for the Intel "ultrabooks" – more vaporware from the 1990's-era PC industry. The "rest of us" have moved onward and upward.
EDIT: Windows installer just spit the DVD out and froze. Can't move the mouse. Time to start over! (I can almost hear them: Have you tried turning it on and off again?)
EDIT 2: If anyone is following this, attempt #2 failed the same way. This is hour 10 of trying to install Vista on a clean MacBook Pro 2010.
EDIT 3: Gave up and installed a VM through Fusion. Ironically, this is easier than a native Windows install.
Why? Are other Intel-based laptops better at installing Windows?
FYI – I've had Vista/Win7 installed on this machine before. It's a question of how horrible the process is. Typing in product codes, inserting DVDs, activation codes, warnings about anti-virus, etc.
Yes, all of them are. Apple notebooks are the worst at running Windows.
You don't have to type product codes -- you can install without one and copy/paste from a text file works fine once you're all set up. You don't have to insert DVDs, Windows installs fine from a USB stick (except on Apple notebooks, so there). Installing Microsoft Security Essentials will shut up any AV warnings.
Besides, you don't even need to install Vista to get an upgrade copy of Windows 7 working. A Google search would have told you that.
I don't get it. If my boot drive is wiped clean, what are the hardware barriers that explain the differences that you point to?
EDIT: Not sure why I'm downvoted for asking this. Can anyone advise as to what hardware issues would make a 2010 Macbook Pro more difficult to install Windows on?
The EFI firmware with "legacy" BIOS support that Apple uses. It doesn't help that Windows actually supports booting from UEFI but not the EFI 1.1 hack that Apple uses.
Thanks for pointing me to that. I wasn't able to determine the real-world impact of the limited BIOS support.
Anyway, I use Windows for exactly one thing: accessing (horrible) web apps that require IE. My original point was that the installation process is a mess from the perspective of a licensed user – Apple hardware or not.
Again, it's not that I can't grok it – it's that I shouldn't have to. I get no sense of pride from hacking a Windows upgrade into a clean installer. Empty victory, etc.
Also, my benchmark is the Lion upgrade. That's how it's supposed to work.
Can you buy any of those today? No. Will they last more than six months on the market? Nobody knows. How many times have PC makers threatened some Apple Killer product that went no where. Too many to count.
Are you sure Apple even supports running Vista on a 2010 MacBook Pro? I've had a huge number of problems with Windows on an Apple computer, and I now think Apple computers are simply terrible at running Windows.
I have Win7 running on Lion, the only problem is the graphics driver that crashes every now and then.
I think Vista is not compatible with Lion's bootcamp though.
In the Apple paradigm, I click on the Lion upgrade in the App Store (it knows I already purchased it). It installs, and we're done – no reboot. Just a video tutorial on new features.
In the Microsoft paradigm, I'm digging up DVD cases to manually type product codes that require me to needlessy recreate my upgrade path and make decisions about things like 32bit vs. 64bit. It's still installing Vista I type this, and the progress bar has been stuck at 75% for about an hour. The user experience: a scaled-up 640x480 installer that has been on the "Completing installation..." step for two hours.
It baffles me why anyone would affirmatively seek out this experience. As for the Intel "ultrabooks" – more vaporware from the 1990's-era PC industry. The "rest of us" have moved onward and upward.
EDIT: Windows installer just spit the DVD out and froze. Can't move the mouse. Time to start over! (I can almost hear them: Have you tried turning it on and off again?)
EDIT 2: If anyone is following this, attempt #2 failed the same way. This is hour 10 of trying to install Vista on a clean MacBook Pro 2010.
EDIT 3: Gave up and installed a VM through Fusion. Ironically, this is easier than a native Windows install.