Trying to install windows 8 on my wives' mid 2010 13' macbook pro, and I ran into some issues since this mac is not supported for windows 8. I have spent some time trying to find the solution, but didn't find what I actually wanted, so thought I'd post this to help some of you out if you run into the same crap.
Click to expand.Boot Camp is 100% free. It comes pre-loaded as part of OS X's base software installations and the only 'cost' is Windows itself. With Parallel's, you pay $80 on top of the cost of Windows itself. But the cons don't end there: 1) Decreased performance: You have to 'allocate' processing cores and memory specifically to Parallel's that comes out of what's available for OSX. Meaning, you tell OSX to give your Windows 1-4 GB of ram and whatever's left over is needed for OSX to continue in the background. You also tell it how many cores to use.
2) Significantly less GPU power: Parallel's runs GPU emulation drivers to 'simulate' a dedicated GPU for Windows which further cuts your performance down. You essentially get a 50% Windows PC and whatever GPU it is emulating is also 50%. The advantages: It runs in OSX. You simply press certain hotkeys and you can switch back to OSX in mere seconds. You can save state on the machine and quickly pause it to gain back resources for OSX. Because it's virtual, you can easily manipulate the virtual hard drive space for it to give yourself more space on the fly. However, Parallel's is MOSTLY for people who need to run non-graphics intensive software such as Windows exclusive production software or maybe AutoCAD or MATLab or ChemDraw or other science software that is Windows exclusive.
Parallel's WAS NOT designed with gamers in mind. The advantages of Boot Camp: 1) 100% hardware support. You're essentially booting into a Windows computer when you use boot camp and gaming performance, Windows performance is stellar. It's in some cases better than Windows performance on a Windows computer. 2) It's free. Boot Camp is free with OSX, you just need to 'buy' Windows 7 or Windows 8.
Parallel's costs money. 3) It uses all the hardware toward Windows. You don't lose performance by having a separate partition.
4) You can see your OSX files. It automatically loads your Mac hard drive as a secondary drive in Windows so you can view videos, documents and downloads from OSX on Windows as long as the file extensions are compatible (most times they are). The disadvantages: You have to shut down/restart and completely exit OSX.
You lose hard drive space. You have to repartition your drive for Windows and the partition sizes, in most cases, are semi-permanent. While you can repartition, the last time I tried I 100% lost my Windows partition and all my games and had to reinstall. You only have 256GB of SSD space.
I would recommend having an external hard drive that you use for Boot Camp and reserve all that glorious good SSD space for good old OSX. Cost wise, Bootcamp is free, so you just need a windows license. With parallels you need a windows license and to purchase parallels obviously. Personal experience? I'd go with parallels, but it won't be suitable for gaming so it depends on how important that is to you.
For me, I hate the windows experience but want some windows programs, so parallels is awesome - I just get the program window and even doc icons for that program. Office 2013 preview runs awesome - miles better than office for mac. Boot Camp is 100% free. It comes pre-loaded as part of OS X's base software installations and the only 'cost' is Windows itself. With Parallel's, you pay $80 on top of the cost of Windows itself.
But the cons don't end there: 1) Decreased performance: You have to 'allocate' processing cores and memory specifically to Parallel's that comes out of what's available for OSX. Meaning, you tell OSX to give your Windows 1-4 GB of ram and whatever's left over is needed for OSX to continue in the background.
You also tell it how many cores to use. 2) Significantly less GPU power: Parallel's runs GPU emulation drivers to 'simulate' a dedicated GPU for Windows which further cuts your performance down. You essentially get a 50% Windows PC and whatever GPU it is emulating is also 50%.
The advantages: It runs in OSX. You simply press certain hotkeys and you can switch back to OSX in mere seconds. You can save state on the machine and quickly pause it to gain back resources for OSX. Because it's virtual, you can easily manipulate the virtual hard drive space for it to give yourself more space on the fly.
However, Parallel's is MOSTLY for people who need to run non-graphics intensive software such as Windows exclusive production software or maybe AutoCAD or MATLab or ChemDraw or other science software that is Windows exclusive. Parallel's WAS NOT designed with gamers in mind.
The advantages of Boot Camp: 1) 100% hardware support. You're essentially booting into a Windows computer when you use boot camp and gaming performance, Windows performance is stellar. It's in some cases better than Windows performance on a Windows computer.
2) It's free. Boot Camp is free with OSX, you just need to 'buy' Windows 7 or Windows 8. Parallel's costs money. 3) It uses all the hardware toward Windows. You don't lose performance by having a separate partition. 4) You can see your OSX files. It automatically loads your Mac hard drive as a secondary drive in Windows so you can view videos, documents and downloads from OSX on Windows as long as the file extensions are compatible (most times they are).
The disadvantages: You have to shut down/restart and completely exit OSX. You lose hard drive space. You have to repartition your drive for Windows and the partition sizes, in most cases, are semi-permanent. While you can repartition, the last time I tried I 100% lost my Windows partition and all my games and had to reinstall. You only have 256GB of SSD space.
I would recommend having an external hard drive that you use for Boot Camp and reserve all that glorious good SSD space for good old OSX. Adding to this, can anyone tell me where to get an ISO file for windows 8 from. I cant seem to find one at all. Also I currently upgraded from windows 7 to 8 on my dell.
Is it possible to use the same product key to activate windows 8 on a mac. If not where can I buy a key from. I have been on the Microsoft website and the only option it gives you is to upgrade from windows 7 which clearly isn't possible with the mac.
I cant find an option to buy windows 8 straight. Help would be much appreciated, Thanks. Cost wise, Bootcamp is free, so you just need a windows license. With parallels you need a windows license and to purchase parallels obviously. Personal experience? I'd go with parallels, but it won't be suitable for gaming so it depends on how important that is to you. For me, I hate the windows experience but want some windows programs, so parallels is awesome - I just get the program window and even doc icons for that program.
Office 2013 preview runs awesome - miles better than office for mac. I use vmware fusion for my win7 partition. I prefer fusion to parallels but they're very similar. I'd recommend one or the other for convenience's sake as you don't have to reboot, and you can always do what most people do with these programs and have bootcamp set up and the VM (virtual machine) running the bootcamp partition from within OS X This gives you the best of both worlds, power and performance from bootcamp, ease of use, convenience and a nice way to transfer files between machines with VM software. Of course this comes at the same cost as your chosen VM software, so as a final note I would say this: If you're going to need a lot of power and performance (eg. Playing games) from your win partition, don't bother with VM software unless you have money to burn, as you'll spend most of your time on bootcamp.
If you're also doing a reasonable amount of things like MS office or less cpu intensive tasks, go for the VM software. Adding to this, can anyone tell me where to get an ISO file for windows 8 from. I cant seem to find one at all. Also I currently upgraded from windows 7 to 8 on my dell. Is it possible to use the same product key to activate windows 8 on a mac. If not where can I buy a key from.
I have been on the Microsoft website and the only option it gives you is to upgrade from windows 7 which clearly isn't possible with the mac. I cant find an option to buy windows 8 straight.
Help would be much appreciated, Thanks. Click to expand.Windows 8 will take up about 8-10GB in installation once it's fully updated.
I would recommend at least 30GB if you plan on installing software/games. Borderlands 2 and Windows 7 put me at about 12GB of 20 and I didn't have enough space to install Aion.
I upped my partition to 50GB but keep in mind, I have a 500GB hard drive and an SSD specifically for OSX. I use 50GB of the 500GB specifically for Windows because I don't care how long Windows takes to load or how long apps take to load on it. My SSD is only for my baby and that's it. Also, if gaming is even slightly a priority, do NOT run Parallel's OR Fusion. Gaming on either is TERRIBLE.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125449435/839226012.jpg)
Might as well just run Wine versions of Windows games. Click to expand.Absolutely agree. I installed Windows 8 on my Mac and within a week it was removed and replaced with Windows 7 again. It's dreadful without a touchscreen, and even with one the UI is really poorly thought out with having to constantly switch between Metro and desktop to do anything worthwhile.
On the subject of Parallel's being $80. I've bought about 4 or 5 copies over the years and never paid much more than about $30ish. Parallels is one of the most frequently discounted pieces of software I've ever seen. Just look around and you're bound to find some special offers. By the way - to echo what someone said before: OP, you can run Bootcamp AND Parallels. You just reboot into full native Windows when you want to run games, but if you're just using Office or something less taxing on the hardware, you can boot into Windows under Parallels and there's no need to restart. Both use the same partition and the same base OS files, so if you make a change in one, it'll be available in the other.
Adding to this, can anyone tell me where to get an ISO file for windows 8 from. I cant seem to find one at all. Also I currently upgraded from windows 7 to 8 on my dell.
Is it possible to use the same product key to activate windows 8 on a mac. If not where can I buy a key from.
I have been on the Microsoft website and the only option it gives you is to upgrade from windows 7 which clearly isn't possible with the mac. I cant find an option to buy windows 8 straight. Help would be much appreciated, Thanks. Click to expand.Actually its easy to get WIndows 8 working with bootcamp.
When you setup bootcamp, download the windows support files onto an external drive. Then when you install windows 8 open the file and click on the.exe and a button will highlight in the ribbon for 'troubleshoot' Click troubleshoot and select that this app was working on a prior version of windows and select Windows 7. Then follow the prompts and it will install the drivers as normal. Then 2 finger scroll works, wifi works, bluetooth works. EVERYthing works just like it does with Win7.
Just make sure to disable Windows 8 auto brightness feature as it gets wonky and lowers the brightness weirdly. Adding to this, can anyone tell me where to get an ISO file for windows 8 from. I cant seem to find one at all. Also I currently upgraded from windows 7 to 8 on my dell. Is it possible to use the same product key to activate windows 8 on a mac. If not where can I buy a key from. I have been on the Microsoft website and the only option it gives you is to upgrade from windows 7 which clearly isn't possible with the mac.
I cant find an option to buy windows 8 straight. Help would be much appreciated, Thanks. I personally believe Bootcamp is always the better route.
Its native and it runs amazing. I have Win 8 on my MBP now (though it barely gets used). If performance means a lot too you,then go bootcamp - Some people have had success installing the Windows 8 upgrade purchase to their Mac. I didnt want to chance it so I bought the Windows 8 system builder and it cost me around 120$ - Actually its easy to get WIndows 8 working with bootcamp.
When you setup bootcamp, download the windows support files onto an external drive. Then when you install windows 8 open the file and click on the.exe and a button will highlight in the ribbon for 'troubleshoot' Click troubleshoot and select that this app was working on a prior version of windows and select Windows 7. Then follow the prompts and it will install the drivers as normal. Then 2 finger scroll works, wifi works, bluetooth works. EVERYthing works just like it does with Win7. Just make sure to disable Windows 8 auto brightness feature as it gets wonky and lowers the brightness weirdly.
Not sure if many of you will know this but I shall ask anyway. Like I said before I have windows 8 on my current laptop. So I just used the product key for that and downloaded it again (windows 8 pro) and saved it to my desktop as an ISO file.
It said at the end to remember the product key because I will need it if I create a new partition when I install windows 8. Does that mean I can just take that ISO file I made and put it on the macbook and load up parallels and use that and my product key to activate windows?
Share this story. Windows 8 arrives. For many Mac users who occasionally need to run Windows applications, virtualization solutions like, and are often the best way to do so.
You take a definite performance hit with virtualization programs, but for most people the ability to run the applications they need without rebooting is more than convenient enough to make up for such shortcomings. There is one exception: gaming.
3D performance is either much-reduced by virtualization or (in the case of VirtualBox) completely non-existent, and given that most Macs don't have top-shelf graphics processors to begin with, there's simply no substitute for running Windows on bare metal, as they say. This means using Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac as you would to any PC, and that means relying on Apple's Windows drivers to get everything working properly. The issue is that Apple doesn't exactly prioritize Windows driver updates, and this is doubly true when a new version of Windows is concerned: Boot Camp support for Windows 7 trailed general availability, and the song remains the same for Windows 8. But official support be damned, we say! We installed Windows 8 on our 2011 iMac and 2010 MacBook Air to see what happened, and we kept a log of our findings to help those of you who don't feel like waiting on Apple's drivers. Setup process Because we haven't talked about this in a while, let's take a gander at the Boot Camp installation process as it stands in Mountain Lion.
Here's what you need:. A Mac that supports Mountain Lion and has at least 20GB of free disk space, though more is obviously preferable.
A valid Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro license key. For the purposes of this article, we're going to assume you're working with the 64-bit version of Windows (and at this point, you probably should be anyway). If you're using a Mac with an optical drive or a MacBook Air older than the 2011 model, you'll need a Windows 8 install DVD (and, for the older Airs, an external optical drive). If you're using a 2011 or 2012 MacBook Air or any other Mac without an optical drive, you'll need either an external optical drive and a Windows 8 install DVD, or a 4GB or larger USB stick and a Windows 8 ISO file. More on this in a bit. A FAT-formatted external drive or blank CD or DVD on which to store the Windows driver files.
Once you've gathered the necessary materials, launch the Boot Camp Assistant from Spotlight or by navigating to Applications and then to Utilities. It will walk you through partitioning your drive to install Windows, downloading the necessary driver files to your external drive, and (for newer MacBook Airs, Retina MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Minis without optical drives), creating a USB installer for Windows from an ISO file. / Downloading Windows drivers with the Boot Camp Assistant. Users of slightly older Macs, however, will notice that the installer still requires a Windows install DVD before it will start working, and the option to create a USB drive isn't even available—those with access to an optical drive cannot opt to use any other method. Strangely, this requirement applies even to 2010, 2009, and 2008-era MacBook Airs, all of which shipped without optical drives; people with those computers will have to find an external optical drive before continuing. After formatting your drive, let the Boot Camp Assistant reboot your computer, and install Windows to your newly created Boot Camp partition as you would to any PC.
When going through the installer, be sure to reformat the Boot Camp partition to NTFS, but don't delete it—this will break the partition and require you to start over again from the beginning. These days, the Windows installer is dead simple to get through as long as you're not terrified of technology—enter your product key and create a user account and you've done most of the heavy lifting.
Once you reach the Start screen, insert the external drive containing the Windows support files, navigate to it from the desktop, and run setup.exe. Installing the Boot Camp support software in Windows 8. The Boot Camp installer shouldn't throw up any red flags—accept all of the setup defaults, and sit back and wait while it installs all of Apple's driver software along with Apple Software Update, and reboot when it prompts you to. How does it work? The vast majority of programs and drivers that work with Windows 7 also work with Windows 8.
Luckily this also applies to much of Apple's Boot Camp software, including read-only access to your Mac's HFS-formatted partition, the Boot Camp control panel that lets you select your default boot partition and adjust other system settings, and the software that makes the Mac's function keys operate as they all do in OS X. There are some small issues: the graphical overlays for things like volume and brightness don't show up in Windows 8, though the buttons operate normally, and things that bother me about Boot Camp in Windows 7 (like the inability to access FileVault-encrypted volumes) persist in Windows 8, but the new operating system doesn't bring any major, system-breaking new problems. Ancient drivers ahoy! Luckily, new drivers are just a few clicks away—Macs use standard PC graphics chips, and these can be powered with standard PC drivers. Below, I've laid out a table of Macs, the graphics chips they use, the driver you'll want to download to go with them, and any other applicable information you'll need to know. All of the drivers below are for use with the 64-bit versions of Windows 8 (but even if you're still sticking with Windows 7, these drivers should help you out, too).
![Windows 8 Bootcamp For Mac Windows 8 Bootcamp For Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125449435/254256537.jpg)
/ At 200 percent, desktop scaling in Windows 8 is still a bit of a mess. Some apps, like Chrome (left) are scaled up but they're blurry messes, and others like Firefox (right) scale up their UI elements but don't scale up the window content. The behavior is slightly better for Metro apps. Every one of those I used, from the built-in Mail and Calendar apps to the New York Times and Kindle apps, looked just fine scaled up, though that doesn't mean every app you use will be that way—the Metro version of Chrome, for example, gave me a scaled-up scroll bar but chose to render pages at the same scaling level as before. / Most Metro apps behave well when scaled up, though others (like Chrome here) continue to have consistency issues.
Note the blown up scroll bar and unscaled window content. Conclusions: Who needs official support?
The variety of Mac configurations out there make this sort of thing an inexact science, but in our experience you shouldn't have problems running Windows 8 on your Macs if you really want to. Official support will smooth over some of the rough edges in the experience, including lack of function key overlays and old, old graphics drivers, but Windows 8's compatibility with software and drivers made for Windows 7 should serve Mac users well here. Promoted Comments.
Ars Praefectus.