Owners of new Macs will no longer be able to install Windows 7 on their computers using Apple's Boot Camp. The company has decided to cut off what is still by far Microsoft's most used operating system in favour of Windows 8 and (eventually) Windows 10.
The move was quietly announced in an amendment to Apple's Boot Camp system requirements earlier this month. Tables at the foot of the page show that the 2015 models of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air will only support the 64-bit version of Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Pro. Windows 7 can still be installed on older Macs, including the latest iMacs and Mac Minis.
In many ways, Apple's desire to drop support for an operating system that was effectively replaced two-and-a-half years ago is understandable. However, Windows 8 remains hugely unpopular with vast swathes of PC users, and it's touch-centric Start Menu will be completely lost on Macs, which don't ship with touchscreens - although the OS can now be configured to boot straight to the traditional desktop. Many business users require Windows 7 to run legacy applications.
Loss of Boot Camp support won't prevent new Mac owners from running Windows 7. There are plenty of other virtualisation products that continue to support Windows 7 on Macs, including Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion.
Although Windows 10 isn't yet on Apple's list of officially supported operating systems, there are many reports of people getting the Windows 10 Technical Preview running just fine using the latest version of Boot Camp. Apple will wait for the final Windows 10 code to be released this summer before officially adding support.