For those who need to use Windows, the Windows on Mac Q&A provides answers for just about everything you need to know about running Windows on the 'Unibody' MacBook Pro or any other Intel-based Mac. Can the 'Unibody' MacBook Pro run Linux? All Intel-based Macs are capable of running a number of Intel-based distributions of Linux. If I can run windows based or mac based turbotax on my Macbook Pro can anyone tell me a reason to choose one over the other? For 2016, the mac version no longer forces you to update when opening the program, you can skip for now like the PC version.
Sometimes the lines between macOS and Windows 10 seem like a war zone of proponents from either side arguing about graphics, user interface, and program availability. But what if you just want the best of both worlds?
As many of us know, it’s the little things that make us wish we could switch back and forth between the two operating systems. Whether it’s that one program you need for work or your favorite video game that isn’t cross-platform compatible, it’s high time you find a way to be able to continue using your gorgeous MacBook Pro without making sacrifices around the edges.
Can I run Windows 10 on My MacBook Pro?
The short answer to this question is yes, you certainly can.
The longer version? To do so, you’re going to need to spend a fair amount of time setting this up and deciding which method of doing so is most effective for you.
Also, no option is going to be seamless – you will probably lose some performance power due to the way built-in optimization software works.
Is Windows 10 free for Mac?
Unfortunately, if you want to run Windows 10 on your Mac, you’ll need to purchase a license from Microsoft.
Windows 10 For Macbook Pro
If you’ve used a PC in the past, you may not be familiar with this since Windows tends to come preinstalled. Wordweb pro 3 0. But in the same way, as if you were building your computer from the ground up or if you were updating an extremely outdated laptop, you’ll need to buy a copy of Windows 10.
This can be done electronically from the Microsoft Store here, where you’ll receive a product key and download, or you can choose to receive a copy via physical USB. Windows 10 Home starts at about $120, and the Pro version costs about $200. However, both are still cheaper than trying to buy an entirely new computer just to run a few of your favorite things.
Running Windows 10 on MacBook Pro
Once you have a copy of Windows 10 in your possession, it’s time to pick a method for installation. There are two main ways to do this: creating a partition on your Mac with the built-in Boot Camp program or using a third-party virtual machine that creates a tiny version of the Windows OS on top of the normal Mac system. We’ll guide you through both of these.
Method 1: Boot Camp
Bootcamp is preinstalled on your Mac, but most people use their MacBook without ever realizing it’s there. To find it, simply search in Spotlight for “Bootcamp”, and it should come up right away.
When you use BootCamp, your Mac’s hard drive will be split into two sections- one running Windows, and one running macOS. These means that they operate in completely separate spheres and cannot interact with each other. Additionally, the size of the partition you create cannot be changed unless you perform a fresh install to reset it.
Pros:
- Already built into Mac, so it’s the safest and easiest option to run Windows.
- You’ll experience the least performance loss.
- It will feel like you’re running a completely new computer.
Cons:
- Not that convenient because your MacBook must be rebooted to switch between Windows 10 and macOS.
- Partition size is semi-permanent, and cannot be resized without some considerable effort to re-install and repartition.
- Transferring files between the two systems is like transferring between two totally separate computers- you’ll need to share them by flash drive (see the best usb-c drive for MacBook Pro), email, or some other method that isn’t just drag-and-drop.
Using BootCamp
To use BootCamp, you’ll need to follow a few basic steps:
- Obtain a copy of Windows 10 (as previously mentioned)
- Make sure your entire MacBook is up to date by checking for any software updates
- Open BootCamp from Spotlight
- Partition your hard drive
- Install Windows & Windows Drivers
- Choose which OS to run and get started!
For a more detailed version of this overview, you’ll want to check out PCMag’s BootCamp walkthrough or head for the official Apple Guide.
Method 2: Virtual Machines
If the idea of rebooting your computer to switch OS doesn’t appeal to you, a virtual machine is always an option. These are ideal in situations where you only need one program or don’t plan on doing many taxing operations on Windows.
In a virtual machine, Windows 10 runs inside an application so it’s like having another computer, but confined inside a single window on your screen. This means you can work in both Mac and Windows at the same time but may suffer a bit from performance issues.
Pros:
- It’s much more convenient than rebooting your computer to use Windows.
- You can change the size of the partition whenever you want.
- You can use files between operating systems easily.
Cons:
- You’ll need to buy a software license for your virtualization machine in addition to a copy of Windows.
- You may notice some drop in performance than if you dual-boot.
When it comes to virtual machines, you have a few options, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.
The most well-known programs are Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMWare Fusion, which provide almost identical functionality with a few minor differences (such as display resolution or Quick Look support) that won’t make or break your decision. They are priced at the same level for a single computer license and similar setup options. Fusion tends to outperform Parallels, but Parallels is a bit more user-friendly.
A third, lesser-known option is VirtualBox. This software is free, but it doesn’t come with the bells and whistles of its competitors. It doesn’t have the same optimization power or even offers a similar variety of setup options, and it tends to be on the techier side, making it difficult to use if you aren’t invested in learning how (you may be interested in this book: An Ultimate Guide Book on Virtualization with VirtualBox). But if you just need to try out virtualization, it’s a great place to start.
Using a Virtual Machine
To use a virtual machine, you’ll need to go through a similar amount of setup as Bootcamp, but the process varies more depending on which software you’ve chosen.
- Obtain a copy of Windows 10 (as mentioned above)
- Also, purchase a license for the software you have chosen
- Create a virtual machine. This process varies by program, but it’s the first thing you need to do before attempting to run any programs
- Install Windows to the Virtual Machine
If you’ve chosen to use Parallels, this guide includes images and should be sufficient to get through the installation process. For VMWare Fusion, their support page includes both a video and text-based tutorial for installation. Those who opt for VirtualBox can follow LifeHacker’s guide to setup since this program’s installation includes a plethora of personalization options you may not be sure what to do with.
Final Words
Running Windows on a MacBook Pro means you get to have your cake and eat it too. It’s a great compromise between systems that let you do the work you need to while sticking with the operating system you know best. While you may see some performance loss and it won’t be quite the same as having a computer completely dedicated to Windows, you do have a variety of options to work with what you’ve got.
How do you use Windows 10 on your Mac? Tell us about your experience by leaving a comment below.
Most people who buy Macs are doing it to run OS X, but you’d be surprised by the number of comments and e-mails we get in response to Mac reviews asking about how Windows runs on the hardware. Since Apple made the Intel switch and introduced its Boot Camp software in 2006, there’s been a small but significant group of people who have chosen to use Apple’s hardware to run Microsoft’s software, either as a secondary or primary operating system.
Because the new MacBook is an entirely new product rather than a straightforward refresh, we spent some time installing Windows and taking it for a spin. If you’ve used Boot Camp before, there aren’t many surprises. But there are still things you need to know if you intend to buy a MacBook to run Windows.
Installation and display differences
The actual process of creating a Boot Camp install drive and downloading your Windows drivers hasn’t changed at all. Get a Windows 8.1 ISO on your MacBook somehow, launch the Boot Camp Assistant app from the Utilities folder, hook up a USB drive that’s 8GB or greater in capacity, decide how much space you want to dedicate to the Windows partition, and let it do its thing.
The one difference, of course, is the whole port thing. USB Type-C flash drives are still unicorns, so at a bare minimum you’ll want Apple’s $19 USB Type-C to Type-A adapter or a generic equivalent. Make sure your laptop is fully charged before you begin the whole process, but, using a USB 3.0 flash drive, we had no trouble creating a Boot Camp install disk, rebooting and installing Windows, and installing the Boot Camp support software and drivers with battery life to spare.
Update: You may run into an issue where the MacBook won't boot from the USB drive after running the Boot Camp Assistant, or where it's not selectable as a startup target in the Startup Disk preference pane. If this happens, hold down the Option key as the computer boots and select the USB drive from the list (it may show up as 'EFI Boot').
The first time you boot to the Windows desktop after everything is installed, you’ll notice that everything onscreen is too small—for whatever reason, the automatic screen detection and UI scaling that happens on Windows PCs doesn’t happen here. It’s not a difficult problem to fix, though. Just right-click the desktop, go to Screen Resolution, click 'make text and other items larger or smaller,' and choose a scaling option you find comfortable. The 150 percent scaling level looked the best to our eyes, though some of you will probably be able to get by at 125 percent, too.
That’s one advantage that Windows has over OS X: no matter which scaling percentage you’re using, the desktop is still being drawn at the panel’s native 2304×1440 resolution, so you don’t need to deal with worsening GPU performance as you make items on the screen larger and smaller. The downside is that software support is still spotty. Microsoft’s apps and major third-party programs like Firefox and Chrome all look good, and Adobe is adding support for high-density Windows screens as an “experimental feature.”
But in other apps, especially older ones or those from smaller teams, you’ll still be dealing with inconsistency issues. Sometimes apps will look tiny, sometimes they’ll be the right size but they’ll be blurry, sometimes most of the window will look fine but there will be individual buttons or sliders that don’t render correctly. OS X apps that don’t support Retina mode have become relatively rare, but that’s not quite the case for Windows yet.
Other software quirks
The level of support Apple offers for Windows has never been spectacular, and Boot Camp continues to cover the basics and not much else. The Boot Camp control panel lets you switch the default boot partition, adjust how the function keys work, and toggle basic trackpad features like right-clicking and tap-to-click. Drivers exist for (most) of the internal hardware. That's pretty much all you get.
There are no special controls in the Boot Camp control panel for the Force Touch trackpad, including settings to change the firmness of the click. Windows seems to use the trackpad’s default firmness setting, and you can’t change that in Windows itself (nor will any settings carry over from OS X). Windows 8.1’s native trackpad gestures are unsupported, which means that Windows 10’s more powerful gestures probably won’t be, either.
Apple's trackpads, always paragons of accuracy while in OS X, become merely above average in Windows. Finger tracking is fine, but two-finger scrolling is tweaky and usually scrolls too quickly or abruptly. Clicking and dragging sometimes takes a couple of tries. This should all sound familiar if you've used Boot Camp on a MacBook before. The Force Touch trackpad neither resolves nor introduces new problems.
Another complaint: Bluetooth is completely non-functional. The adapter doesn’t show up in the Device Manager or in the PC Settings screen, nor do accessories that you’ve paired in OS X continue to work when you reboot into Windows. This is more than likely to be an easily fixable driver problem, it’s just not fixed now.
And, finally, be careful about installing new, not-provided-by-Apple drivers to solve problems. The Boot Camp package installs a fairly recent version of Intel’s integrated graphics driver, but there’s already a newer version available through Windows Update and the Intel support site. Jprofiler 10 1 1 – java based applications example. After installing it, though, we’d run into major graphics corruption issues that could only be solved by restarting the computer or rolling back to the older driver.
Performance and battery life
Though the hardware is the same, Windows and OS X are different enough to cause some significant differences in performance and battery life. The general rule of thumb is that graphics performance is better in Windows, since OS X is slow to pick up support for new OpenGL versions and drivers (we explored this phenomenon more fully in our review of the 2013 Mac Pro). On the flip side, battery life is usually worse in Windows, something generally attributed to Apple’s tighter integration between hardware and software. Our tests bear both of these observations out.
These charts exist just for the sake of comparing the MacBook running Windows to the MacBook running OS X; other comparisons can be found in our main MacBook review.
The CPU scores are basically a wash. Windows is a smidge slower in Geekbench and a little faster in Cinebench but not drastically so in either case. The graphics benchmarks show Windows firmly ahead of OS X, sometimes by just a bit (GFXBench T-Rex test) and sometimes by quite a lot (GFXBench Manhattan).
Macbook Pro Price
As best as we can tell, the MacBook supports the same external display configurations in Windows 8.1 as it does in OS X. We couldn't get our Dell P2415Q to output 4K at 60Hz over SST, even with the internal display disabled.
The MacBook loses around an hour and a half of battery life in our Wi-Fi Web browsing test, which loops a set of pages continuously until the laptop dies (we use the platform’s default browser for this, so you’re looking at Safari results in OS X and Internet Explorer results in Windows). In the WebGL test, oddly, Windows actually gains around an hour of battery life relative to the MacBook. It’s possible that the same changes that help GPU performance in Windows also improve its power consumption under load, but it’s difficult to say.
Buying a MacBook primarily to run Windows isn’t the worst idea you could possibly have—most of the hardware’s virtues and shortcomings remain the same regardless of the operating system you’re running. There are specific problems—non-functional Bluetooth, barebones trackpad controls—that we’d like to see fixed in subsequent driver releases, but it’s mostly fine as-is.
Macbook Pro 13 Inch
That said, the PC OEMs are doing well enough these days that grabbing a Mac isn’t really your best option if you don’t need OS X. Several of you pointed out Asus’ UX305, a similarly slim PC available for less money (though you need to buy several upgrades to bring it to parity with the MacBook). Dell’s XPS 13 is a favorite if you want more performance and don’t mind a fan. The MacBook is still an appealing option if you want one machine that runs everything, but for the few of you who like buying Apple hardware to run Microsoft software, there are other devices you ought to look at first.