Apple's Boot Camp Will Support Windows 7, But Not Yet

Apple promises support for Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate versions with its Boot Camp software in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, though not until later this year, according to Apple's Web site. Snow Leopard includes Boot Camp 3.0. The Windows 7 support will be available as a software update to Boot Camp before the end of the year, according to a brief support document on Apple's Web site.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer launched Windows 7 Thursday at an event in New York City.

Boot Camp, first launched in April 2006, allows Apple's Intel-based Macs to run Windows operating systems. However, Apple noted on its Web site that nine Mac models from 2006 will not support Windows 7, including 17-inch iMac, 20-inch iMac, 15-inch MacBook Pro, 17-inch MacBook Pro and a mid-2006 Mac Pro with Intel Xeon dual-core 2.66GHz or 3GHz processors.

Apple did not detail why these 2006 models would not be supported, but it could have to do with new hardware requirements for Windows 7 that are not included in those older models.

Boot Camp 3.0 was released in August with Snow Leopard with new functions that let users open, read and copy files on Mac OS X volumes while booted into Windows. It also allows a system administrator to change the startup disk selection of a Mac running Windows using Boot Camp through a command line utility.