how to install windows 10 in macbook air dual boot

VirtualBoxĪlthough there are a number of popular VM programs out there, VirtualBox is completely free, open-source, and awesome. There’s no need for constant backups and restores. If something goes wrong, whether with software installations or by infecting your system with a virus, you can easily switch back to a previous snapshot. This lets you experiment freely with your environment. You can, at any point, save the state of your machine with a “snapshot” and revert back to that state if you need to. Because you can configure your virtual hardware, you can even install an old OS like DOS or OS/2. You can run software written for one OS on another without needing to reboot. Additionally, Apple has officially dropped support for Windows 7 as of 2015.Virtual machines allow you to run more than one OS at a time. Windows boots into EFI mode natively under the Mac's firmware and has all the features thereof. 2012 and later Macs do not use the BIOS compatibility support module anymore. It should also be noted that this list only applies to Intel-based Macs made before 2012.

That means you lose processor features like dynamic frequency scaling and Turbo Boost (where the processor can disable a core for the sake of allowing another core to operate higher than its rated clock speed). Limited ACPI support (only basic S1 and S3 sleep states are supported).Optical S/PDIF output on the headphone jack.You can use these buses you just can't boot from them. Boot support for USB, FireWire, and ExpressCard buses.Graphics switching (Windows is locked into using the discrete GPU on dual-GPU Macs).SSDs will slow down over time in Windows. TRIM support for solid state drives (SSDs).Native Command Queuing (NCQ), a technique that allows SATA controllers to reorder I/O requests more efficiently rather than executing them in the order received.Hard drives show up as IDE devices to Windows. However, I would not characterize the difference as 'incredible' the way you are seeing, so there may be more going on.Īmong the BIOS features Apple did not implement are: Many of those features could be contributing to Windows feeling slower. And because that layer was designed specifically to support Windows XP, it only implements the bare minimum BIOS features needed to run it. Macs have had an EFI firmware since they switched to the Intel platform in 2005, but Microsoft did not support EFI until Windows Vista, and Windows' EFI support was not really mature until Windows 8.Īs a result, Apple implemented a BIOS emulation layer that kicks in automatically when the system is booting a non-Apple OS from a hybrid MBR partition table. This may be because your model is using a BIOS compatibility support module to support Windows in Boot Camp.

How to install windows 10 in macbook air dual boot