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Early look at Windows 10 on the new Retina MacBook says it runs better than OS X

One of the first people to try Windows 10 on the new Retina MacBook says that it actually runs more smoothly than OS X. The comment was made by Computer Science major Alex King, who tried upgrading his Boot Camp installation of Windows 8.1 to the preview of Windows 10.

Here’s the real kicker: it’s fast. It’s smooth. It renders at 60FPS unless you have a lot going on. It’s unequivocally better than performance on OS X, further leading me to believe that Apple really needs to overhaul how animations are done. Even when I turn Transparency off in OS X, Mission Control isn’t completely smooth. Here, even after some Aero Glass transparency has been added in, everything is smooth. It’s remarkable, and it makes me believe in the 12-inch MacBook more than ever before.

If you’re fortunate enough to have taken delivery of your own Retina MacBook and want to try the experiment for yourself, be prepared for a few glitches along the way. King said that not all of the Boot Camp drivers automatically installed, there’s no Bluetooth support and some Windows apps (like Steam) look blurry because they don’t support the full resolution of the Retina display. But overall, the experience sounds like a good one.

If you’re still not sure whether you’re the target market for the new lower-powered, ultra-portable machine, you can check out our own in-depth review and one-month-in video of just what it can and can’t do.

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Comments

  1. Smoother cosmetic animations… but no bluetooth and blurry apps. Ye-es. Sounds like a good trade-off…

  2. Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

    Windows has always had a honeymoon period after a fresh install. Who doesn’t love that fresh windows feeling? Install Office and give it a month.

    • Gary Dauphin - 9 years ago

      Mac OS is sorta the same way…. especially if you rely on a lot of 3rd party add on utilities.

      • Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

        There’s a major difference between them, and that’s the registry. OSX being born of unix has no such beast. In every version of windows since Windows95 the registry has been a double-edged sword. The registry allows for fabulous corporate features like a roaming user profile, and very granular desktop permissions for every kind of user-class you can think of… but at the same time, the ever-expanding registry bloat makes windows incrementally slower over time.

        3rd party addons can be uninstalled. Applications can be removed… but the registry is rarely cleaned up properly upon application removal, and even then the size of the database doesn’t tend to shrink. When tons and tons of keys are added to the registry (eg, when Office is installed) Windows gets noticeably more sluggish, because the registry becomes slower to traverse for *everything* installed.

        Even when Office isn’t actually running, the registry has still ballooned as a result of its installation, and therefore any program asking windows for its own settings has to wait just a little bit longer.

        For the most part, if you terminate extra processes in OSX, performance will improve, but in windows you have to make the registry smaller, and the only practical way of doing that is a fresh installation.

      • Johannes Vogel - 9 years ago

        @Milorad Ivović: That’s actually a common misconception and not true. The registry is sorted hierarchically as a tree and therefore super-fast regardless of how many keys are stored in there. The only things that *could* make the registry slower is more hierarchies, which doesn’t happen to a extend that would actually matter.

      • charilaosmulder - 9 years ago

        Which OS doesn’t get slow by installing a lot of 3rd party add ons? Especially when downloaded from outside a trusted software store like the app store.

      • Tim M Simmons - 9 years ago

        I respectfully disagree…. being a Windows user forever and working at Intel, it was always a battle at home with my wife doing Mac Support at UC Davis. I purchases my Mac Mini when Intel put their chip in it and never looked back. My Mac Mini worked flawlessly for years and it is still running today so what happened? My software I used started giving me a warring that it will no longer support the hardware so 7-8 years later I finally upgraded to a MacBook Pro (early 2011) and it is still my favorite system. Yes I still have Dells and HP or Lenovo laptops from work but none of them come close to the quality of speed of my old MacBook Pro. I have not tried Windows 10 yet, so we will see. But I would think my next laptop will be a 13″ Macbook Pro… I DJ on the side and need the USB for connection to my Rane Controller and external HD, but have never experienced the lag that you get on a Window’s based system after a month of usage.

      • Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

        @ Johannes Vogel
        I’m aware of the structure of the registry, and the nature of databases, but in the absence of an alternative explanation for slowness over time, I have to insist that there’s something unique about the registry which makes it uniquely suck.

        Nothing fixes an old install. Nothing.

        You can defragment the drive (of limited use on a low-frag file system like NTFS anyway). You can disable services, you can uninstall everything, you can kill processes, but still the system runs like shit, until you do ONE thing. Start with a fresh registry. Even if you install windows over the top of itself, on a dirty drive, as long as you don’t upgrade, and the registry is fresh, it runs like a dream.

        Explain that, and I’ll put more credence into what you’re saying. The fact that the registry is essentially a folder structure doesn’t mean it behaves like one. At any rate, installing office will literally double the size of it, and immediately slow the system down.

        That’s not coincidental.

      • I have to agree with Milorad. I’ve used Windows since 2005. Windows XP on a Intel Pentium 4 ran beautiful after a clean install. There was nothing to load at boot besides basic device drivers. But once more programs are installed, that became the slowing point. For example, my father has been a Norton Antivirus Subscriber since 2002, and as the years have went on, Norton took more of a toll on System Performance. Boot up took enormously longer, programs took longer to launch. It was quite annoying. I got my first Mac in Winter 2014. 13″ MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display 8GB LPDDR3 1600MHz, Intel Core i5-4210 @ 2.6GHz unto 3.1GHz. 128GB Flash Storage. I’ve always wanted a mac because I found the way that they work to be seamless, and less problematic. Which, for me on my part is definitely true. My MacBook Pro still runs like it was bought yesterday. It’s pretty smooth. From Pressing the Power Button to the desktop only takes 7 seconds. Also, I have Windows 7 installed with Bootcamp. Windows will sometimes skip ‘Starting Windows’ and jump straight to the Desktop. So that takes only about 10 seconds. It’s awesome. But I will agree that the more you install programs on Windows, the longer it takes for Windows to startup, and launch applications.

  3. Luis Alejandro Masanti - 9 years ago

    In the old day we have the Wintel (Windows+Intel) products… Now, we are going to have the Winple (Windows+Apple) products!

    • observer1959 - 9 years ago

      While I get what you’re saying, Intel doesn’t sell hardware, they make chips and their chip is in Apple computers so it’s still a Wintel machine if you load Windows on it.

  4. Michael Superczynski - 9 years ago

    It’s still Windows and it looks like crap.

    • fofer - 9 years ago

      Lemme guess, you haven’t seen nor tried Windows 10 (or 8.1) yet.

      • observer1959 - 9 years ago

        I haven’t tried Windows 10 but I’ve heard great things about it. I have however tried Windows 8.1 and it sucks. I prefer Windows 7.

      • Daniel Campos - 9 years ago

        I have tried Windows 10 Build 10074… Here it is booting in two minutes on my old laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alz_K8Hc97U

      • PhilBoogie - 9 years ago

        Daniel Campos says: I have tried Windows 10 Build 10074… Here it is booting in two minutes on my old laptop.

        Wow! 2 freaking minutes! Who the hell wants to sit around waiting for Windows to boot…for a whole 2 freaking minutes?!

        Wow. Just wow.

  5. We all know this story. It runs better for like a… ehm… week? I’m a Mac OS X on a MacBook for more than 5 years now and I did never regret my choice, it was one of the best choices in my life.

    • Every release OSX get’s slower. I have a 2012 MBP/r and Yosemite is pretty damn sluggish now, I’ve literally stopped using my MBP/r since OSX is unstable and sluggish.

      • Isiah Johnson - 9 years ago

        Really? Because my MacBook mid 2010 is faster than ever. Yosemite on my Mac is second to Snow Leopard in terms performance.

      • My early 2011 MBP with a user upgraded SSD + Bluetooth/WIFI Card and Yosemite works literally better than it did when I purchased it 3-4 years ago. Heavy daily usage and not a single issue with anything ever.

      • paulywalnuts23 - 9 years ago

        I will take your MBP off you if you are just going to let it sit.

      • Andrew Messenger - 9 years ago

        Really? Because my experience with a 2010 MacBook Pro has been fantastic with Yosemite.

      • incredibilistic - 9 years ago

        I see your 2012 MBP/r with Yosemite and raise you an Early 2008 that runs Yosemite like a champ.

        I concede that it’s not all 100% hugs and roses — like the battery, even a brand new one, can’t keep the system running for more than 45 minutes before dying. Although I can text from iMessage I don’t have AirDrop or Handoff. Otherwise my 17″ MBP runs beautifully.

        I keep my expectations in check but even with the handful of snags I face a couple times per month I still prefer OS X over ANY iteration of Windows.

        Exposé, Spaces, Launch Pad, Spotlight, the Dock, the super-smooth two-finger scrolling, navigation and pinch-to-zoom action of Safari — also Safari’s tabs view — the built-in Dictionary, tabs in Finder, the elegance of the icons, consistent aesthetics across all native apps, the translucency; I could go on and on about how many features OS X has that even Windows 10 doesn’t have that just make OS X a better operating system. Period.

        I’m not the least bit impressed with Windows 10, more specifically the color palette that’s garish and loud as well as the butt-ugly icons for both “modern apps” and traditional apps. And those folder icons…yuck!!!

      • darwiniandude - 9 years ago

        When you did the last update, you left the FileVault box ticked. Turn it off! Apple was stupid to leave that box checked by default.

      • darwiniandude - 9 years ago

        I have a Mid 2007 iMac with SSD, and a notebook HDD placed in a IDE DVD bay converter to replace the useless optical drive. It flies. Buy your machine an SSD.

  6. Ben Dodson (@bendodson) - 9 years ago

    A large part of the Steam interface is blurry on the Macbook running OS X as they haven’t updated it for Retina displays – not just a Windows issue.

  7. 311sie - 9 years ago

    without benchmarks/data behind his claim it’s just an opinion. On the other hand, MS seems to be really getting their stuff together as of lately so I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out ot be accurate.

  8. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    There is no denying that both the Retina iMac and now the Retina MacBook have serious issues with smooth animation in OS X. It is really bothersome. I hope 10.11 addresses it.

    • herewegoagain7 - 9 years ago

      My baseline 5k iMac has no issues with animation at all. Perhaps some people need to learn how to do a fresh OSX install. It’s not that difficult.

      • AnxiousChild - 9 years ago

        perhaps, your eye doesn’t perceive 25 frames per second…
        you think we haven’t done fresh installs ? :D :D
        AND even IF fresh install would make things OKAY ……you think it’s okay for general population like working people who care ’bout different stuff to do this every time they upgrade their OS X?

        You gotta be shittin’ me mate, it’s supposed to work flawlessly after upgrading directly from Mac App Store, no more work should be needed. period.

      • Daniel Campos - 9 years ago

        But you have that special t-clock chip in it that makes animations smooth. Macbooks don’t.

      • Joseph (@Dakunclear) - 9 years ago

        The new OSX isn’t all that much better by that I mean El Capitan. It has 2 major flaws that I can see and that is performance is crap right now and that is in the final stages of beta and another thing is if you plug your camera in it auto opens Photos which you can’t turn off to go directly into the camera folder so when you upload the photos to your computer it actually downsizes the files to about 4mbs when the original file is 11mbs, so it that sense it is a royal pain in the ass but as far as the Yosemite issue with WiFi that has been fixed completely in the new OSX but loading is bad but anyways I don’t really know about boot time as my rMBP is always turned on. As for battery life it is the same as it was with Yosemite and Mavericks.

  9. Computer Science Major.. as in.. this chap is still in school? We’re now making news of a college kid’s opinion of how something works after a fresh install. I’m going to agree with a lot of the other comments. Windows works great after an install. After a short period, it returns to its regular, old sluggish self. Oh and wait, wait, which of the 7 versions of Windows 10 was this? Was it starter, pro, ultimate, ultimate extreme, ultimate extreme awesome, ultimate platinum, or ultimate platinum master?

    • Jacques Alesi (@_alesi_) - 9 years ago

      “for consumers, they will only truly see two editions for PCs: Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro”, but nice try…

    • observer1959 - 9 years ago

      Probably Windows Awesome Omnipotent Pro Extreme.

    • Anders Lund - 9 years ago

      “Windows works great after an install. After a short period, it returns to its regular, old sluggish self.”

      Whatever you’re doing to your Windows installs, do something different.

      • darwiniandude - 9 years ago

        Windows is great as long as you don’t install any software. Or you are a very knowledgable power user.

        Much windows software is coded with little respect for the system. The developer does whatever the hell they want. The installer explodes files all over the system, bloats the registry. The registry grows over time and pretty much any application can spew all over it. It’s an exceptionally different design from OS X having an app bundle in /Applications, a human readable plist preference file in ~/Library/Preferences and any other data require located in ~/Library/Application Support/App Name.

        I support both platforms and troubleshoot for many users, the holes that otherwise intelligent people dig themselves into whilst using Microsoft Windows simply boggle the mind.

        Or simple upgrades: Buy a new computer. On Mac, keep your programs and settings and files. On windows, keep your files, reload all your software.

        Need to wipe for a fresh start? When you recover a windows machine it goes back to the day you bought it. No updates. Years later it might take a day or two to fully update a Windows 7 machine to the current level. Internet recovery on a Mac? Comes back to the current version of the OS with all updates done.

        Microsoft need to fix some underlying foundation issues before I would use a windows machine as my primary computer again.

      • Do something different? Lol, dude, I assure you, over the years I spent way more time than I care to admit streamlining the crap out of windows installations. Custom installs, strip down everything that isn’t absolutely necessary, turn off all unnecessary services, only have required things at startup, etc. No matter what is done, it always happens.

  10. Rhison Sapam - 9 years ago

    What about the LAN sharing problem..??? Has it been fixed..???

  11. Cristian Moisei - 9 years ago

    When I tried it it ran like shit.

  12. kevinxucs - 9 years ago

    Geez, did he mention battery life?

  13. I always thought MS should aim to make the best OS for any PC. including Macs. Get all the drivers and build them in. Make install Windows on a mac a breeze and no-brainer. Apple doesn’t have to lose for Microsoft to win….

  14. Coolnalu - 9 years ago

    “unless you have a lot going on”. pointless review. and i have made a pointless comment.

  15. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

    I have to find a reason to run Windows, and so far I haven’t. There are apps that I run on OS X that simply aren’t available on Windows and the apps that do something similar I don’t want because the UI of the apps suck and in order to do the same thing, I have to use 3rd party plug-ins and play around with a antiquated setup which is not a pleasant experience. I’ll stick with OS X, it runs just fine.

    If you have OS X and it’s running sluggish, maybe you need to clean up a bunch of cached files. I ran Clean My Mac 3 and it did wonders and it sped things up.

    • observer1959 - 9 years ago

      Most the time I find when Mac OS X is running sluggish, it’s because operating systems have been installed on top of operating systems instead of doing a clean install.

  16. Gary Dauphin - 9 years ago

    While Alex’s review and opinion are appreciated and well thought out, it is rather subjective other than a few general FPS tests. And as Microsoft starts filling out features in the preview software (No ‘History’ feature in the Web browser?), surely that will add some bulk to Windows 10.

    That being said, I wish Apple would quit focusing on globbing on more features onto OS X and put some of that engineering talent on two things: 1) Known bugs that need to get fixed, and 2) Fine tuning and speed ups.

  17. mailtochristian - 9 years ago

    Ok guys, we really need to stop with the myth of clean install. It can’t be that we need to reinstall from scratch every new update. It sucks. Mac OS X is supposed to take care of it, instead after a couple of months use, OS X gets sluggish and unreliable. For instance: no chance to open files saved in iCloud Drive. So what, fresh install again? The third in 2015? REALLY?!
    Now, if I do something wrong, you let me know cuz I’m sick of it. I never thought to really enjoy going back to work on windows. But I really enjoy the office functionality and the system reliability (say finder vs. win explorer, etc..)

  18. darwiniandude - 9 years ago

    Windows does not support Retina displays like OS X does.
    What resolution was he running at? If he picked 1440×900 (obvious choice, only selectable resolution higher than the paltry 1366×768 my 11″ has) then that poor integrated GPU is rendering at 2880×1800, rescaling down to 2304×1440. That HAS to have a performance hit.
    Install something like SwitchResX and run natively at 2304×1440: less work for GPU, more space. This is how windows will be running anyway.

    I’m sure OS XI will be better optimised for this beastie. (And no, it won’t be called that)

    I badly want this machine. It’s 100% silent. Like my SSD upgraded G4 Cube. It feels fast and snappy. Unfortunately by day job requires near constant connection of thunderbolt multi drive enclosure, which is entirely impossible even with adapters. Doh.

  19. telmoej2 - 9 years ago

    I don’t have ANY Mission Control issues on my Retina MBP 13″. I don’t know what you are talking about.

  20. I like how people point to registry entries being left behind in old version of windows.. but dont talk about the fact that 32 bit programs will be installed in a virtual machine isolated .. and registry being made better by snipping application state entries after install and uninstall..

  21. Without Retina Display support, this test is worthless. Try again with the Retina Display drivers, and then we’ll talk about it.

  22. sync_complete - 9 years ago

    I’ve deleted my Bootcamp partition on my iMac; most of the games I like on Steam are now on the Mac too, so I certainly won’t be carving up my new Macbook when it arrives next month.

  23. darwiniandude - 9 years ago

    Why are we even arguing this here? This is 9to5mac.
    We’ve all either escaped the tyranny or Windows, or never been subjected to it.

    Windows is required for some games, if you don’t have a console.

  24. Adam Boulton - 9 years ago

    So, I’ve finally gotten Windows 10 on my 15″ macbook pro (2013-14), and it’s pretty smooth so far. The only thing that’s hard to live with is the insane battery drain, and the fact that the laptop gets pretty hot. I have it on balanced power settings and sometimes even battery saver. I get 2-4 hours of battery after a full charge with Windows 10. It’s a clean install, so there’s barely any programs installed. I get 6-10 hours with Yosemite, and rarely ever gets warm to the touch. I must be doing something wrong.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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