In a memo to retail partners, Apple has announced that it will deliver support for Windows 7 in Mac OS X Snow Leopard's Boot Camp utility by the end of the year via a software update, but exclude support for some Macs sold in 2006.

Boot Camp is a two-step utility designed to setup Intel Mac computers to dual-boot both Mac OS X or Windows. The first component, which runs under Mac OS X, partitions the user's hard drive in place to prepare the system for an installation of Windows. After that step completes, the user is directed to install Windows from an authentic DVD copy provided by the user (Apple does not license or sell copies of Windows).

After Windows installs itself, Boot Camp provides a secondary package of drivers that the user must install from within Windows. These drivers provide native support for Mac-specific hardware under Windows, such as a backlit keyboard, built-in iSight camera, trackpad, Bluetooth, graphics, networking, audio, and so on. Snow Leopard's Boot Camp 3.0 also installs read-only HFS+ support for viewing Mac volumes under Windows.

According to the announcement, a series of Mac models "will not be supported for use with Windows 7 using Boot Camp," specifically: