Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'

[mrumsd]

what about macOS in the cloud? that would probably mean i could develop "ios webapps" on something else than a mac-computer. cause the current situation for developers to debug js-code (which safari webkit makes sure it differs enough from chrome blink, so it breaks on simpliest tasks on webrtc for an example, cause webtech for apple obviously is not a primary goal) on ios-devices and not into native applications at all, is tbh ridiculous. apple made pretty sure mobile development equals to using apple computers, with virtual machines not allowed on non-macs and even if you get it working, macos is the only platform out there that doesnt have a decent virtualized gpu. unless this changes, i'd rather stay with my "slow" non-mac, where another platform, if even only for bugfixing and testing, is just creating a new partition away ...

 

[Reason077]

This is actually incorrect. Apple's CPUs support the full ARM instruction set. They may have added their own

Apple doesn't add its own instructions to the ARM ISA. If they did, it would be pretty obvious if Apple's compiler started generating instructions that were not part of the published specs. Additionally, the compiler (LLVM) is open-source, so if any non-standard instructions were being used it would show up there.

 

[Reason077]

However, I just found this article, indicating Parallels is in fact an emulator (
https://www.parallels.com/blogs/what-is-a-virtual-machine/?amp ), i.e., that rather than creating a virtual partition in which Windows/Linux is running natively, it creates an x86 hardware emulation layer on top of which Windows/Linux can run. This would mean that, when Apple was demonstrating Linux-through-Parallels at WWDC, it actually wasn't running natively, but rather on top of Parallels' x86 hardware emulation layer.

Parallels uses CPU virtualization. The guest OS (ie: Windows) is still running natively, but within a hardware abstraction layer. That's not quite the same as emulation, where CPU instructions must be translated or interpreted between CPU architectures, which reduces performance.

Or, to put it another way, with Parallels the computer hardware environment is emulated, but not the CPU itself.

 

[Reason077]

Apple won’t allow you to install/boot that replacement OS though...

Not sure that this is true. There doesn't appear to be anything to stop you signing your own bootable kernel for Apple Silicon macs:

Apple ships a utility on Apple Silicon Macs that allows you to sign kernels your... | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com

 

[LillDrutten]

I would really like to see it boot linux. I have ordered a Air, and I have no plan to run linux on it now.
But when the machine is getting old it can have a few more years as a linux. I use my 2009 mac book pro as a linux laptop today and it is a well build machine.

 

[Alan Wynn]

Microsoft is going to come back and say Windows on M1 ARM is a consideration only if Apple doesn't lock down multi-booting. Would be nice if M1 has the freedom like Raspberry Pi 4 to multiboot different Linux distros, Android, Windows on ARM, etc.

Why? How is that in Microsoft’s interest? I know that is your desire, but I fail to see why it should be theirs. They would much prefer that only approved operating systems (of which they would have one) would be able to boot. It would improve their competitive position.

 

[LillDrutten]

Why? How is that in Microsoft’s interest? I know that is your desire, but I fail to see why it should be theirs. They would much prefer that only approved operating systems (of which they would have one) would be able to boot. It would improve their competitive position.

The problem is then that they have not sold the unit. Surely they don't have to activity support other software, but using force or technology to prevent competition is problematic on legal aspects in both USA and EU. And apple take a risk that they might lose that battle, and will have open up not only the Mac but also iphone and ipad for other OS.

 

[Alan Wynn]

and yet microsoft just had their biggest ever quarter for the Surface product line (over $2B)

Only $1.5 billion according to The Verge, and not their biggest quarter. Down from $1.86 billion in Q2 of FY 2020 according to PC World.

 

[Alan Wynn]

That doesn't help sway MS to play nice with Apple if M1 laptops decimate Surface Pro X.

It would really depend on why Microsoft is building the Surface line. If they see it as a way to push OEMs to adopt new features, it would not be a problem. If they see it as important in its own right, it is an issue.

 

[Alan Wynn]

Nobody said this is about running majority Windows software; it's about wanting to be able to use a Mac; wanting to buy a Mac or Macs for your personal use, family, business or school, but absolutely NEEDING to use one or two or a handful of often very specific and/or custom software packages that ONLY run on Windows.

Less than 1% of Macintosh systems have Bootcamp installed, and less than 5% use Windows under virtualization. For those that need one or two Windows applications, a cloud desktop is probably a better solution than running under a VM that one has to maintain oneself.

Or heck, even WANTING to run a handful of Windows-only apps is a valid reason to wish it would stay possible, it's just a want instead of a NEED.

Now you are talking about an even smaller market. More importantly the question is will that desire prevent them from buying ASi Macintosh systems. If not, in whose financial interest is it to make sure this happens?

In education (for example) there are a ton of crappy old Windows apps that simply aren't ever going to be updated for Mac. Things like Math assessments that teachers need to use. Now, I've already figured out one way around this for now, if we start moving staff to ARMacs - I'll use an existing brute-force MacPro with Parallels running a bunch of auto-launching Windows VMs and then create specific instances of Chrome Remote Desktop (or a similar utility) inside each VM so each teacher can easily remote into their own Windows VM whenever needed.

Sounds like a better solution than requiring every ASi Macintosh system have a well maintained VM with Windows on it, or even worse a Bootcamp partition. Depending on how often they need to be run, a cloud hosted instance would be even nicer as there would be no need to keep it updated at all.

 

[Alan Wynn]

The problem is then that they have not sold the unit. Surely they don't have to activity support other software, but using force or technology to prevent competition is problematic on legal aspects in both USA and EU. And apple take a risk that they might lose that battle, and will have open up not only the Mac but also iphone and ipad for other OS.

You seem to be arguing why it is in Apple’s interest to allow other operating systems to boot, not why it is in Microsoft’s interest.

 

[holmesf]

Apple doesn't add its own instructions to the ARM ISA. If they did, it would be pretty obvious if Apple's compiler started generating instructions that were not part of the published specs. Additionally, the compiler (LLVM) is open-source, so if any non-standard instructions were being used it would show up there.

Actually, they have indeed extended the ISA. But the LLVM compiler doesn't generate these instructions. Various people have found these custom instructions in machine code and reverse engineered them:

RWT Forums - Real World Tech

content overridden

www.realworldtech.com

There’s been a lot of confusion as to what this means, as until now it hadn’t been widely known that Arm architecture licensees were allowed to extend their ISA with custom instructions. We weren’t able to get any confirmation from either Apple or Arm on the matter, but one thing that is clear is that Apple isn’t publicly exposing these new instructions to developers, and they’re not included in Apple’s public compilers. We do know, however, that Apple internally does have compilers available for it, and libraries such as the Accelerate.framework seem to be able to take advantage of AMX. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time or experience to investigate this further for this article.

The Apple iPhone 11, 11 Pro & 11 Pro Max Review: Performance, Battery, & Camera Elevated

www.anandtech.com

 

[BayouTiger]

Parallels uses CPU virtualization. The guest OS (ie: Windows) is still running natively, but within a hardware abstraction layer. That's not quite the same as emulation, where CPU instructions must be translated or interpreted between CPU architectures, which reduces performance.

Or, to put it another way, with Parallels the computer hardware environment is emulated, but not the CPU itself.

Thank you for putting that out there. It is always amazing to me how few understand this premise. I have friends that have told mac users that there is no way they will be successful running certain apps under a VM because “emulation” crushed performance. I’ve had to mmake them understand sometimes, that not only does the VM perform In near real time, but in some cases is even better than a PC because the HW layer is predictable. Add that a VM can be tuned for exactly what is needed for a particular application.

Less than 1% of Macintosh systems have Bootcamp installed, and less than 5% use Windows under virtualization. For those that need one or two Windows applications, a cloud desktop is probably a better solution than running under a VM that one has to maintain oneself.


Sounds like a better solution than requiring every ASi Macintosh system have a well maintained VM with Windows on it, or even worse a Bootcamp partition. Depending on how often they need to be run, a cloud hosted instance would be even nicer as there would be no need to keep it updated at all.

This seems like a very low number to me. I have many, many fellow users that need Windows to run apps that the casual user will never need. It is always frustrating to me that there seems to be an assumption that “nearly” all Mac users are either doing simple Web/Office/Lifestyle apps, or that “nearly” all pros are in media creation as all the Youtubers would have you believe.

Many of us need Windows for very heavy duty apps like Revit or Bluebeam. Even AutoCad is somewhat crippled on the Mac. I also deal with specialized apps for my field that do not have any Mac app available. Many of these can by hoseted in the cloud and I have several employees that use hosted machines on my ESX server for them. BUt there are many of us that use apps that require connection to equipment for programming or data acquisition that can not be done in the cloud.

I deal with lighting and building control systems and very few of these are Mac friendly. Even my tuning software for my track car requires a PC for logging and tuning.

I know it is a pipe dream but I would love to see a PC “accessory” that could connect via TB and allow Windows apps To run. SOme of us that go back decades in the Apple world remember owning Applied Engineering boards that could be installed in our Apple II‘s that contained a Z80 and allowed us to run CP/M to facilitate WordStar and dBase. But back then we couldn’t just toss a 2.5lb laptop in our bag to handle that.

I now carry a 16” MBP with Fusion installed, but I am finding I prefer to carry a Surface Notebook and Ipad Pro. I am thinking that my next approach will be an M1 Mac and another UltraBook. Tedious, but it is not the end of the world. Allows me to carry two relatively inexpensive laptops rather than one that costs nearly $4000. Especially since a lot of my usage is at jobsites where it could wander off.

 

[ani4ani]

deleted

 

[theorist9]

Parallels uses CPU virtualization. The guest OS (ie: Windows) is still running natively, but within a hardware abstraction layer. That's not quite the same as emulation, where CPU instructions must be translated or interpreted between CPU architectures, which reduces performance.

Or, to put it another way, with Parallels the computer hardware environment is emulated, but not the CPU itself.

Thanks for the explanation. I don't understand what the difference is between CPU emulation and hardware emulation, since the CPU is hardware. I'd probably need a more detailed explanation to understand the distinction you're making.

Nevetheless, it seems the bottom line is that Parallels requires a native guest OS installation to operate, and thus we can conclude, from Apple's WWDC demo showing Linux running on AS via Parallels, that Linux must be able to run natively on AS.

 

[theorist9]

Less than 1% of Macintosh systems have Bootcamp installed, and less than 5% use Windows under virtualization.

The installed Mac user base is ~100M, and Parallels says they have 6M users, giving 6% + 1% + (% using VM Fusion) + (% using Virtual Box). So probably closer to 10% than 5% for Windows+Linux (and probably more than 5% for Windows alone). Note also that Virtual Box is free, so it could have a lot of users for that reason alone.

For those that need one or two Windows applications, a cloud desktop is probably a better solution than running under a VM that one has to maintain oneself.

I dunno. When I need to install and use a specific Windows-only program, I find it a lot easier to stay in the Mac environment, using Parallels in Coherence Mode (which is already installed on my machine, along with Windows and Office 365), than to use a virtual Windows desktop.

 

[chucker23n1]

Thanks for the explanation. I don't understand what the difference is between CPU emulation and hardware emulation, since the CPU is hardware. I'd probably need a more detailed explanation to understand the distinction you're making.

Parallels emulates some portions of the hardware that aren't there or aren't there in the expected fashion. For example, you can add multiple network adapters to it even when you only have a single physical one. Or, the OS boots off what it thinks is a hard disk (and perhaps has multiple additional ones available) — but in the host OS, that hard disk is actually just a file containing a disk image.

For performance-critical aspects like the CPU and GPU, though, two things are different from a primitive emulation approach:

• the architecture of host and guest are the same. No translation is necessary; the instruction set is identical.
• the hypervisor (in this case, Parallels) really just configures the physical CPU, telling it to partition its resources into the host OS and one or more guest OSes. After that, Parallels no longer has to act as an intermediary, other than, say, to shut down the VM.

In contrast, something like SoftWindows or Connectix Virtual PC back in the day would literally emulate an entire PC. Every piece of hardware from the sound card to the CPU had to be intermediated and translated to an equivalent that makes sense on the physical hardware.

Nevetheless, it seems the bottom line is that Parallels requires a native guest OS installation to operate, and thus we can conclude, from Apple's WWDC demo showing Linux running on AS via Parallels, that Linux must be able to run natively on AS.

Yes, Apple demo'd an ARM variant of Linux.

 

[DeepIn2U]

This is interesting. I didn’t even know there was an ARM version of Windows.

If I get an M1 MBP, I’ll still have my spiffy new 6-core Intel mini for virtualization, but it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds here.

Spiffy? Does Biff know you’re using his uncle’s name out of context here?
(back 2 the future)

 

[joediianni]

Actually it is up to MS because Apple M1 can run Windows, but the issue is the licensing rights which are totally and 100% only to do with MS, sorry!

My point was the same exact thing could be said for MacOS running on a PC. But Apple won’t allow MacOS to be installed on non-Apple hardware.

 

[Kabeyun]

Spiffy? Does Biff know you’re using his uncle’s name out of context here?
(back 2 the future)

Well played.
Now make like a tree, and get out of here.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Since bootcamp won't run, this is a mute point. Fact is, M1 is going to shut out windows compatibility and Microsoft doesn't give a damn about it at all. Sadly, neither do I. It remains to be seen if the M1 can be made to run windows natively or if hackintosh's can run OS X sorry, OS XI or Big Sur on their machines.. Anything Apple does can easily be exposed and allowed to run on windows PCs. Its been proven then and will be proven again ! I am not a fan of hackintosh, but if the new M1 macs are HIGHER in price compared to the Intel Macs, then this will drive a lot to Hackintosh.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Proof M1 is being used to spy on you and allows Apple and Big Tech to see your every move. Everyone who values freedom should think twice.

Security Researcher Highlights Potential Privacy Concerns on Macs with M1 Chip

Yesterday Apple launched the macOS Big Sur to the general public. The latest macOS arrives with a host of new features. Many users faced issues while downloading and installing macOS Big Sur on their device. A server outage caused the download/install failure, and it also affected the...

www.iphonehacks.com

1984 all over again.

Here is one Mac user who is concerned.. as we all should be as this is the main goal - BIG BROTHER WATCHING YOU.. NO, IBM WASN'T THE ENEMY.. APPLE WAS ALL ALONG !

intosh • 9 days ago • edited
This is the end of the road for me with Macs. Still have a 2015 MBP. Not gonna upgrade hardware, nor software. My next laptop will run a bit of Windows, but mostly Linux.

 

[Macbookprodude]

EXPOSING APPLE'S NEW M1 - A THREAT TO HOW WE USE OUR COMPUTERS.

MacOS Big Sur is spying on everything you do and sending the data to Apple

Apple's latest operating system, macOS Big Sur, uses a new API to constantly send users' data (including how, when, and where a Mac is used) to Apple. This data is transmitted to Apple without encryption, meaning anyone with access to the same network as the Mac can see the information.

www.notebookcheck.net

DEBUNKING M1'S SPEED - Apple is lying.

Apple M1 Chip Performance Claim is FALSE? Macbook Air Does Not Outperform 98% of Laptops, Says Expert

Apple's "One More Thing" event launched the next-generation ARM-based Apple Silicon named the "M1," claiming to be faster than 98% of laptops. Are they right?

www.techtimes.com

 

[senttoschool]

That would instantly make the MacBook one of the most popular Windows machines. It would decimate the Surface line of Microsoft products, especially the Surface Pro X.

99% of the people who buy Surface Pro machines wouldn't know how to install Windows ARM on a Mac.

 

[lostngone]

Proof M1 is being used to spy on you and allows Apple and Big Tech to see your every move. Everyone who values freedom should think twice.

Security Researcher Highlights Potential Privacy Concerns on Macs with M1 Chip

Yesterday Apple launched the macOS Big Sur to the general public. The latest macOS arrives with a host of new features. Many users faced issues while downloading and installing macOS Big Sur on their device. A server outage caused the download/install failure, and it also affected the...

www.iphonehacks.com

1984 all over again.

Here is one Mac user who is concerned.. as we all should be as this is the main goal - BIG BROTHER WATCHING YOU.. NO, IBM WASN'T THE ENEMY.. APPLE WAS ALL ALONG !

But... but... but... Apple are the “good guys” They are only doing this for your protection!