False
Sadly the company I work for bought a multiple of 3 of those crap machines.
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Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'
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Sadly the company I work for bought a multiple of 3 of those crap machines.
If Microsoft isn't interested, then some enterprising soul might be able to find the company that bought the rights to SoftWindows (which died when BootCamp was released), and if they still have the source code then you would have an application that let you install Windows 95 and translating everything to PowerPC code. Taking that and make it run on a 64 bit ARM processor and make it use Windows 10 should not be _too_ hard. Should be doable for a few million dollars.
Now whether anyone is interested and sees this as a way to make money is a different matter.
Now whether anyone is interested and sees this as a way to make money is a different matter.
The biggest buyer of surface machines is Microsoft. everyone else is small.
Crossover is great, but not all Windows apps will work using Crossover.
Would ARm windows run on a M1 with “just” new drivers? I’m not sure, as M1 design is Apple unique but using Arm instruction set...
Microsoft clearly has an interest in the Mac community as they release Office for Mac...
Microsoft clearly has an interest in the Mac community as they release Office for Mac...
It’s going to take Microsoft a while to do this but ever since Steve Ballbag left (hot though he is) they’re cool enough to do it. The limitation is - there’s no way apple would have involved them early on in the process. My guess is they’ve had sample Apple Silicon for around a year tops. I am sure they are getting on with this because
1) it makes sense commercially and for the dev community many of whose use macs, and
2) the more they get experience with ARM architecture the better - and it is in their best interests to push themselves here!
1) it makes sense commercially and for the dev community many of whose use macs, and
2) the more they get experience with ARM architecture the better - and it is in their best interests to push themselves here!
There are already ARM versions of Windows. The problem is, ARM isn't like x86, where mostly anything for it will work across most hardware. They'd have to make a version specifically for the M1.
Doubtful they'd run on the M1 Macs. Those games would be x64/x86 binary, complied to run on Intel processors. If you had an x86 emulator, it would probably run pretty slow.
Which won't let you run Windows because Windows for ARM is not available to end-users.
Both Apple and Microsoft need to work together to bring Windows to market that can boot on the M1 machines.
The M1 based macs are not booting the same way as a run of the mill PC clone anymore, in fact they need boot code that's signed by Apple.
Even when skipping over the need to boot, a Windows copy compiled to run on ARM based machines is not going to have what it takes to make use of the entire Apple Silicon based mac (it's not enough to have ARM code, you also need to use the M1's GPUs, the M1's neural engine, all of the management of the system, etc. to make full use of the hardware capabilities the machine offers.
Even what Crossover does is only short term: it relies on the abilities of rosetta 2 - and that's unlikely to survive more than a few years after the last mac was sold using an Intel CPU before macOS goes fully Apple Silicon native as it's just a means to power through the transition, not a permanent solution.
In short I see this more as Apple stretching out a hand to MSFT to try to pull them in the bath and work together on what comes after bootcamp. But for MSFT to do that, MSFT will have a hard time selling the move to the likes of HP and DELL etc. who'll have a huge competitive disadvantage as they will not have access to the Apple M1 productline now nor in the future. And no other CPU comes even remotely close to the M1 at this time.
So in the end Apple is a hardware company and they told MSFT to play by their rules now, if they want to run on their hardware. They can do it simply because of how much more advanced the hardware is compared to the "standard" components used in the wintel world.
As a user: go without windows if you can. It'll make your life _much_ easier - I have -.
The M1 based macs are not booting the same way as a run of the mill PC clone anymore, in fact they need boot code that's signed by Apple.
Even when skipping over the need to boot, a Windows copy compiled to run on ARM based machines is not going to have what it takes to make use of the entire Apple Silicon based mac (it's not enough to have ARM code, you also need to use the M1's GPUs, the M1's neural engine, all of the management of the system, etc. to make full use of the hardware capabilities the machine offers.
Even what Crossover does is only short term: it relies on the abilities of rosetta 2 - and that's unlikely to survive more than a few years after the last mac was sold using an Intel CPU before macOS goes fully Apple Silicon native as it's just a means to power through the transition, not a permanent solution.
In short I see this more as Apple stretching out a hand to MSFT to try to pull them in the bath and work together on what comes after bootcamp. But for MSFT to do that, MSFT will have a hard time selling the move to the likes of HP and DELL etc. who'll have a huge competitive disadvantage as they will not have access to the Apple M1 productline now nor in the future. And no other CPU comes even remotely close to the M1 at this time.
So in the end Apple is a hardware company and they told MSFT to play by their rules now, if they want to run on their hardware. They can do it simply because of how much more advanced the hardware is compared to the "standard" components used in the wintel world.
As a user: go without windows if you can. It'll make your life _much_ easier - I have -.
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This is actually incorrect. Apple's CPUs support the full ARM instruction set. They may have added their own, but that doesn't mean Windows wouldn't work. Standard ARM is a subset of Apple's ARM, so anything that will run on it will run on Apple machines. That's why Parallels is able to virtualise standard ARM Linux distros on M1 Macs.
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.
Yeah, this is exactly what so many of us have been worried about. It's easy for Mac fanboys to decry any need to run Windows at full speed, but that's just not the real world for so many people. For many persons in my circle, both personal and professional, the ability to run Windows was in fact KEY to their ability to switch to Mac, period. Unless they wanted to lug two systems around all the time, which let's be real, the majority of people don't want to do.
I certainly hope that the murmuring we've been hearing about Microsoft getting off their arse and actually making a good version of Windows for ARM is true.
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Careful. Apple's CPUs dropped support for 32 bit applications completely. For good reason, it's probably good for 10% to 15% additional speed, but 32 bit support is gone. I wouldn't make any guesses what ARM code is running on Windows ARM.
There is a WWDC session about booting - nothing is locked down.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
I agree. M1 Macs lose the dual-OS flexibility and that can be a deal breaker for some.
I really don't know if the Windows-on-Mac market is big enough to warrant Microsoft doing this work, but I hope so.
These Macs are so powerful, that even many Rosetta2 apps run faster than native Intel, which is absolutely incredible.
For my part I use a company-issued Windows machine for work; all my Apple hardware is for personal use. And we've officially gotten to the point where the Apple hardware exceeds my ability to severely tax the hardware in any way.
I want native Linux on this, please.
Unfortunately, Apple is not very good at documenting their stuff, so Intel Macs with T2 are a sad story last I've had a look (not for Secure Boot — T2 is the sound chip too, and all hardware monitoring is done with it too).
Unfortunately, Apple is not very good at documenting their stuff, so Intel Macs with T2 are a sad story last I've had a look (not for Secure Boot — T2 is the sound chip too, and all hardware monitoring is done with it too).
Microsoft will do this eventually, don't think they are looking at Apple and salivating of the thought that their Surface line can get this type of efficiency with their own products. People need to just realize that while x86 is dominant, there will always be change, and this is the next big change that will allow devices to have longer more efficient battery life, in an ever evolving digital world. With more Cloud computing and advancement in the field, the lines begin to blur. Gaming? Cloud is where its at ... 5G and 6G will help with on the go ... this is the right direction.
I don't think Apple's somewhat nebulous response there is really about what you think they were talking about.
Apple is saying they have their hypervisor there and Microsoft needs to certify/enable licenses that will run on top of Apple's hypervisor.
I suspect more than a few in this thread read that as "Oh yeah there is documented , open access (welcome to apple proprietary secure boot firmware sign out front) , raw security boot here. . Microsoft , will crypto sign (and/or verify ) your OS and put you up on the boot options screen. " I don't think Apple was talking about that. Hence, not particularly talking about Windows 10 where there is some particularly heavyweight 3D graphics bandwidth overhead.
"Windows running natively" on M1 more so means that Windows 10 core is running on ARM. Not necessarily that they are jumped onto the processor exclusively from macOS ( that is technically more so boot, not "running". ) .
The preceeding Linux examples were about VMs.
"... Federighi pointed out that the M1 Macs do use a virtualization framework that supports products like Parallels or VMWare, but he acknowledged that these would typically virtualize other ARM operating systems. ..."
Some folks run Solidworks on VMware Fusion or Parallels , but more than few when talking about "Windows 10 + Solidworks" are talking the whole x86_64 Mac in a substantively different operating mode.
Apple's ARM is a subset of standard ARM. Apple has an ISA ARM license which basically means they get to use (and build on top of) the ARM instruction set. No doubt Apple's added onto it though (much like Intel chips add on SSE, VMX, VT-X, etc) so to take full advantage of the chips, you'd want to recompile. But the "basics" would probably work.
The only problem is drivers. Apple now is in complete control of them. Virtualization like Parallels / VMWare are running native code and tapping into Apple's display drivers—they've basically virtualized the display driver that the guest OS sees.
Unless Apple supplies drivers, like they do with BootCamp, "native" dual booting Linux/Windows probably won't happen for quite some time unless someone figure out a way to work it out. And of course There's also that pesky SecureBoot.
Windows on ARM apparently now supports 64 Bit emulation. I wouldn't make any guesses as to how ARM would even run the M1 either but I'm sure someone at Microsoft is having a play.
At this point it is not just documentation. More than pretty good chance there is no UEFI there at all or any path other than Apple signed software to a raw hardware boot. The boot handoff process and backchannel low level calls would be different than on other ARM UEFI/Linux systems.
Apple is willing to throw a virtual machine interface at other operating systems. ( with a spun out virtualized UEFI emulation layer to it) That is really what is being discussions in these session with the Apple execs.
"... Federighi pointed out that the M1 Macs do use a virtualization framework that supports products like Parallels or VMWare, but he acknowledged that these would typically virtualize other ARM operating systems. ..."
Apple's secure enclave is mixed into that unified memory (and system cache) too.
and yet microsoft just had their biggest ever quarter for the Surface product line (over $2B)
Or Connectix with Virtual PC. Whatever happened to them? Oh yeah, Microsoft bought them and that was the end of that
.