I need run x86 windows not the half baked ARM windows. Without that, no ARM mac's for me.
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Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'
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For those who say that it doesn’t matter because Apple only has 10% of marketshare: having a big portion of the cake doesn’t make you inmune to big improvements. Maybe the balance doesn’t tilt when you competitor is just a bit better than you, but it will be (it is) embarrassing to sell computers with half the battery life, half the speed and fans at the same price than Apple. It’s not sustainable on the long term, and we will definitely see Windows on ARM as the mainstream way, sooner than later.
if Windows is sitting on top of a virtual machine then that VM can present a virtual GPU to the OS. That could be a generic, lowest common denominator GPU. Windows 10 has to interact with various virtual machine presentated virtual devices on other platforms.
The virtual GPU would translate the GPU calls made to it to GPU calls made to Apple's GPU. Apple wouldn't have to do any drivers at all to the GPU.
There could be funky and/or proprietary trackpad or touchbar or etc features that are not found in a standard virtual machine's presented interface. Those would need Apple drivers if there were "passed through" the VM interface and presented "raw" to the OS image being hosted. But almost all basic function (mouse , keyboard , etc. ) could be emulated.
That just isn't going to result in max performance.
Apple needed to do drivers when they were letting Windows run "raw" on the hardware outside a virtual machine. That is basically a no fly zone. ( So said in previous interview shortly after WWDC 2020. )
Just out of curiosity, Is there actually any evidence or hint pointing to the possibility of Apple having instruction set extensions beyond ARMv8.2?
I would think they have kept the instruction set intact, as there are other ways of extending the functionality (coprocessor integration). Standard instruction set helps a lot with compiler development, for example.
OTOH, it is Apple, so you never know...
That doesn't help sway MS to play nice with Apple if M1 laptops decimate Surface Pro X.
That would be the only commercial reason not to release Windows on ARM for retail sale. Otherwise, why not let Apple Silicon owners spend more money to buy Windows?
I agree, and I pray they do it. There are times when I need to run Windows and having it on my Mac as an app was a major relief.
Hence Federighi’s point that it’s up to Microsoft. Parallels and VMWare are just using Big Sur’s hypervisor and putting their own front ends on it.
Microsoft will only build an ARM version for the M1 if they feel there is demand for windows based applications. MS Office has always been hugely popular with many Mac users BUT I am sure the number crunchers at Microsoft will have been already hard at work looking at the number of Windows installed on Intel Macs and the number of Microsoft applications being used on Macs because those Mac users will be the ones who would be installing Windows and Windows applications on to their M1. These figures are important because it will tell Microsoft if it is worth investing the time and money into making Windows ARM and Windows ARM applications. If the projections come back that not enough Windows installs and applications will make it worthwhile for Microsoft to spend time and probably millions on developing Windows for M1 Mac's then they wont.
Which is the MAJORITY OF THE WORLD. Yes, even in the US, where Macs have a decent user base it is only about 15%, so Windows is still the most used OS for both professional and personal computers in the US. In the creative fields, where MacOS is well appreciated Apple enjoys only 29% of total users, and in Gaming Microsoft crushes with a whopping 97%.
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I need windows because of the years of backwards compatibility it brings. The fact you can run 32 bir apps. The fact you can run highly useful but old software that you may have had back till the windows 95 days.
Getting a version of windows running on m1 which can do all this would be great.
Windows which can run steam and a fairly hefty library of windows games would be pretty good too.
Getting a version of windows running on m1 which can do all this would be great.
Windows which can run steam and a fairly hefty library of windows games would be pretty good too.
It is really unlikely. Why would Apple support booting to Linux?
The demand is small in any case for several reasons:
1. Apple Silicon is designed for highly efficient virtualization which makes virtual Linux instances very fast.
2. A lot of traditional Linux tools are available as native MacOS applications, which may make even the virtual Linux unnecessary.
3. If you need a single Linux tool, you may run it in Docker.
As a personal experience, I used to have a Linux VM running all the time. During the last years I have started it more and more seldom because of reasons 2 and 3 above.
One could understand their reluctance, I suppose. But I very much doubt they expected this kind of leap in performance. I'm sure they're pondering things in a very new light now. Maybe not a more favorable light.
In 2021 Intel will roll out Adler Lake ( probably gen12 ) CPU SoC with 4-8 big cores and 4-8 smaller cores. If they get the right updates weaved into Windows to do effective load balancing out of the small cores when the workload is low then that should substantively shrink the battery life gap substantially.
Light workloads , the target Adler lake goal can cut a Gen 11 (tigher Lake) consumption almost in half (40-50% range in some cases ). Chop down the video decode/encode and Zoom calls get longer without big primary processor cores being much different.
( Intel could pull it off since a major portion here is software and getting cooperation from Microsoft.... which has Intel SurfaceBooks. It isn't solely based on fab tech that is stuck. ) Are they going to match M1 (and M1-variants coming later in the year)? Probably not but all Intel has to do shrink the gap enough and point to "continuity" of the software stack for end users to retain a large fraction of the users. Most users aren't upgrading ( most users are generally on much longer upgrade cycles now so that also blunts the short term impact M1 Macs will have. )
It isn't a slam dunk for ARM. Pretty likely there will be come Cortex-X derivaties show up, but the C8X solutions now just aren't competitive if needs substantive "horsepower". Yeah get longer battery but somewhat "slow".
The other ARM implementations will have to deliver for ARM to go mainstream. So far that isn't happening. Qualcomm is dabbling at it, but not in with boot feet and full effort. Cortex-X1 will likely be better but still ( and a door that Microsoft could go through directly themselves ... pragmatically get a custom solution from ARM instead of Qualcomm. ) .
So what currently happens if you try to boot the ARM version of Windows from UUP Dump on the M1? Has anyone tried this?
I have it running on my Raspberry Pi 4, poorly mind you.
I have it running on my Raspberry Pi 4, poorly mind you.
Linux is not new to pre-UEFI boot schemes on ARM. UEFI on ARM is a new kid on the block, in fact, judging by the adoption rate.
Microsoft already has an x86-on-ARM emulator, though. The easiest path for them would be to take Windows on ARM (which comes with that emulator) and make it run well inside Parallels and/or VMware. Whether they want to or can, licensing-wise, is another question. (I'm guessing yes and yes.)
Well, Microsoft mainly bought them for virtualization expertise to get a headstart on Hyper-V (competing with VMware) and Azure.Or Connectix with Virtual PC. Whatever happened to them? Oh yeah, Microsoft bought them and that was the end of that
You can still see the ancestry in the UI, if you squint:
I don’t really see a downside for Microsoft here. In the same way that they’ve been eager to maintain their iOS footprint, maintaining a version of Windows for dual-boot Macs is ultimately beneficial to their installation numbers.
I've been saying this all along! Apple WANTS Windows users to switch to Mac. The Codeweavers CrossOver WINE solution seems like it works REALLY well for Apple Silicon despite target apps being translated three times over. But, Apple is not going to stand in the way of Windows on Mac use after 15 years of "our Macs can run Windows too"!
Apple's approach to modern secure boot is not "pre UEFI". It is closer to being "post UEFI". UEFI was not secure enough, so they left it behind. Apple has Apple Silicon opcodes to turn the kernel "read only" after loading. etc. etc.
And without the UEFI stack Linux arm didn't have the broad card/peripheral boot driver stacks aligned. ARM in the Data Center has been coming "real soon now" for 5-6 years. A substation portion was deep customizations to the runtime environment and dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's on driver support. Being booted up and running with a narrow stack wasn't getting deep traction.
Ignorance is bliss, as the old saying goes.