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

[UK-MacAddict]

If Windows support comes I will buy a new Apple Silicone Mac instantly. I like having one machine that does it all I don’t want a separate PC setup.

Since Windows runs on the ARM based Surface Pro X they should boot camp the iPads as well if possible.

 

[SpinThis!]

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.

#3 is going to be an issue on M1 Macs moving forward though. Docker is really only "native" on Linux; when it runs on a Mac, it runs as a lightweight VM on HyperKit. Any Docker images that you want to run on an Apple silicon Mac will also need to be compiled for ARM as well (like Universal binaries) so if you do any sort of development, dev and production aren't going to be exactly the same. When Docker for M1 ships, teams who use both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs are going to find themselves scratching their heads for awhile working out the kinks.

 

[justperry]

6?

Haha..more like 37-40-43-46...I said multiple of 3 so it has to be a number one can divide by three, actual number I don't know exactly, probably about 30-40.

My colleagues and I aren't too happy, they are junk.

 

[UK-MacAddict]

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.

The MS Surface Pro X has an ARM chip. I think that was the first and currently only product running the ARM version of Windows.

 

[deconstruct60]

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.

This isn't about "dual boot" Macs. This is Windows 10 running in a VM image that could be relatively moved various different machines because it is coupled to non physical "machine"/"system".

Windows 10's licensing model is generally that it is tied to a machine. When that machine dies/retires/etc you get another license. It is the dual edge sword of handing out "free upgrades". At some point need to put a cap on it least it is endless cost and only relatively smaller up front revenue.

[ Same for macOS. The revenue is bundled with the system sold. Eventually need to get to new systems to get to another round of funding for those upgrades. ]


Microsoft does cloud instance licensing ( Azure will likely be running Windows on ARM (WoA) instances in volume by next year sometime. ) and enterprise seat like licensing but wide market that isn't what they do.

The iOS footprint are Office365 apps. There is a subscription revenue model there. Don't buy once and get forever upgrades for the compete set of features.

 

[reyesmac]

Sounds like they are throwing some of their users a bone. Wouldnt Microsoft have to pay Apple in some way to run their software on their system? You have to pay to create an App for the mac that wont be treated like some hostile virus. I'm sure getting another operating system on macs with ever increasing security measures is going to be a pretty big task without apples authorization. But if would be cool with me if they did that.

 

[UK-MacAddict]

The biggest buyer of surface machines is Microsoft. everyone else is small.

From my experience with them the Surface Pro tablets are very good.

 

[deconstruct60]

The MS Surface Pro X has an ARM chip. I think that was the first and currently only product running the ARM version of Windows.

No.

2018
" ... The Arm64 apps are designed for the Windows 10 on Arm convertibles like the new Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS and Samsung's Galaxy Book2. ..."
https://www.zdnet.com/article/windo...xpect-to-see-better-apps-soon-says-microsoft/

2019
" ... SQ1: October 2, 2019; "

Surface Pro X - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The 2018 models had a straight from a smartphone SoC in them so not many folks liked them for the performance, but they did exist before Surface X Pro. Surface X Pro is might be the first "ARM built for Windows" implementations. ( but still really a partially tweaked smartphone processor with clock bumps. )

 

[justperry]

The MS Surface Pro X has an ARM chip. I think that was the first and currently only product running the ARM version of Windows.

Are you sure?
My company got *them a couple of months ago, Intel i5 inside.

*Crap

 

[joediianni]

This sounds like a PC user saying allowing MacOS on non-Apple HW is “up to Apple”. In my opinion that’s kind of a lame duck response on Apple’s part. Maybe they could get onboard with building emulation if they were so focused on taking over the universe and doing everything in a silo.

 

[ph001bi]

The MS Surface Pro X has an ARM chip. I think that was the first and currently only product running the ARM version of Windows.

There has been Windows on Arm machines for 2 years now. The first ones(HP Envy X2 and Asus NovaGo) used to run on Snapdragon 835 and were dead slow, then the Lenovo C630 and Samsung Galaxy Book 2 ran on Snapdragon 850 (A laptop version of the 845) and now some run on the Qualcomm 8CX (Samsung Galaxy Book S) or 8CX2 (Lenovo Yoga 5G) The First surface X ran on a CPU called SQ1 (a CX8 with a ML core added), the current Surface X runs on the SQ2 (an 8CX2 with the same ML core)

 

[UK-MacAddict]

Are you sure?
My company got *them a couple of months ago, Intel i5 inside.

*Crap

They are likely the Surface Pro 7 which has Intel i5 and i7 chips.

 

[UK-MacAddict]

There has been Windows on Arm machines for 2 years now. The first ones(HP Envy X2 and Asus NovaGo) used to run on Snapdragon 835 and were dead slow, then the Lenovo C630 and Samsung Galaxy Book 2 ran on Snapdragon 850 (A laptop version of the 845) and now some run on the Qualcomm 8CX (Samsung Galaxy Book S) or 8CX2 (Lenovo Yoga 5G) The First surface X ran on a CPU called SQ1 (a CX8 with a ML core added), the current Surface X runs on the SQ2 (an 8CX2 with the same ML core)

Yea someone else pointed this out as well. I don’t follow the Windows side of things too often. First I heard of ARM Windows was the Surface Pro X.

 

[ruka.snow]

#3 is going to be an issue on M1 Macs moving forward though. Docker is really only "native" on Linux; when it runs on a Mac, it runs as a lightweight VM on HyperKit. Any Docker images that you want to run on an Apple silicon Mac will also need to be compiled for ARM as well (like Universal binaries) so if you do any sort of development, dev and production aren't going to be exactly the same. When Docker for M1 ships, teams who use both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs are going to find themselves scratching their heads for awhile working out the kinks.

We have been building docker images for ARM and X86 and those images are going up onto different environments as your dev machine regardless. Often we build and shove the image up on ECS or ECS Fargate, no buggers are given what processor that is.

 

[KPOM]

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.

Another possible motivation is that if it works well, it could prompt Qualcomm, NVIDIA, et. al. to design better chips for running Windows to make it less dependent on Intel and allow for more flexible designs. I'm sure Microsoft has Windows running on M1 MacBooks as we speak, evaluating their performance.

 

[dontwalkhand]

I need run x86 windows not the half baked ARM windows. Without that, no ARM mac's for me.

ARM Windows runs x86 apps, look at the Surface Pro X.

 

[ph001bi]

Yea someone else pointed this out as well. I don’t follow the Windows side of things too often. First I heard of ARM Windows was the Surface Pro X.

They're one of the few interesting development on the Windows side in years. Having said that, performance wise even the SQ2 is still less powerful than an A12Z so they have a way to go before making an impact.

 

[deconstruct60]

Sounds like they are throwing some of their users a bone. Wouldnt Microsoft have to pay Apple in some way to run their software on their system?

Run inside a virtual machine? No. Not any more than a user would have to pay Apple to enter words into a Word Processor to write a novel. Pragmatically It is data running inside a program.

If there was some firmware modification that Apple had to make to enable Microsoft to boot "raw" on the hardware, then maybe. Or fees for Apple OS crypto-signature service or something along those lines.

You have to pay to create an App for the mac that wont be treated like some hostile virus.

The software vendor of the virtual machine that leverages Apple's hypervisor subsystem that Windows runs on would have to pay. If Microsoft wanted to get into the Mac virtual machine software business they could pay. They kind of sort of play that role on Windows but also don't in some ways. There are HyperV services built into some of the Windows versions, but Microsoft doesn't sell that as an application.

" HyperV for macOS " .... I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

I'm sure getting another operating system on macs with ever increasing security measures is going to be a pretty big task without apples authorization. But if would be cool with me if they did that.

Nope. Beause won't run directly on the Mac so won't have direct access to the hardware ... so Apple low level security measures not impinged on at ll. macOS kernel in charge all the time in "read only" mode. Good luck getting in.

 

[KPOM]

Are you sure?
My company got *them a couple of months ago, Intel i5 inside.

*Crap

The Surface Pro 7 has Intel chips. The Surface Pro X has a Qualcomm chip.

 

[JeepGuy]

Except these aren’t the windows you’re looking for. MS has a lot of work to do still.

Exactly, ARM Windows, and x86 Windows are completely different beasts, there is a lot of software that has not been ported over, especially CAD/CAM, even MS Access, MS project and Visio don't have a ARM version.

 

[Moyapilot]

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

Yup, the Surface laptops are awesome. Look at their design next to the MBA and you’ll see which is outdated. The M1 changes things inside, but the Surface laptops with future AMD and Intel chips will still be fantastic.

Back on topic...I don’t see Microsoft doing Apple a massive favour and doing this. It would be a huge development cost and only strengthen Apples monopolization further. I know MS is no holier either, all these megacorps are the same, they want to take over the entire world. MS would be killing off their PC partners if they did this. Lenovo, Dell, HP, their own Surface line etc.

 

[deconstruct60]

This sounds like a PC user saying allowing MacOS on non-Apple HW is “up to Apple”. In my opinion that’s kind of a lame duck response on Apple’s part. Maybe they could get onboard with building emulation if they were so focused on taking over the universe and doing everything in a silo.

Apple has built a hypervisor infrastructure into macOS. It has actually been there for several years at this point with most folks not paying attention to it.
For a couple of years users have been able to leverage this as a service on top of Anka in the Macstadium "cloud".

" ...

Anka Hypervisor​

The core of the Anka toolset is a native macOS hypervisor that leverages Apple’s macOS hypervisor.framework for virtualization. This hypervisor includes PV network and disk drivers that are required for operations inside the Anka VMs. ... "

https://www.macstadium.com/anka

What Apple is doing with M-series silicon is two things.

First, Pushing VMWare Fusion and Parallels to also jump onto this system library service. It is now the "only path" to virtualiztaion on macOS on ARM.

Second, (where they are being somewhat "lame duck" ) is they are detaching the GPU and direct hardware interaction in their solution. So no paravirtualization or sophisticated IO-MMU "pass through" to isolated hardware that some of the more advanced HyperVisors provide.

That part is much less work for Apple. If Apple's hypervisor passed through a hardware virtual 'slice' of the iGPU then yeah Apple would be on the hook for driver support. Here they do a giant "punt" but by passing the load off to the VM software vendors to build a GPU emulation interface for Windows to attached to. all circa hypervisor features from 4-6 years ago. [ Not sure how much Apple borrowed from FreeBSD Bhyve but similar scope of following the modern evolution of Hypervisors .... not a large amount. ]

 

[DrV]

#3 is going to be an issue on M1 Macs moving forward though. Docker is really only "native" on Linux; when it runs on a Mac, it runs as a lightweight VM on HyperKit. Any Docker images that you want to run on an Apple silicon Mac will also need to be compiled for ARM as well (like Universal binaries) so if you do any sort of development, dev and production aren't going to be exactly the same. When Docker for M1 ships, teams who use both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs are going to find themselves scratching their heads for awhile working out the kinks.

I agree.

However, I was referring to the desktop use of Docker to replace (other) Linux VMs. For example, I have different versions of different Linux-based toolchains in containers. Before Docker, I needed to have a VM for each toolchain. And as long as the sw is relatively standard Linux software, ‘docker build’ is all you need.

Of course, there are pieces of software tightly bound to x86/x64 even in Linux. YMMV, but mine has been quite good.

 

[DrV]

I said they may have. As in it's technically possible and there's nothing stopping them. I have no idea if they have or not, but the point is it wouldn't stop Windows from running (unless it was compiled for some other implementation of ARM which did have custom instructions).

I do apologize. I did not mean to say you implied anything. Your words just let me wonder if and if yes then why.

However, even if you had said Apple extended the instruction set, you would probably have been right. And yes, there is evidence.

It seems that there are a bunch of AMX instructions; wide vector and matrix calculation instructions which may actually be carried out by the GPU, and which are probably intended for machine learning.

These additional instructions are not publicly documented (apart from their existence), and only Apple internal tools (not the standard clang et al.) produce code with these instructions.

It seems that ARM is nowadays more flexible and allows custom extensions within certain limits.

Another funny thing is that it is difficult to find the actual version of the instruction set. Some sources claim it is ARMv8.2-A, but that is most probably wrong. There are even some mentions about ARMv8.6-A, but ARMv8.4-A is the most likely candidate.

 

[novakk86]

Microsoft it is up to you to get on the stick and release native M1 Chip apps and Windows for the new Apple computers. Time will tell. Good to know Macs can run Windows if Microsoft licenses them to do it.

Windows on arm is a bad comedy. You would have more use of an Android.... Even FreeBSD.

Microsoft it is up to you to get on the stick and release native M1 Chip apps and Windows for the new Apple computers. Time will tell. Good to know Macs can run Windows if Microsoft licenses them to do it.