I despise Parallels. Nearly every new MacOS version breaks it, so it's effectively subscription software you have to buy every year if you want to stay current on MacOS. I'd much rather Microsoft roll their own self contained product for this.
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Microsoft Brings x64 Emulation to Windows on Arm PCs
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This is more important for virtualization (e.g. VMWare, Parallel, VirtualBox) than for people wanting to run random Windows apps (e.g. Solitaire) on M1.
And yet Microsoft has a Mac Business Unit with a large staff and marketing budget. Guess they must not understand they are not making any money.
As I noted in another post, given that Microsoft already develops Windows on Arm, the driver and integration team required to support this product could be quite small. Based on estimates of only 5%, profits could be in the range of $80.
Microsoft must be no where near as smart as you are, as they spent a fair amount of money porting Office to iOS and iPadOS, especially since “practically nobody“ uses it. You should probably contact Mr. Nadella and let him know how much money his company is wasting.
That is amazing. According to Gartner and IDC the worldwide PC market was between 261.2 million and 266.69 million. That would mean that Dell shipped between 97.49% and 99.54% of all PCs sold.
According to IDC, here were the rankings for 2019:
- Lenovo (64.768 million)
- HP (62.908 million)
- Dell (46.545 million just a tad under your 260 million number)
- Apple (17.684 million)
- Acer (17.029 million)
1. This just seems incoherent and off topic?
2. You can use spotlight + finder to search on the Mac. Why do you say you use terminal? Just click the search in the top right of the finder window you can just search the subfolders of the current place you are looking. Spotlight is generally considered much better then windows search. It seems you just don't know how to use it properly.
3. How does a broken keyboard relate to Mac OS?
4. Maybe you write code but you cant find the search box in finder? and know how to make it only search the current directory? Seems a bit strange but I guess it can happen.
Those “old shell” M1 Macs are just the step in a 2 year transition plan. By using the existing form for these low end Macs, they are able to highlight how much of an impact the new chips have without confusing the message with a new design. It also makes the M1 Macs seem less of a risk for buyers as they look just like the familiar Macs. They may do something similar for the larger MacBook Pros and iMac or they may go ahead and introduce the new designs that have been rumored. Imagine new laptops with M-series chips and all new enclosures and with modern cameras and inputs? Keep an eye out for these in the next 6 to 12 months.
I expected hardware acceleration and/or instruction set extensions, but has there been any confirmation of that?
Can you provide a citation for this? I have spent quite a bit of time trying to verify this.
My understanding is it is much faster because of things like implementing retain/release in hardware (making reference counting so much faster) that Apple able to do because they controlled all aspects of the process.
Without a license from Intel or AMD Apple is not allowed to build any x86 instruction set into a chip.
Intel owns the rights to the 32 bit code and has licensed only AMD to use it.
AMD owns the rights to the 64 bit code and has licensed only Intel to use it.
In short: they made a deal together.
As far as I know nobody else is licensed. Where did you get your 'intel' from?
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Again, the port is done - Windows ARM is available for ARMv8-A devices just like it is available for x86 and x64 devices. I am not arguing the hardness of such a port because it is existing and maintained.
My second argument was about the drivers - which Microsoft never provides for a particular HW - does not matter if this HW is ARM based or x86/x64 based.
This has several reasons - among others is that certain HW implementation details needed for writing a driver are considered secrets.
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You seem to be fixated on a very narrow definition of “port” (fixing and recompiling the hardware independent parts to ensure true independence). I am using an equally valid but more expansive definition (everything that is needed to ensure that it runs on a particular hardware platform). However, since you cannot get past your definition, I will use a different word: package. Someone needs to package Microsoft’s Arm-based Windows version with its drivers and any other changes that might be needed to ensure maximum performance, and do the QA to ensure it all works.
Again, I guess it really depends on your definition of “provides”. It is possible that Microsoft might not write any drivers (they certainly used to write some of them, but I have not really kept up on their current policies), but given that one can buy various computers from Microsoft, I am pretty sure that they come actually working and that it is not like the bad old days where before one can start using one’s brand new Surface Book RT one first has to insert a floppy with all the drivers for the sound interface, the SSD, etc., in addition, if I start with most new systems (even those I build myself), I rarely need to download new drivers or install them from other media. Most are included in the install package provided by Microsoft to the end user installing the software. You can argue all you want that they did not really provide them, but as the end user, any problems I have with the standard drivers are going to go to Microsoft support not to Qualcomm, etc.
In this case, whoever packages Windows for Apple Silicon will be responsible for writing, getting someone else to write or including the drivers needed to make a complete package. If the consumer told: Download this from place 1, then this from place 2, then this from place 3, and so on, they will sell about 5 copies of this software.
It may not be Microsoft who does the packaging, but I am pretty sure it is not going to be Apple this time.
1. For you maybe not , I used both and related to topic. I want to test .NET core(MACOS) and sql server docker when I can test on the shop if available.
2. Spotlight and Windows search are the worst enemy of ram. On Windows, I limited to certain part so as spotlight.
3. As mention, I used a lot of laptop before which mean 1 year the keyboard are broken. Movin' to MACOS platform thinking the keyboard seem alternative as windows vendor laptop counterpart. For me, MacBook keyboard 2011 laptop is superb and the one the most reason I don't want to sell it. Keyboard is the main important for me, next ram the last storage.
Why would Microsoft be releasing a hypervisor for macOS? Microsoft makes their own hardware that competes with Macs. Making a hypervisor that runs Windows on macOS is counterproductive for their own hardware.
Wine doesn’t emulate one architecture on another architecture. Wine runs Windows applications written for the Intel architecture under macOS (or Linux) also written for the Intel architecture.
Both Rosetta 2 and original Rosetta are emulators that allow software written for one architecture to run on another architecture.
I am not suggesting that they should, but they would do it because they decided it will make them money. Exactly the same reason they release other software for macOS and iOS/iPadOS.
Their Hypervisor already runs on hardware that already competes with theirs, so there is a clear precedent.
Wine/Crossover translates Windows ABI calls to native OS calls, sometimes using shims to work out differences. Similar to a translator. Since it is not emulating code, all the native OS calls run at full speed and the non-System calls from the original application also run at native speed, it is only the shims that slow things down (and the fact that the code was not optimized for the native platform).
Neither is an emulator. Both are binary translators. Basically, they treat the binary as if it was an intermediate language. I am curious how Rosetta would work on a Wine/Crossover app.
Spotlight uses very little RAM, its indexes take up disk space, but are quite efficient. I know little about the current state of Windows search, but I do know that I do not need to resort to a terminal window to find a file on macOS.
I have no idea at all what you are trying to say here. I will say that the quality of your keyboard seems to have little to do with the topic of this thread, Microsoft’s support of x86_64 applications on their Windows on Arm systems. Again, it might make complete sense to you in your native language, it is incomprehensible in English. (BTW, to answer a question that you asked in an earlier post: ESL is an acronym for English as a Second Language.)
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Not sure i would refer to "package" as "porting" but whatever floats your boat.
It is important to use the right terms, because as far as porting of the OS is concerned (including maintenance and feature enhancements), it would be clearly Microsoft's task - but as we concluded, thats done.
This should give you an important insight. For the Surface line of devices Microsoft is at the same time the OEM. So indeed PC OEMs are responsible to configure Windows including all necessary drivers from 3rd parties. It is really not Microsoft who configures Windows for a certain PC unless it is a Surface device.
Likewise, if you buy an NVidia GPU and put it in your PC, it is up to NVidia to deliver the driver to you. If something is not working with your GPU, you can call Microsoft support all day long - they cannot help you.
And if your Dell laptop is not working...you better call Dell support.
If Apple intents to provide their users with access to Windows, it would be clearly Apple as OEM to provide necessary drivers in the first place. But as you mentioned - this is unlikely. Second option would be the developer of the virtualization solution like Parallels - much more likely.
While we are the topic of licensing, i am sure, that if your company has a Windows enterprise license, this would already cover Windows ARM.
We get it. You are still fixated on this. Call it what ever it is you want. Completely unimportant to me, since you and everyone participating in this discussion, understands what is being discussed.
Here was your original quote:
You made an absolute statement which is clearly wrong. It is not just wrong for the case of the Microsoft’s hardware, it is wrong for much of what is considered standard drivers: USB HIL, basic graphics, basic audio, CD/DVD/SATA drivers, and many more. There are certainly specialized drivers, but most drivers an average system needs are provided by Microsoft.
That you are able to come up with an example of a driver that one would need to get from a third party does not change that there are many drivers provided by Microsoft.
If the drivers provided by Microsoft do not work, users call Microsoft. As you would say, good luck getting support from a hardware vendor with a retail copy of Windows.
Apple has made it clear they do not intend to do that. The question being discussed is if Microsoft intends to do it or if they will work with a virtualization company to do it.
I think it is about 50/50 that Microsoft will do it themselves, but I guess we will have to wait and see.
On what basis do you make this claim? We have seen no evidence that this is true and no one other than you has asserted this. If you have a citation that supports this, please provide it.
How is it related to the topic? Be specific.
What shop? Give some context.
Spotlight uses very little ram actually. Seems you are remembering incorrectly.
MacOS is the software. Mac is the hardware platform. MacOS runs on desktop computers too like MacMini or Mac Pro. Or even hackintosh.
In those cases an external keyboard would be used and not necessarily an Apple one. You are conflating hardware and software.
In what way does Windows 10 on Arm not solve the problem? It’s full Windows running on Arm. Emulation doesn’t solve the real issue here which is why MS are less enthusiastic at implementing it. It’s no coincidence that they waited for the M1 to be released, without Apple making Arm mainstream, lack of emulation was the only thing driving native Arm development on Windows, so was a good idea to hold off. Now that Apple have got on board with Arm developers will get the message and start moving, this leans emulation will no longer stall that process.
In what way? Dotnet apps are very easy to port and universal apps would already work. MS have all kinds of developer support it’s the lack of developer desire that’s the issue. As a dev why would you have thought Arm would work this time until Apple made the move? It’s easy for Apple to move as the ecosystem is smaller and they can force a change. MS have their hands tied as they live in a broader world of devices and partners as well as huge legacy support. Personally I’m amazed MS put in the effort and kept putting in the effort for 8 years with very little reward. For Apple it’s almost guaranteed success, although a minor gamble if they end up MacOS only
Not only that, but Intel x86 actually has a RISC-like highly pipelined core which uses "micro-ops"... x86 CISC instructions are translated to micro-ops and executed (so that they can take advantage of CISC benefits in instruction fetch bandwidth, but still get the RISC execution advantages).
However, they still have to deal with issues like instruction prefetch complexity (which in x86 occurs with the front-end CISC architecture)... that and some bad/political (non-)choices in Intel engineering has caused the complexity disaster/stagnation that sits inside every x86 CPU from Intel...
The statement I made had nothing to do with Microsoft, it was a general comment about Apple. Apple is often not the first in a market (the iPhone was not the first smart phone, the iPod was not the first portable music player, Airpods were not the first wireless headsets, etc.), but is often the first player that actually gets the solution right.
As to the answer to your question, I have no idea, as I have no idea what problem they were trying to solve. Just like many previous attempts to port Windows to other architectures (PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha among others), Microsoft has not really explained why one should want Windows on Arm.
I am trying to follow your logic. From the viewpoint of developers and users, how is Windows 10 on Arm compelling? Was there a big wave of users adopting it? In the 8 years since the Surface RT, what percentage of the market did Windows on Arm hold? Were most major developers porting their software to it? If it “solved the problem” (as you said earlier), why would Apple’s adoption of Apple Silicon with less than 3% of the desktop market (Apple Silicon Macintosh systems are probably about less than half of Apple Systems being sold, so less than half of Apple’s 6-7% of the market) make Arm “mainstream”?
It seems like you are trying to have it both ways. Microsoft “solved the problem” yet did not provide a way to run a large percentage of existing apps (seems like an incomplete solution to me). They delivered this incomplete solution in order to force developers to port to this platform (that must not have been very compelling if that was the only way to get them to port).
What it seems like you are saying, is that Apple developed a compelling reason to switch architectures and now Microsoft wants to capitalize on that publicity and mindshare with a product that is nowhere near as compelling.