Software support on arm macs will be the same. Hate to break it to you. I can barely justify buying a Mac now. In the future there’s simply no way. Apple is aiming at the folks who think iPad apps are amazing or something. Think fisher price type apps. We saw this reimagining already with Big Sur. Dumbed down for the typical ignorant mainstream user.
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Rosetta Won't Support x86 Virtualization Apps Running Windows
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Software support on arm macs will be the same. Hate to break it to you. I can barely justify buying a Mac now. In the future there’s simply no way. Apple is aiming at the folks who think iPad apps are amazing or something. Think fisher price type apps. We saw this reimagining already with Big Sur. Dumbed down for the typical ignorant mainstream user.
Considering you can already run versions of Windows (though, the older the better 🙂 ) on an iPad or iPhone with unsupported emulation software, I'm pretty sure more than one company will offer a supported commercial emulator for ARM Macs.
christian_koehler
macrumors member
No, the problem is not related to processor performance.
Mac OS X has ended support for all 32 bit code. All X86 code on the Mac is 64 bit. For that reason, Rosetta 2 MUST support 64 bit x86 code, but support for 32 bit X86 can be skipped easily.
Windows on the other hand still supports 32 bit code. Even many 64 bit applications rely on 32 bit compatibility. Sometimes just because the installer is still a 32 bit exe. In order to offer 64 bit support, Microsoft has to support both 32 and 64 bit compatiblity which makes the binary translator much more complex and bigger. It also means many libraries were necessary in both 32 and 64 bit. Probably quite a burden for a small (surface like) device.
It is one of the main reasons why you cannot run X86 VMs on that ARM Mac. For full compatibility with such applications Rosetta 2 wohld need to supprt 32 bit code. In fact it would even need support for 16 bit X86 code (including 8086 real mode and 80286 protected mode) and a quirky mode that was used to run 16 bit real mode applications on a 32 bit OS ('virtual 8086 mode'), because the guest OS might still require hese features (maybe even just for booting).
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Lol "dumbed down" because they changed the UI a bit. It isn't as if it they killed APIs so that pro apps no longer work, or that it doesn't have Terminal.app. They even mentioned "UNIX" in their keynote.
This is sortof the typical response though "Apple made the desktop background prettier, the Mac is just an Iphone 3GS now! 🙄"
Isn’t under Ballmer era Windows Vista was born ?
Sure but you also have Catalina for Cook. Big Sur looks to totally screw things up.
Big Sur reminds me of iOS 7, like, the early early betas of iOS 7. I actually really like the look.
It would have been funny if the desktop background was that animated, purple/blue floating bubbles iOS 7 wallpaper.
supermariofan25
macrumors regular
The technology already exists in the open source world, take a look at UTM an iOS app built with QEMU at it's core that allows you to run x86_64 Windows on a frickin iPad. For obvious reasons this isn't on the App Store but can be sideloaded through an app called AltStore
Blarg. One of the several things I like better about windows is backwards compatibility. That’s just vital for an actual PC, and Apple’s been terrible at it, and...now is even worse.
this just pushes macOS to be even closer to iOS and at this point, why not just merge macOS and iPadOS if you’re not serious about having a full pc?
this just pushes macOS to be even closer to iOS and at this point, why not just merge macOS and iPadOS if you’re not serious about having a full pc?
gnasher729
Suspended
You are confusing "iPad version" and "ARM version". It's no problem at all to create an ARM version that looks and works exactly like the Intel version, as long as it runs on a Mac and not an iPad.
Was looking at the catalyst apps. You know the ones replacing everything on macOS that look like garbage. This is their windows 8 moment.
gnasher729
Suspended
Many users _think_ they run Windows, but they are actually running Windows software using Citrix. Which runs on an iPad just fine.
Show me an arm version of office or photoshop that is remotely comparable to the real thing.
No, UTM is an emulator. It _IS_ running actual Windows.
Emulators have existed for decades, why is everyone so surprised?
gnasher729
Suspended
There's a bit of confusion there. You have a VM, and then you have software that runs inside the VM. Like you might have the Parallels VM, and running Windows or Linux inside it. VMs have to use special instructions so that the code inside them can't touch anything outside the VM or only in a controlled way. These special instructions are not supported by Rosetta (today, this might change in six months time). So you can't run an Intel VM at the moment.
But you can run an ARM VM. Which _normally_ would only be able to run ARM code _inside_ the VM. And that's where the maker of a VM can add additional work to use Rosetta so that the code running _inside_ the VM could by Intel code.
Umm, I guess you're talking about Windows devs not releasing a lot of ARM native titles? Mac developers will update (if necessary) and compile their existing Mac apps for ARM. They will be the same apps for essentially the same platform just running on a different CPU.
You're making it sound like a vendor will have to code an ARM version from scratch in pure assembly, then will give up when it's too much work and just make a toy version 😀. Maybe sell it for the same price with a middle finger in the center of the app store screenshot?
Like the Office they demoed during the keynote?
Why is everyone confusing "ARM" with "iOS"?
Wonder if Apple will pass on any cost savings, isn't that one reason they say for moving to Arm?
supermariofan25
macrumors regular
QEMU is an emulation platform, it lets you emulate architectures that aren't native to your current system. For example you can run an operating system built on the PPC architechure on a host that has an x86_64 CPU, it uses very similar technology to Rosetta 2 in that it uses JIT compilers. I am not kidding when I say that UTM can run x86_64 Windows on your device because QEMU translates the x86 instructions to something that ARM understands on the fly. Try it out for yourself, its quite amazing.
I feel your pain. Cisco engineer here no x86 kext support and no Windows for X86 app support is going to be tough. Only hope for Windows for ARM now emulating X86 for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows applications. Maybe I can still run all of my tools in Windows for ARM, but it means that macOS will be simply a shell now and most of my work will happen in Windows (for ARM) in the X86 emulation layer. This begs a question, Why even have a Mac at that point. Why not simply get a Windows laptop? Disruptive? You bet. Mac is dead in engineering now. Congrats Cookie.
SaxPlayer
macrumors 6502a
I haven't read all 13 pages of comments - just skim read through - but I'll chuck my 2p's worth in anyway.
I'm a web and app developer. I use Windows for testing websites on Windows browsers and also to access SQL Server databases using SQL Server Management Studio. That's it for Windows. I use Parallels Desktop running Windows 10. It's a convenience to have both running on my iMac Pro and sharing the clipboard is handy, there's no doubt.
There's no way this will stop my next computer being an ARM based Mac, however it does leave me with a question mark over how best to organise my workflow going forward. Having another machine (even a cheap Windows laptop) would be no great problem. The issue to get over (for me) is making transferring things across from Windows to Mac quick and easy. Sure, I can save a file to my network - but the convenience of using the clipboard when I need to take something back or forth between the two operating systems is a huge time saver. I see no obvious way to resolve that.
Not a deal breaker by any means. The switch to Apple Silicon is a very positive move. It'll just throw up little gotchas that we need to find a workable solution for.
I'm a web and app developer. I use Windows for testing websites on Windows browsers and also to access SQL Server databases using SQL Server Management Studio. That's it for Windows. I use Parallels Desktop running Windows 10. It's a convenience to have both running on my iMac Pro and sharing the clipboard is handy, there's no doubt.
There's no way this will stop my next computer being an ARM based Mac, however it does leave me with a question mark over how best to organise my workflow going forward. Having another machine (even a cheap Windows laptop) would be no great problem. The issue to get over (for me) is making transferring things across from Windows to Mac quick and easy. Sure, I can save a file to my network - but the convenience of using the clipboard when I need to take something back or forth between the two operating systems is a huge time saver. I see no obvious way to resolve that.
Not a deal breaker by any means. The switch to Apple Silicon is a very positive move. It'll just throw up little gotchas that we need to find a workable solution for.
The demo shows Parallels? Are you sure? I thought it was the virtualization app built into macOS.
I think Apple realized that native Windows compatibility was a double-edged sword. Yes, it enabled the “switchers” back in 2006, but at the same time kept it less attractive to make native Mac apps even as iPhone and iPad transformed Apple and made their platforms more popular.
At the same time, the main. criticism of iPad is that while the hardware is fully capable, the OS is limited. With Macs with Apple Silicon that is no longer the case. Developers can write “real apps” for a “real OS” now. That has the potential not only to improve the quality of apps on the Mac, but potentially the iPad, as well, particularly if Apple eventually releases a “reverse Catalyst” or further merges the two platforms.
Good question. Let me answer with another question. Why didn’t they mention Windows one time?
supermariofan25
macrumors regular
Look into an app called Synergy, it is a paid app but allows for you to use the same keyboard and mouse across two or more computers, no extra dongle or anything needed and also supports shared clipboard and drag and drop of files between your devices. Free alternatives may be available but I haven't looked into it, maybe try the Alternative to website or search around on various forums to see what others suggest.