Rosetta Won't Support x86 Virtualization Apps Running Windows

[cmaier]

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.

Synergy is pretty great. I used it for a long time. It’s like having a dual-monitor setup, but one screen runs pc apps and the other runs mac.
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Maybe AMD or Intel will license their CPU code for a software emulation application to run under the new Mac ARM silicon.
If it costs $200 to buy a physical i7 processor then Intel could sell you a license for that specific ARM Mac hardware an i7 emulator for $200. You want an i9, then $400 for the software.
That way Intel is still getting paid for their proprietary code in their chips and the user has full access to all the SSE chipset.

There is no such “code” in AMD or Intel’s chips. It doesn’t work that way.

And while AMD and intel do have software *models* of their chips which they use as a reference to verify that the hardware does what is intended, these model run very slowly. It can take an hour on a super fast machine to run code that would take a minute to run on an actual machine, because the level at which things are emulated is very detailed.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I'll just get two machines. Problem solved.

 

[newfoundglory]

Definitely emulation solutions needed. Not sure we'd necessarily see this from parallels or vmware though?

The only thought I had on this was, I wonder if emulation performance could be increased by using the fast GPUs included with Apple's latest chips.

Certainly a market for a good optimised emulation app though, someone best start right now.....

 

[bkendig]

I like Boot Camp so that when I'm on vacation (or even on the back porch) with my Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro (GeForce 750), I can play some Windows games. Nothing too fancy or high-powered - I have a huge Steam library with some good indie titles. It also helps to be able to run Windows software on the rare occasions when I need to.

An ARM-based Mac that won't run Boot Camp is fine ... but I'm not going to pay $2399 for it. I'd actually rather lose macOS and go with a Razer Blade 15 for $1599.

 

[cardfan]

Easy! There is MS office for Windows on ARM. This is a native 64 bit ARM application.
You can use it on Surface pro X for example.
Exactly the same as the common Windows X86 version.

Linux also has feature heavy applications like LibreOffice and GIMP. You can compile them for ARM
and use them on various ARM hardware. Exactly the same as on Linux/X86.

sigh. There’s no native arm 64bit version of office. And when there is such a thing it won’t be the real thing. Just another lite version. The only version of office that runs on a surface pro x is emulated 32bit x86 version which is the real thing but again...emulated.

 

[chrfr]

I know very little about virtualization but doesn’t this just mean that Parallels or VMWare simply need to create an ARM version of their emulator since Rosetta can’t run their current emulator?

What Parallels and VMware do now isn't emulation.

 

[Azrael9]

I'll just get two machines. Problem solved.

Yes.

Eg. iMac 24 ARM at £999.

Windows tower for £999.

£2k. Two machines.

Job done.

A dual machine set up makes good sense if you're running a business. You have a back up machine.

Azrael.

 

[SocialKonstruct]

Right now looking at the Surface Book 3 15 as we speak LoL. My MacBook Pro 16 got downgraded to home server this week.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Oops. I have Fusion still on this Mac Pro, and it's version 8.5.8. I obviously don't use it much anymore. It does have 8 VMs on it though.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Yes.

Eg. iMac 24 ARM at £999.

Windows tower for £999.

£2k. Two machines.

Job done.

A dual machine set up makes good sense if you're running a business. You have a back up machine.

Azrael.

Yet another reason why I *really* hope Target Display Mode comes back.

 

[chrixxa]

not being able to use windows will be a deal breaker for some. it is truly useful to have that ability if you ever need it. they should probably find a way to make this work. you can't tell me its impossible

 

[RedWeasel]

Time to dig out that old copy of Connectix Virtual PC.

That brings up memories I didn't really miss...

 

[deconstruct60]

sigh. There’s no native arm 64bit version of office. And when there is such a thing it won’t be the real thing. Just another lite version. The only version of office that runs on a surface pro x is emulated 32bit x86 version which is the real thing but again...emulated.

From Microsoft.

"...
Installing and using Microsoft Office

• Use Office 365 for the best experience on a Windows 10 PC on an ARM-based processor.
• Office 365 "click-to-run" installs Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, optimized to run on a Windows 10 PC on an ARM-based processor.
• Microsoft Teams runs great on Surface Pro X.
• For "perpetual versions" of Office such as Office 2019, install the 32-bit version.

"

Deploy, manage, and service Arm processor-based Surface devices - Surface

Learn how to deploy, manage, and service Arm-based Surface devices, including Surface Pro 11th Edition and Surface Laptop 7th Edition.

docs.microsoft.com

If 32-bit wasn't a difference why is it highlighted for the "perpetual" version? The older versions weren't. That isn't necessarily where 365 is now.

Office presents as 32-bit to the host system so that legacy, lagging plug-ins will work. Technically it isn't Office's problem, it is the plug-ins dragging behind problem. If don't use any of them there is little overhead problem of not invoking the 32-bit interface thunking most of the time.

 

[biffuz]

I wonder if someone will make a 5-fold universal binary 32/64 PPC, 32/64 Intel and 64 ARM (assuming ARM will be 64 only which I think is a reasonable assumption). Would be fun just for the sake of it.

Technically it may be possible, but XCode dropped PPC support long ago. You would have to use different compilers and then package the file. Also, the SDKs versions will be different, it's going to be a mess. It would be more practitcal to make two binaries, one PPC+Intel for old OSX, and one Intel+ARM for newer ones.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

not being able to use windows will be a deal breaker for some. it is truly useful to have that ability if you ever need it. they should probably find a way to make this work. you can't tell me its impossible

It won't be impossible. VMWare and Parallels or someone else will almost certainly come up with an x86 emulation version. X86 is so well documented that it's not particularly challenging to emulate. Even if they don't come up with a solution like that, they will undoubtedly release versions of their software compatible with virtualising ARM based operating systems such as Linux (as I believe shown in the demo video in the WWDC stream) and Windows 10 Arm Edition which itself has something Rosetta-like for running x86 software (albeit only 32 bit). Performance isn't going to be anywhere near what it is now for running Windows Apps but it will likely be fine for most people's purposes and those that require more power are more likely to be using dedicated VM servers anyway rather than their own machines.

 

[pldelisle]

Parallels usually comes out with a new version in September of each year, at the same time as the new macOS is released.

The suspens won't be long.

 

[Azrael9]

It won't be impossible. VMWare and Parallels or someone else will almost certainly come up with an x86 emulation version. X86 is so well documented that it's not particularly challenging to emulate.

It's 'just code.'

Azrael.

 

[SocialKonstruct]

I teach in a college, and all of the Macs in our labs are set up to dual-boot Windows.

Losing BootCamp capability is going to force some difficult decisions when the next upgrade cycle comes around.

Time to switch to Surface Studio. Less headaches for schools.

 

[SaxPlayer]

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.

Thanks so much for the tip! I hadn't heard of that. It may be the solution to this dilemma. I have no issues with paying for helpful software so if it fixes this problem when the time comes to upgrade then I'll pay the fee gladly! Many thanks.

 

[LogicalApex]

I still struggle hard to understand what value this shift is bringing to the Mac. It breaks professional workflows to expand parity with the iPad which already does a good job doing what it does. I can usually see something when Apple makes radical shifts like this, but I can't see it here.

No, that means that Apple's future Macs with Apple-designed chips will not support using Rosetta to run software like VMWare or Parallels to run Windows within the virtualization software. You have no way of knowing whether VMWare, Parallels, or others will create Apple silicon-compatible software to virtualize Windows or other x86 platforms.

Edit: And I sure as hell am not taking any odds against them doing so. They'd have to be nuts to leave all that money on the table.

It may not be an option they can take... We shall see...

x86 virtualization is heavily dependent on virtualization specific instruction sets added to the x86_64 instruction set such as VT-x. I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't able to emulate these due to patent licensing restrictions from Intel (much like how many newer instruction sets are omitted).

 

[deconstruct60]

So, you are saying Apple has the source code to the build Windows and the Windows engineering team is entirely in California, the same team I meet with almost every year on the Redmond campus for sessions in spring? 🙄

No, you are saying that. You mentioned both Office 365 and Windows. The Mac Business Uniit is not the Windows team. Microsoft is a large corporation with development teams in multiple cities. A major chunk of the MBU is located in the Mountain View, CA campus. So the "bucket load" of DTK systems would be sent there for app development, CI testing, etc. . Not Redmond.

Windows team doesn't build a completely different set of binaires for AMD x86 implementation than Intel x86 implementations. Vast majority of the stack is compiled to x86 and runs on both. Not particularly going to be any different for various ARM implementors. The bulk of the Windows stack will be built to ARM and they smaller pieces like specific drivers , mild tweaks to scheduler ( for core and switch quirks ) , and some other limited aspects will be customized for that load ( And that doesn't happen beforehand all the time. AMD Zen cores initially all got a somewhat dubious scheduler that was not optimized at all for their core+memory structure). This doesn't require a "bucket load" os systems and as I pointed out the low level Apple hardware needs highly custom work is Apple's problem. And you do not need a copy of the kernel source code to write a driver.

 

[cmaier]

Time to switch to Surface Studio. Less headaches for schools.

How well does a surface studio run MacOS?

(Ps: why is everyone whining that mac is making it unlikely to run windows x86, when there aren’t any windows machines that can run MacOS?)

 

[theluggage]

The only version of office that runs on a surface pro x is emulated 32bit x86 version which is the real thing but again...emulated.

Actually, there seems to be mass confusion on that point - but it looks like Office on ARM Windows is mostly ARM64 native but they've kept bits of it in emulated x86 so that it can load x86 plugins, which means that it "reports" as being x86.

Thing is, these are mostly Windows problems arising from Microsoft's failure to kill off Win32 - by now, everything was supposed to be UWP and CPU-independent, but instead the first thing people do when they get a Surface X is to try and run 25 year-old binaries... It is as if Apple were trying to move to ARM at the same time as having to support MacOS 9 and Carbon apps (the 32 to 64 bit shift on the Mac was a lot simpler than dealing with Win32) ...

That's the real problem with worrying too much about Windows support on Mac - if MacOS is better than Windows then one reason is that Apple is free to burn off the dead wood every 5-10 years.

 

[SocialKonstruct]

Witht he amount of money Apple is smoking through cooking all this stuff up, I'd be surprised prices don't go up.

At that point I won't be buying anymore Macs if that happens.
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How well does a surface studio run MacOS?

(Ps: why is everyone whining that mac is making it unlikely to run windows x86, when there aren’t any windows machines that can run MacOS?)

My school uses Mac for art programs like Adobe and those runs perfectly on Windows. The only thing we would miss is Final Cut Pro but most students are switching to Premiere which is better nowadays.

 

[TiggrToo]

I know very little about virtualization but doesn’t this just mean that Parallels or VMWare simply need to create an ARM version of their emulator since Rosetta can’t run their current emulator? Is there a technical reason they wouldn’t be able to do so? You have to believe if you can make an ARM emulator of X86 that the two big names in virtualization are likely to do so and fairly quickly.

Bottom line is I don’t think this means that ARM Macs are destined to not run Windows, it just means Boot Camp is dead and we have to wait for new versions of virtualization software to be made for ARM to run Windows in a Mac OS 11 “window”.

Right?

Wrong. It's not that simple. Virtualization is not emulation.