The rumored ARM Macbooks won't have any x86 emulation or dedicated cores for translation

[questionwonder]

I'm just throwing out an opinion here, but I just read some of the release notes from the Microsofts .Net site and their newest release of .Net Core (.Net 5.0) has support for WinARM64. As I use Visual Studio Code on my Macbook Air for work, this announcement leads me to believe that when Apple announces their ARM laptop (if rumors are true), they won't have any x86 emulator or CPU cores dedicated to translating x86 to ARM. I believe Apple will come out and announce full Windows ARM OS support from a VM or bootcamp and tons of apps that companies have been working on in secret that will have ARM support from day 1.

Just wondering what others think about this?
It starts with libraries like .Net then moves to the apps that use them like VS Code and others...just my thought!

 

[Murgatroyd314]

If they don't include a way to run x86 software out of the box, users will be cut off from all old programs that haven't been rewritten for ARM. At this point, a lot of people could decide that since they're losing their old workflow anyway, they might as well switch to Windows.

 

[bill-p]

If this ARM-based MacBook doesn't have x86 compatibility, then it also can't run VS Code, which is Electron-based. And Electron is open-source, you can't work on a version of it "in secret".

So yeah, I think that should get you all of the answers you need.

Microsoft already pushed out Windows on ARM like... years ago. The Surface Pro X is not the first ARM-based Windows device. Hell, Windows 10 is also not the first desktop environment running on ARM from Microsoft. Windows on ARM has had years of development, and even now, it's still not ready to become even something like an iPad competitor.

I mean...

Windows CE - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That translates to at least one whole decade of Windows on ARM development... just to put that into perspective.

Also, Apple already has a Darwin-based OS that works on ARM, that has over a billion apps, that has active support and development from all major developers, that already has over a billion peripherals built for it: iPad OS.

From a business perspective, it makes more sense for Apple to continue to make iPad OS more like a desktop environment, more useful... so that it may eventually become an alternative to Mac OS, rather than trying to forcibly introduce an "inferior" version of Mac OS that doesn't have touch support, doesn't have apps, and can't connect to peripherals.

 

[questionwonder]

Why can't Microsoft work on a secret ARM based Electron framework for VS Code? Don't a lot of open source frameworks start out private first? They have VS Code Online now, and that runs directly in the browser! Maybe they will add extension or something similar to get it 100% for the ARM stuff on an iPad or WinARM. Question - Can the ARM based version of Windows that has been demoed recently work on and iPad? If not, could they make it work on an iPad?

 

[bill-p]

It's an exercise in futility when you are branching out an open source project in secret and not merging back anything at all for months, or even a whole year, or more. The reason is that the open source side will have very regular changes and will eventually diverge from your private code stash.

VS Code Online doesn't need to run in Electron. Electron is basically just a "container" per se... for when you need to launch something as a standalone desktop app.

Let's just say... it's not that easy:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1191738696401391617

You're basically asking for too much.