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I want an M1 badly, but I can't really switch until I can virtualize windows. That is a huge thing for me. Maybe that will force me to wait until a M2 or M2X and get the benefit of 2nd gen apple silicon & avoid first adopter woes, but id like it now lol.
 
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This is good news but they need to put more effort into making their VMWare Tools drivers available for Windows ARM. Parallels Tools works already with Windows ARM.

I like the M1 machines and I have an M1 Air, but because VMWare still isn't quite there yet I think I will hand that machine off to my spouse and stick with my MBP 16 for now. I don't really want to pay what Parallels is asking for a subscription, and even though I like using QEMU+KVM on Linux hosts, UTM just isn't ready for primetime yet.
 
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VMware Fusion for M1 Macs will be quite limited in scope, with a focus on virtualizing Arm-based Linux distributions. VMware Fusion will not officially support Windows 10 on M1 Macs at launch, as Microsoft has yet to offer licensing for the Arm version of Windows 10. In a tweet, Roy said Windows 10 should still run when selecting the "other" operating system type, but VMware will not be shipping drivers or VMware Tools.

VMware Fusion will also not be able to virtualize Intel-based Windows or Linux distributions, while support for virtualizing macOS is not ready yet. In a blog post last April, Roy said "there isn't exactly much business value relative to the engineering effort that is required" to support Intel-based operating systems on M1 Macs, adding that VMware is "laser focused on making Arm Linux VMs on Apple silicon a delight to use."

No timeframe has been provided for the public release of VMware Fusion for M1 Macs, and pricing and upgrade options remain to be seen.
Even though it is limited, I am glad it is out there as another VM enviroment for the future. On the PC side a lot used Linux for engineering projects rather than windows at work. Perhaps as other ARM based OS's become more readily available the usefulness of this VMware product will grow for M1 Macs.
 
Yeah, but for the past 15 years the Intel compatibility with either native or virtualized Windows (or other OS) was a big incentive for people that needed to run Windows (or other) software for work, and wanted the Mac experience for their day to day usage.

For many that meant having to only carry one laptop, and the extra cost of the Mac platform was justified. That is no longer the case going forward.
Apple knew this was a consequence of moving to Apple Silicon. However, staying with x86/x64 was not viable long term and did not fall in line with Apple’s goals. Keeping Intel CPUs is the trap that MS fell into and now may never be able to extract itself out of.
 
Apple knew this was a consequence of moving to Apple Silicon. However, staying with x86/x64 was not viable long term and did not fall in line with Apple’s goals. Keeping Intel CPUs is the trap that MS fell into and now may never be able to extract itself out of.
Well, yeah, just saying that this transition kills a very useful feature for many "pro-sumers".
 
I want an M1 badly, but I can't really switch until I can virtualize windows. That is a huge thing for me. Maybe that will force me to wait until a M2 or M2X and get the benefit of 2nd gen apple silicon & avoid first adopter woes, but id like it now lol.
Regular Windows on Apple Silicon won’t happen. Not now, not ever. Waiting for M11 won’t help that.
 
People have other options now. Windows in the cloud being one. Even before Apple's ARM transition, my use of Windows greatly diminished as more and more functions once relegated to exclusive PC programs moved to browser-based or open-source software. Once MS Project went online, the few times a month I needed windows went away without a fight. Nothing was worse than having to fire up a virtual machine and having hours of updates and patches to apply just so I could do a few simple tasks or look at some proprietary documents.

Exactly the same here! Back in around 2010 I was doing heavy Windows server based development and ended up switching to a Lenovo thinkpad so I could get 32GB of RAM and run multi-VM setups in Fusion. By the time Apple finally got around to giving us 32GB machines several years later, everything had gone cloud and/or open source non-proprietary software which overall is probably better but I can certainly get by with less now...in fact I am on a base MBA M1 at the moment until the new MBPs arrive. My own need to dive into an actual Windows VM gets less and less and I can easily connect to a remote one at home or in Azure if needed.
 
I could switch entirely to MacOS (and IOS/IPadOS) - only a few odds and ends that would be a nuisance but not a major issue. Despite having hardly used MacOS until the past few months.

Partner, despite her being a very long-term Mac user, has one single program that needs Windows. The people who wrote that seem to have cloth ears with respect to any MacOS version. And they even require you to use a Windows version of Corel Draw - not compatible with the Mac version.

Worse still, they are implementing a weird (and probably wholly unnecessary) wifi SD card system which is a hardware device. That needs to be plugged into a Windows machine to be set up. And it looks as if it is a mandatory part of the set-up. So cloud Windows quite likely not an option.

Complete pain. Who is at fault? I point my finger at the program developers/owners. They have been asked for a MacOS version for years but ignore the requests. Many users are like partner, Mac users who currently use Fusion or Parallels (though not actually supported for the app, it does seem to work).
 
It's looking more and more likely that I've purchased my last (personal) Mac, unfortunately. I could live without x86 backwards compatibility (although I'd lose access to some beloved old games); but too much of my wife's sewing software is Windows only. It works just fine on our existing 2017 iMac, but once that dies I'll have to come up with an x86-based replacement.

I won't personally be moving my primary OS to Windows... Linux Mint is certainly ready for prime-time. I'll probably try to get my wife to try it as well, but she may just say "screw it, just put me on Windows".
 
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Subscriptions keep development flowing. The business model of holding off hundred of features and releasing that for £400 every 18 months just doesn't hold anymore. Customers expect software to be always current and features to be available when they are ready, not held back till v2, v3, etc. And then some software is just too mature now, like MS Office, how many will pay Microsoft £350 ever 1-2 years for Office 2021 and 2023 when 2021 already does everything you could ever want?

No - I get it, and I'm not against subscriptions - I have a bunch of them, and I agree that developers need to eat. I just need to be selective about which ones I need. It is all to easy to find yourself with $hundreds each month in subscriptions I don't need.

Windows365 is great, but the pricing doesn't make sense for my needs. If I used it everyday it would be good value and a no brainer. To use it to spin up a VM every other month for 15 minutes isn't cost effective for my purposes.
 
I want an M1 badly, but I can't really switch until I can virtualize windows. That is a huge thing for me. Maybe that will force me to wait until a M2 or M2X and get the benefit of 2nd gen apple silicon & avoid first adopter woes, but id like it now lol.
If you're hellbent on staying with Mac hardware, you might see if - rather than running the entire Windows OS - the software you want/need will run on Codeweaver's Crossover (Wine) platform.
 
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Vmware really dragged their feet on this one, and they seem to be on their high horse when it comes to not supporting windows 10. parallels already supports m1 macs with official support for windows. Yes i understand windows does not officially support m1 and vmware is getting behind that stance but still kinda seems like vmware just doesnt care anymore on that aspect on their software.
 
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Yeah, but for the past 15 years the Intel compatibility with either native or virtualized Windows (or other OS) was a big incentive for people that needed to run Windows (or other) software for work, and wanted the Mac experience for their day to day usage.

For many that meant having to only carry one laptop, and the extra cost of the Mac platform was justified. That is no longer the case going forward.
you can do it with parallels
 
you must be young... a lot of us have the Commodore 64 for this. :D
Haha! Those things sure were ahead of their time. I started on TRSDOS and a cassette "tape drive", baby. :) Thank goodness for those 80K floppy disks. Actually it started with punched cards on a high school mini computer.
 
This will make it a real dilemma when the M2/M1X 16"MBP comes out. I use a Windows VM for a select few tasks based on some legacy software and I also MS Project a few times per year. It is nothing critical, but it beats schlepping across the house to fire up my old Windows laptop.

To my knowledge there are no viable Mac alternative to Project. Smartsheet is great - but I don't want to pay monthly for something that I use 5-6 times a year at most and, well, subscribing/canceling is a pain.

I get that my use case is pretty rare though.
The M1 strategy from Apple is bascially alianating all their customer who rely on x86 VMs to do their job … I got a x86 mini (2020) and a work 15” MBP. the work mac will be a ubuntu notebook next time around, I’m not sure if I’ll just keep the mini until it dies, or just give in an get an M1 at some point as I need Adobe … (there is no alternative for me).
 
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The. You are going to make sure you have a decent Intel-based Mac of some kind on your desk for the foreseeable future. It is what it is.
I do have both brand new Intel Mac laptop and several real Dells. I travel with a Mac and it is a bit hard to carry my towers on the plane.

In addition, I am moving to linux for most everything new now. Apple has made macOS not really usable for real hard core computing needs, Apple devices are just toys. Something my SAP friends told me years ago and I failed to listen.
 
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