Microsoft Outlines Official Support For Windows 11 on Mac with Apple Silicon (windowscentral.com) 53
Microsoft has outlined how users running Apple Silicon-based Macs can utilize Windows 11 in a new support document published today. The document explains how users running Mac devices with either M1 or M2 chips can use Windows 11, either via the cloud or using a local virtualization such as Parallels Desktop. From a report: Unfortunately, the document makes no mention of installing Windows 11 natively on Apple Silicon hardware. Apple's legacy Bootcamp application, which previously allowed Mac users to install Windows into its own bootable partition on a Mac, was removed when Apple transitioned to ARM processors. As of now, Microsoft points to Windows 365 as a potential solution for running Windows 11 on a Mac, using its enterprise service to stream a Windows 11 PC from the cloud. [...] For those users, Microsoft also mentions Parallels Desktop as a viable alternative. Version 18 of Parallels Desktop is now officially authorized to run Windows 11 on ARM on a Mac with M1 or M2 processors. This is the only way to officially run Windows 11 on ARM locally on a Mac with Apple Silicon.
Why would they want to pursue native installs? (Score:3)
"Unfortunately, the document makes no mention of installing Windows 11 natively on Apple Silicon hardware."
I guess my question would be for whom such a thing would be important. The number of people needing this would probably be pretty tiny - and probably almost exclusively developers. If you're going to commit the resources required to maintain that, you'd need to be growing revenue somewhere.
I just don't see it. Or maybe I lack vision.
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I guess my question would be for whom such a thing would be important.
Microsoft.
But don't worry. When it doesn't take over the world, they'll drop it faster than Zune.
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I'd think they might want to simply because this is a different CPU architecture, and one that might prove to have some real performance benefits for the Windows OS if they tried to optimize it for it.
The M series CPU is current the way forward for all of Apple's computers. Anything with an Intel type CPU in it is a "last years' model" at this point and due to be phased out. So Microsoft stands to be able to sell Windows licenses to any Mac produced from here forward, instead of being a non-option for most
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But more demanding things like Windows-based games won't run well enough in Parallels to be viable.
You also need to be running the Arm version of Windows 11, so those games almost surely won't be available.
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But more demanding things like Windows-based games won't run well enough in Parallels to be viable
They'd certainly run better in Parallels than they would in an ARM version of Windows, unless you think game developers are going to go out of their way to make builds for ARM Macs with Windows installed on them.
People who buy a Mac and want to run PC games on it has got to be a tiny market.
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Only because they go in knowing they can't do it which strips down the number of interested people.
Realistically, I suspect there is quite a large group of people who would want "Computer X" but the ability to run software for a "Computer Y" that is more popular. A large number of people who would otherwise pick Computer X pick Computer Y instead because Computer X isn't able to run that software.
I wonder how many Mac owners also have a PC lying around?
A lot of them; but in my experience, none of them end up using their PC. However, I have no data for those switching to Apple Silicon Macs. This will no doubt make it easier for them.
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Except Microsoft has done Windows for ARM at least 3 separate times already. The first was for Windows CE which it found moderate success when it was adapted to PocketPC/Windows Mobile. The second was for Windows RT which Microsoft released for ARM based tablets running Windows 8, to basic derision since they
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MacOS on ARM runs well, the hardware is a LOT better than the last generation of intel macs. Performance is better, the fans rarely spin up (the air doesn't even have one) and the laptop doesn't get hot.
Running windows for arm under virtualization on a mac tends to be a lot faster than the arm machines which are intended to run windows.
Performance of windows/arm has two issues, and it's not really arm itself which is the problem.
First is that the hardware built to run windows/arm isn't great, and certainly
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there may be something in the way Windows is doing things that doesn't mesh with ARM or other things that kill performance.
IIRC, there is actually an issue with instruction-ordering, or address-ordering, (linear vs. random-order-something) that was highly inefficient for ARM execution. Apple got around this for Mac Applications; but nothing was to be done for Windows Applications.
Maybe someone else can remember what I am struggling-with.
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I kinda know what you're talking about but I don't remember the specifics, The gist of it was there were some extra challenges to emulating x86 code on ARM accurately and efficiently. It didn't apply to native ARM code.
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I kinda know what you're talking about but I don't remember the specifics, The gist of it was there were some extra challenges to emulating x86 code on ARM accurately and efficiently. It didn't apply to native ARM code.
Yeah, I think the context was x86 to ARM transcoding.
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And my experience with those emulators (whether Parallels or VirtualBox or VMWare's solution) is that they always get "clunky". Things may run, but with weird, lengthy and sometimes random pauses that make you think something froze up. The experience just isn't great.
Wonder what you keep doing wrong then? Maybe your hardware wasn't up to the task of running a these hypervisors. Can't speak for Parallels but VirtualBox and Vmware have always been rock solid, in most cases indistinguishable from running it on actual hardware.
re: vm performance (Score:2)
I'm wondering, now, what applications YOU run in one, and what kind of hardware you're using it with??
Among other examples, I have an Apple iMac Pro with an Intel Xeon CPU in it. With VirtualBox, it struggles with responsiveness when I use utilities written for some of my older music/MIDI gear, such as the Line 6 patch librarian software for a POD XT Pro rack mounted processor. (I have to use the Windows version of the software because being circa 2002 gear, Line 6 no longer supports the software librarian/
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Old iMac Pro with Xeon processors. That is pretty old hardware but old enough to put out to pasture. Unfortunately, I don't know the status of Mac hypervisors . Does Mac OS have restrictions on running guests' machines?
As for me, I have a i9-9900K with 64GB of RAM. A few years old but still perfectly serviceable. I've also run VM's on intel Duo processors, AMD 965/8150/8350, i7-6600k, and a 4 core i5 that I don't remember the model number. All of them I have had no issues with VM's on them, they ra
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And those really aren't insignificant numbers since Apple is typically in the top 3 laptop brands sold.
Top 4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
About 10% of the market and quite far behind #3. Not trivial numbers, but factoring in the percentage of people who would run windows, it's going to probably be a few percent of the laptop market.
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There isn't much software for ARM native Windows. I can't see that changing, it's too much effort to maintain an ARM version of any substantial app given the tiny market.
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I understand that, and I'm sure it's true, but for me it just no longer matters if I run Windows or macOS. The only real differences are the GUI controls and the keyboard shortcuts. I use substantially the same software on both. Microsoft Office is built from substantially the same codebase for both platforms; I think the main difference is you still can't run Access on a Mac. All the browsers, including Microsoft Edge, are available on macOS. Pretty much everything else I use is open source and can be buil
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Any time I heard about someone using Boot Camp to run Windows regularly, it always boiled down to a single thing: Windows-only video games. And that made sense when Apple was including GPUs from AMD / Intel / Nvidia and Intel CPUs as there was nothing particularly special about the hardware other than form factor and firmware. Anyone that needs Windows for actual work on a day-to-day basis wouldn't fiddle-fuck with rebooting and losing everything they're doing on the Mac in order to do some windows-y crap
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Microsoft isn't going to make a proper Windows distribution for generic arm64 that isn't locked to their Surface products
They do, the arm version is just as generic as the x86 version - you just need an arm device (or hypervisor) with uefi firmware and drivers for all the peripherals. Parallels has provided drivers for their hypervisor on arm in the same way they did for x86.
Windows isn't tied to the microsoft surface hardware, it's just not been marketed for use on generic arm devices.
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I guess my question would be for whom such a thing would be important. The number of people needing this would probably be pretty tiny - and probably almost exclusively developers.
I had bought a mac laptop for myself a while ago when I needed a mac at the time. It was sitting unused for a few years until I needed it for my daughter to remote-school during COVID. The parental controls on MacOS are so rubbishy that I couldn't use them. I instead installed Windows and it works fine for her.
So... I agree with you about "tiny", but thought I'd share this non-developer use-case.
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1. Gamers
2. Professionals who want the build quality of a Mac and need to run computationally-heavy, Windows-only apps
3. Why not?
4. Some software has license restrictions and knows it's running in a VM
5. Getting some esoteric peripherals to work in VM can be a massive pain in the dick
6. Why not?
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Professionals who want the build quality of a Mac and need to run computationally-heavy, Windows-only apps
This has been my observation. I used to work with a bunch of 'mac-heads' that used to go on and on about how good their macbooks where. An how they managed to trick the company in to paying for them. Then when it came time to do real work they would boot their macs into Windows. Management found out and soon their macbooks where replace with dells running windows at half the price.
My Dell on the other hand was running Linux and machead bitched. Then I explained it to management and kept on running
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The one thing that isn’t clear is whether we are talking Windows 11 for x86_64 or ARM. I am guessing the support document is directed at the former, meaning a native install is out of the question.
As for the native ARM version, there probably isn’t the proper firmware support in the OS to leverage macOS directly on Apple M* hardware.
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Ditto. Got the last 2020 Intel MBP model when ARM M1 was brand new and needed BootCamp and VMs.
One Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Why?
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I liken this to shooting yourself in your own foot:
Just because there's nothing stopping you doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Re: One Question (Score:2)
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Because it's fairly low effort in the scheme of how highly virtualized MS has made Windows as of late, and having access to Windows 11 in some fashion without having to have a second machine is probably a feature that some users and developers would greatly apprecaite (and they'll probably sell a few Win11 licenses along the way)
We gotta accept it's not late 90's-2000's Microsoft anymore. I'm not saying theyre good but they are definitely different.
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The ONLY time I use windows is when I have a piece of hardware that requires it, At that point I would have used Parallels or VMWare.
We had lots of licences for Parallels, but when they went into software rental, we dumped it entirely.
I am in the process of converting a teaching lab of 40 iMacs to be just VDI clients for Windows, all of our Vernier hardware works seamlessly with it.
I am a Mac user, but financial reality is a factor, Apple does no
Will they support UTM? (Score:2)
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UTM is a free virtual machine [getutm.app] for Apple Silicon Macs (and iOS too). Will they officially allow licences for that too or will they paywall it to Parallels users only? Also the Raspberry Pi folks got Windows booting too, but no official licencing either.
It's a fantastic, if finicky, solution, but also flakey as hell. Windows XP would simply cash on me for no reproducible reason.
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Windows 11 for ARM runs on my M2 Air w/o issue under UTM as of about a month ago. I could even play some Steam games under it, albeit a bit more slowly than I would prefer, but working regardless.
It's been just fine for doing the minimal things I want to test in Windows w/o moving to the gaming machine.
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Apple provides an official VM framework which UTM can make use of. In theory, using the Apple VM framework will be the way to go in the long run.
I tried out UTM with the Apple VM framework and found that it worked fine. There are limitations around window scaling when using the Apple VM framework. It does not like to resize automatically - resolutions must be set manually. At least with Linux, I never tried Windows. On the plus side, you can make use of Rosetta from your Linux VM. I was quite excite
Nested virtualization (Score:2)
And that, I think, is the problem with operating systems like Qubes OS, or indeed Windows 11 itself with its Android and Linux subsystems. The PC cannot be fully virtualized, because the virtual environment cannot itself host VMs.
I have no experience on mainframes but I believe that where virtualiza
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How does Microsoft manage to do it while Parallels cannot?
Re: Nested virtualization (Score:2)
I do this on my Intel-based MBP running VMWare Fusion, e.g. Windows in a VM and Docker using Hyper-V within the VM. Maybe the hardware support isnâ(TM)t there on ARM-based ones, or maybe Parallels hasnâ(TM)t implemented it yet.
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M1 does not have nested virtualization support, while M2 supposedly does.
It isn't present in all x64 cpus either, only some newer ones support nested hypervisors.
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I'm not sure it's about new or old per se when it comes to the x86_64 systems because I was doing this with a 15" MBP that I got early 2015 (it was a mid-2014 model IIRC). That doesn't seem so new.
I for one... (Score:2)
...have kept my awesome Intel iMac to boot into Windows and play the games I love (though I also play some games in MacOS). For other stuff I use an M1 MacBook Air, which is serviceable for what I need it for when on the road, which is using VNC to log into my office Mac workstation. This system works just fine for me. Of course, eventually there will be Windows games that I won't be able to run well (high quality, 60 fps, 1440), but I'm happy with the excellent performance of the games I play now (Fallout
So it's an... (Score:2)
Turd in your cornflakes? (Score:1)
I prefer my cornflakes with cinnamon and apples, and without turds in them.
And it still sucks (Score:1)
Because not every application (like SQL) can be installed and run without additional hacks.
Parallels fell behind in graphics over a decade (Score:2)
Parallels is not a solution if you want to run graphics apps. From https://kb.parallels.com/en/12... [parallels.com]
"3D acceleration is currently supported at the level of DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 3.3. Some of the latest AAA games may not launch or run."
With DirectX 12 and Vulkan both out for over 7 years, I'd expect support by now.
I use to run Parallels for years, but eventually dumped it. Main pain-point was that it fell further and further behind in terms of 3D support and I could neither run games nor make 3D Apps in a