Considering M1 iMac, NEED Windows for Work

[Thisismattwade]

Hi everyone,

I'm strongly considering purchasing one of the new iMacs announced last week. It seems like a perfect fit for my family BUT I need Windows for work. I see that Windows (ARM-based?) is now available (in a way) on M1 Macs through, I believe, Parallells. How does this work? Does this version of Windows look like my current Windows setup, with a C drive (and any other drives) folder structure? What about syncing a service like SharePoint? We use SharePoint heavily at work, and we have a lot of automation that relies on mapping SharePoint to the local user's C drive. E.g., currently my work's SharePoint sites are mapped to my Windows C drive, and the show up as a sub-folder in the C:\Users\... folder. Does Windows on an M1 Mac have that same structure?

How would I go about seeing if a particular piece of software can be installed on this version of Windows? We use a third-party FTP service (WinSCP), a GPG encryption utility (gpg4win), and a financial data software (Refinitiv Eikon) for daily work. How can I go about seeing if these pieces of software would work?

I'm assuming I would want to get more storage on the iMac: leaning toward 512GB, but I can see 1TB for future-proofing and in case this Windows question entails having more storage.

I realize these are really specific questions, but they're the most pressing to my purchasing decision.

Thank you!

 

[Lihp8270]

Not all software runs on Windows for ARM. There’s also no legit licenses available.

For specific packages you’d have to consult the vendor, but they’d also be most likely running under emulation too in the windows for arm system. The performance penalty is likely to be significant considering the windows for arm emulation or x86

Id say if you need windows. Then M1 Mac is not for you at the moment

 

[Marshall73]

Depends on the applications you run, SharePoint works fine on macOS even though OneDrive for business is still running an intel binary. Looking at what you have listed I would stick with windows for the time being.

of course, you could buy the iMac AND a small windows box, like a Lenovo Tiny PC running a ryzen 3, 8GB ram and 256gb ssd and windows 10. Set it up for Remote Desktop and install all of your windows apps on it, then hide it away in a cupboard or under your desk ?

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[Toutou]

Get a different machine for Windows.

The x86 software you mention has to run under emulation (x86 software, arm64 Windows) inside a Windows virtual machine inside macOS. The x86->arm64 emulation in Windows is still pretty slow and not really ready for primetime. The arm64 version Windows is officially not available, you can only download it as a member of the Windows Insider program. In order to run the VM comfortably you'd probably need to use Parallels ($79 a year).

That's a lot of hoops to jump through to in order to have an unsupported, buggy beta version of Windows.

 

[Euroamerican]

I agree. Buy the iMac for the family and a Windows PC for the work. Besides the headache of getting your particular work flow to work on the Mac, you've got less of a chance of the family competition getting in the way of your work getting done!


That being said:

With my current Intel Macs, I can run Windows VMS in VMWare's Fusion. That has been pretty handy for testing and support of some Windows users I give advice to or support. As we all know, that is not currently available for M1.

However, I just found this article:

VMWare Will Support M1 Macs Soon, Offering More Ways to Run Windows

More like 'Windows 10 on M1.'

www.tomshardware.com

You may be in luck in the long run.

 

[Boyd01]

I agree, the M1 is the wrong machine if you need Windows. OTOH, I got a 2018 i7/64gb Intel Mini last summer and was able to get rid of my Windows computer and replace it with a virtual machine with Parallels. Still really happy with this setup, and as a bonus I can run all my expensive legacy Mac software in a MacOS Mountain Lion VM. The M1 Macs are cool, but just can't do what I need.