Since Apple Silicon Mac can not use x86 windows, it will be a huge problem for those people using virtualization such as Parallels. Due to the different architecture, this will be the worst point of AS Mac but I have no idea what Apple is thinking. Even pro users are concerned. Yes, you can still emulate and use virtualiziation but within the same architecture and the performance will be poor for ARM to x86. Who is also concerned about this?
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Emulation, virtualization, bootcamp. No hopes?
- Thread starter sosumilee
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Since Apple Silicon Mac can not use x86 windows, it will be a huge problem for those people using virtualization such as Parallels. Due to the different architecture, this will be the worst point of AS Mac but I have no idea what Apple is thinking. Even pro users are concerned. Yes, you can still emulate and use virtualiziation but within the same architecture and the performance will be poor for ARM to x86. Who is also concerned about this?
This isn't Apple's problem. It is that simple. Microsoft does make a version of Windows for ARM. What Microsoft does with Windows for ARM (whether the do a complete port over to Apple Silicon, whether they run existing X86 (32 bit) or X64 (64 bit) applications, how optimized any or all of this becomes) is up to Microsoft. Apple may try to encourage Windows for ARM/Apple Silicon, or not. I'm inclined to think that Apple doesn't do anything in either direction.
What Parallels, or any other emulator, again it is in the hands of those creating the emulator. Apple certainly won't do it, and as long as the emulator fits within Apple's software guidelines/rules, won't do anything to stop it.
Just because people have chosen to run Windows on the Intel Macs in the past, should not be taken as Apple having given any sense of priority to this aspect of the Intel Macs. This had far more credence 10-12 years ago than it does now. Back then, it was a relative lack of Mac software that may have been the major influence. Today, with the ability to run iOS apps (and yes, I know they are not Mac optimized apps) and its huge base of software, makes running Windows apps less of a priority.
What Parallels, or any other emulator, again it is in the hands of those creating the emulator. Apple certainly won't do it, and as long as the emulator fits within Apple's software guidelines/rules, won't do anything to stop it.
Just because people have chosen to run Windows on the Intel Macs in the past, should not be taken as Apple having given any sense of priority to this aspect of the Intel Macs. This had far more credence 10-12 years ago than it does now. Back then, it was a relative lack of Mac software that may have been the major influence. Today, with the ability to run iOS apps (and yes, I know they are not Mac optimized apps) and its huge base of software, makes running Windows apps less of a priority.
If you save the money for parallels license you could buy a pretty decent computer.
But how do we know that we can emulate x86 from ARM? What about AVX which Roshetta 2 cant even translate? What about software dependent with speicifc hardware such as Intel?
its still a problem.... Its favoring the smaller to the larger that's still at stake... Apple is changing things, but you can't really blame Windows, because who today users ARM on a Widows system ? Everyone i know in business uses Intel... N arm chip..
So, if your restricting something to work you had always worked well before,, then its a change.
Here’s a product idea: Windows in a stick. A USB-C (USB4) stick with AMD Renoir 15W processor, LPDDR4 RAM and SSD. A middleware (Parallels?) to communicate between macOS and Windows. Display output to internal display. I’d buy one, because I don’t want to carry two computers with me.
x86 virtualization (and Boot Camp with it) was always just a perk of Apple using x86. It was never the intended reason for Apple using x86.
That all being said, I'd be shocked if Microsoft and Apple weren't in talks to figure out a way to get Windows 10 for ARM64 to run on an Apple Silicon Mac, whether it be via Parallels or some Apple Silicon means of a native boot (kind of like Boot Camp for Intel). In the interim, it will be tough for me, personally as the flexibility of booting and virtualizing x86 versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux is super useful. But, it's not like I didn't survive on a Mac pre-Intel. It just means that I'm going to be doing more on an actual PC.
A Parallels license is $80. For Pro it's $99 per year. Even assuming one subscribes to the Pro version for five years, and then still buys a Windows 10 Pro license on top of that, the kind of PC you'd build would be **** unless it's a desktop and unless you cut some annoying corners. Trust me, I've done this math and I do PC shopping for breakfast.
Note that not all x86 processors are compatible with all (some even any) versions of AVX. AVX-512 has very limited support, and is not supported by upcoming (!) intel desktop processors.
Windows, and Windows software, has no problems with this. Neither does Rosetta 2, obviously.
Concern trolling gets tiresome.
Plenty of old prebulit towers around asking for almost nothing (in the states at least). Give it a $20 or so 120G SATA SSD. Some cleanup and re-paste if necessary. I think this already reach the level of performance one typically gets in parallel. As a bonus the tower would accept a GPU upgrade (sometimes require a PSU upgrade at the same time ). The parallels setup couldn’t do the same.
Btw, for playing AAA games casually Linux might work too.
I expect we see some support for virtualization of Arm guests since Apple demoed it at the keynote, using Parallels. I think this also shows that Apple cares about this to some extent (as many developers need this).
VMware seems to be considering (see here).
I am less optimistic regarding to virtualbox (based on this forum discussion).
The situation of emulation of non Arm guests is less clear though probably of interest to many (pro and non pro) users.
VMware seems to be considering (see here).
I am less optimistic regarding to virtualbox (based on this forum discussion).
The situation of emulation of non Arm guests is less clear though probably of interest to many (pro and non pro) users.
I solved the problem by moving to an X86 based Linux system. Then I have VMWplaer installed over that. Player is now free.
My iMac still works but I notice I go days at a time now with no need to turn it on. My new system is an HP workstation, a "Z420" with a Xeon CPU, Nvidia GPU and 64GB RAM. It dramatically outperforms the iMac.
I think my solution will be common for those who need to run X86, they will abandon Mac for other platforms. But on the other hand, VERY few people will care about ARM vs Intel. All they need is Safari.
My iMac still works but I notice I go days at a time now with no need to turn it on. My new system is an HP workstation, a "Z420" with a Xeon CPU, Nvidia GPU and 64GB RAM. It dramatically outperforms the iMac.
I think my solution will be common for those who need to run X86, they will abandon Mac for other platforms. But on the other hand, VERY few people will care about ARM vs Intel. All they need is Safari.
Does it use DDR3 or DDR4? I like the fact once it is one generation behind there is little premium for ECC memory.
Don't count on anything imho. I posted a complaint comment in response to a blog post on the Parallels web site, it was actually a pretty good article explaining some in-depth on their technology. My comment asked why no guidance at all on the ability to continue to run Windows apps under Parallels on ARM Macs. I said that we too have needs to plan directions in 2021, and not have any visibility at all makes that impossible. That's all I said. My comment was deleted, so to me that says a lot about what to expect from Parallels. They lost a good chunk of loyalty from me today.
Idk. At that point why not just use a cloud solution?
as far as I understand it, emulating a complex instruction set cpu on a RISC cpu like arm is possible but incredibly inefficient. It may be technically possible but an impracticality inefficient product.
And to be honest, I really don’t see what the fuss is about. How many people really *need* to run Windows apps alongside Mac apps?
for me personally the only things I need Windows for is running some pretty specialized astrophotography equiplement. I dumped parallels/boot camp and went with a dedicated Windows NUC a long time ago. I imagine most use cases for mac users needing Windows at this point are also pretty specialized.
And to be honest, I really don’t see what the fuss is about. How many people really *need* to run Windows apps alongside Mac apps?
for me personally the only things I need Windows for is running some pretty specialized astrophotography equiplement. I dumped parallels/boot camp and went with a dedicated Windows NUC a long time ago. I imagine most use cases for mac users needing Windows at this point are also pretty specialized.
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I don't think i've seen see VMWare, Parallels mention AMD tech... only Intel VT requirement. I'm sure it would still work
haha.. middleware,, *we have a new acronym"
FWIW, today Parallels released its Big Sur-compatible Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac featuring Universal Binary code for Apple Silicon-compatibility.
I just downloaded the trial of Parallels Desktop 16.1.0 and there's not a single Universal Binary to be found. all intel only...
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Got a link to where they say "Universal Binary"? I could not find it on their web site. Maybe the site is not yet updated and there is a press release?
http://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece845/docs/vmware-evolution.pdf looks like a good read for people want to go down this rabbit hole.
given the fact that we now have ESXi on aarch64, I'm pretty sure that we'll see a release of VMware Fusion on ASi Macs.
You don’t need to emulate anything. Translation is how it’s done. Both Rosetta and whatever Windows is using achieve good results.
All we need is Windows on ARM to properly support x86 apps. Windows can be then run in a virtual machine. I am sure it’s coming in 2021.