Only 2.4% of Windows 10 users have upgraded to Windows 11. They would probably like to have more users. AppleTV, Photos and Music are coming to Microsoft machines which is a good sign of their working together. I believe we are closer than ever to getting Boot Camp. I don't believe the Parallels/Crossover solution is the end.
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I predict Boot Camp & Windows 11 are coming to Apple Silicon.
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Well they did say at WWDC 2020 "if Microsoft agrees" or what not, so it might happen, but if it does, it probably won't for a couple more years.
I predict Boot Camp will never return for a couple of reasons. For maximizing security alone allowing dual boot makes no sense. Apple would get the blame for any problem with Boot Camp regardless who's responsible. The whole architecture of M1 is a trade secret, which Apple won't share with anyone let alone Microsoft. Virtualization becomes more feasible with faster computers, running native might not even be necessary. With iOS and ARM Apple broke the WINTEL monopoly and has no interest in keeping either of them alive and relevant. Not running Windows is a feature not a bug.
Even if the political issues can be solved and Apple gives away their trade secret information about their hardware intervals… you think Microsoft will be willing to invest millions of $ just to attract a few more users buying windows licenses? Apple surely won’t. I mean, they don’t even want to support Vulkan on macOS, which would be an easy one.
I see no business reason for Apple to spend time and money to get ARM windows running natively especially on a product that isn't even commercially available.
That big orange chunk of the pie called Services is why it won't happen since it's driven by MacOS service subscription nagware so no way Apple will give you the means to replace it. Nothing personal, just business.
Windows 10/11 for Arm is wrapped up in license issues with Qualcomm.
That's Apple's real compilation in hardware, so assume Qualcomm will do anything it can to hinder a Widows licensing deal for AppleSoC.
That's Apple's real compilation in hardware, so assume Qualcomm will do anything it can to hinder a Widows licensing deal for AppleSoC.
Apple's position is that they allow dual booting (as in it's possible) but will neither do anything to help or hinder 3rd party OS's on the platform. Although it's still in beta, Asahi linux is bootable on AS Macs. So it seems like Apple won't prevent you from installing or creating your own OS to run on its hardware, but they won't go out of their way to assist you either as in creating another version of BootCamp.
github.com
In short, it really is up to Microsoft if they want to invest the time and energy to make Windows work on AS Macs. Leaving issues with licensing from Qualcomm aside, I suspect they are happy to have Windows running in virtual/remote machines as far as macs are concerned.
Introduction to Apple Silicon
Hardware and software docs / wiki. Contribute to AsahiLinux/docs development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
In short, it really is up to Microsoft if they want to invest the time and energy to make Windows work on AS Macs. Leaving issues with licensing from Qualcomm aside, I suspect they are happy to have Windows running in virtual/remote machines as far as macs are concerned.
Apple have quite clearly said that they won't support direct booting of alternate operating systems - the boot options are there to allow developers to boot multiple versions of MacOS - and everything else is via virtualisation (which they do support via Hyperkit & where Microsoft do have everything that they need). That doesn't mean that they'll block it, but it does suggest that there's no guarantee that the hardware/firmware interfaces the Asahi folks are reverse-engineering will be long-term stable - and while Asahi deserve kudos for what they've done so far they're a long way from a full-featured, stable product (esp. GPU acceleration - probably the "biggie").
Virtualization now seems to be working well on Parallels, with VMWare in public beta - and it's now possible to get a legitimate license for Windows 11 on ARM that doesn't rely on signing up to an "insider's preview" evaluation scheme. For anybody who has some bits of Windows-only software to run from time to time, virtualisation (or, as time goes by, remote access) is the best solution.
I'm not clear why people want to direct-boot Windows on Apple Silicon - on Intel Macs this made sense because they were basically PC clones in nice boxes and ran Windows well, could support PC-only hardware and often offered better AMD or NVIDIA (when that was a thing) graphics drivers. Intel Macs were only ever a firmware module & some generic drivers away from being able to run Windows unmodified. Apple Silicon Macs are more of a development of iPad architecture and, beyond the ARM instruction set, aren't even like other ARM-based systems - running windows natively would need new drivers for everything, especially Apple's GPUs (which are optimised for Metal, not DirectX) and its questionable whether Windows software would aver make use of things like the neural and media engines.
As for MS wanting to grow Windows-on-ARM - yes, today even a M1 MacBook running Parallels is possibly the best performing Windows-on-ARM system available... but MS's Windows business model isn't about helping Apple sell Macs - it's about licensing Windows and services to the ~90% of personal computer users who buy their hardware from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, etc. etc. - and I really don't see Apple licensing Apple Silicon to Dell so that they can make M2 laptops for $500... MS's best bet would be to work with someone like Qualcomm to produce better laptop/PC-grade ARM chips which HPDelnovo could actually buy for their own machines.
(Yes, MS have their Surface PC range - which indeed caused some rumblings from PC makers when first announced - but MS seem to be keeping those as premium-priced 'windows showcase' machines mainly competing with Macs rather than threatening HPDelNovo's bread and butter - and, of course, PC makers are free to compete - even with the Qualcomm-based Surface X - whereas Windows-on-Apple-Silicon would lock them out).
I think this is the crucial point and something folks simply aren’t getting. They hear “ARM” and assume it’s just about the CPU instruction set. But there are so many more things that make a platform. It’s as you say - Intel Macs were just regular standard x86 platforms with some Apple specific exotic hardware modules added to the mix. ARM macs are a fully proprietary system that’s doesn’t even rely on established standards. One of the reasons Asahi could do such a quick progress is because its authors have already spent years before reverse-engineering the iPhone. And while they do fantastic work (and the GPU support is coming along much faster than I would have ever imagined) it will never be a stable OS.
I predict that it is not. There is no reason for Apple to do this. And Microsoft will only do something like it if they can run windows for arm as the os. They are working on building their own pc’s with their own processors. So I’m sorry ,but as for as Apple Silicone goes, bootcamp is dead.
Good luck if you think Microsoft will write system drivers and modify Windows OS for one vendor that doesn't follow industry standards. Qualcomm + Windows on ARM partnership exist because Qualcomm provides system drivers and follows industry standards.
Qualcomm + Windows on ARM partnership exist, because ... neither of them has a product to sell without the other. There are two relevant mobile OS's, iOS and Android. Microsoft is a tiny weak company, who'll never set any standards on ARM.
The official Apple stance is no support, yes.
The unofficial stance is better. They're not documenting anything, but they've made changes which seem specifically targeted at 3rd party boot stability. They've added a new alternate path for starting the kernel which bypasses the ordinary Mac path based on Mach-O dynamic linking. There's no real reason for them to add this other than giving projects like Asahi an interface to boot a non-Mach-O binary (Linux doesn't use Mach-O). Prior to Apple's introduction of this change, changes to Mach-O and other things could easily break Asahi boot, meaning that if the user did something like update their macOS (and associated RecoveryOS), Linux might stop booting. Now it should be much more stable.
Apple seems to like the fact that Asahi and friends exist, and will go slightly out of their way to make things smoother. But only slightly.
BTW, Asahi GPU accel isn't ready for release yet AFAIK, but was demonstrated around the end of September. They're closer to it than you might think.
I don’t think that. My very next sentence in my post states that I think Microsoft is happy having Windows on AS purely in virtual/remote machines as it is now.
😂🤣😂
They probably won't be successful with Arm based windows, however, they are not a tiny weak company.
”tiny & weak” is obviously ridiculous…
However, their star is falling - they have held on to their near-dominance in the traditional PC OS and software business, which will keep them in beer and smokes for the foreseeable future - but have totally missed the boat with mobile and face significant competition in the server/cloud computing/services field - which are the real growth areas. I don’t think it takes a genius to predict that they’re going to be focussing on “services” now rather than getting into battles over desktop OS dominance - and they can & do sell software and services to MacOS (and iOS, and Android, and ChromeOS) users.
I think that, with Windows-on-ARM, they’re mainly insuring against Intel/AMD dropping the ball too badly and don’t care too much whether or not ARM displaces Intel as long as they’ve got a product. As I think I said in a previous post, if MS do want to push WoA what they need is a “Microsoft Silicon” (probably made by someone like Qualcomm or NVIDIA) chip that - unlike Apple Silicon - can be licensed by the other PC makers who account for most of MS’s OS and software/services customers. Or, they might not want to disrupt the PC market *at all* by forcing a platform change - any such churn would give Google, Apple et. al. a chance to win new users.
Falling or changing?
Yes, windows complete dominance is a thing of the past but that doesn't mean that MSFT is going to be a shell of its former self. Revenue from Windows is smaller then you think (see image below)
Also, A similar discussion could have been said about IBM 10, or 20 years ago. They made printers, keyboards, typewriters, personal computers, mainframes, etc. Now look at that them - A service oriented company. People I'm sure said their star was falling and they couldn't compete in the new world order.
Don't forget, Apple is also transforming, Their service business unit accounts for 21% of all revenue, second only to the iPhone
Its clear that MS is moving more to a service orientated focus, so while Windows marketshare is dropping, MSFT is not going anywhere, their star is not falling imo.
The real fightI had in work as Linux servers taking up spaces traditionally Windows servers! The did this simply because Microsoft had a plan to charge a yearly fee for server taking the place of transitional servers in Military! Many many places you could have VOIP servers for all military Intelligence running on Linux servers!
Not today, but Windows' "desktop OS" market share has gone from 86% in 1997 to 76% in 2022 - which ignores the fact that it's a smaller percentage of a shrinking pie, where the big growth has been in non-desktop OSs - mobile and server - which have been Microsoft's big failures.
Today, MS have built up Azure and other services to make up for the decline of Windows, but they don't "own" any of those sectors - 21% of the cloud infrastructure market, behind Amazon at 34%.
I guess it's debatable whether MS's star has fallen, or whether other stars have risen faster. I don't think they're going away any time soon now, but their former dominance is already history. The die was cast when they missed the first bus on web services and mobile.
I used to live near Havant in the UK where IBM were a major employer and had acres of offices/factories. Mostly gone now - and mainly closed/sold off, not re-located. There are dozens of tech companies in the old buildings but not IBM. I'd call that a "fallen star" - even if there is still a successful "services company" called IBM (which emerged from near-bankruptcy) doing important things, they very much are a shadow of their former self.
IBM and Apple have an interesting history. First, Steve Jobs sought to topple their dominance in personal computers. One of my favorite pictures:
Eventually, they partnered in the AIM alliance along with Motorola to promote PowerPC on the desktop. When that failed, IBM eventually divested most of their hardware divisions, slowly transforming into the services company that we have today. They are also one of the largest corporate buyers of Macs, perhaps the biggest, and have often promoted the productivity and support cost benefits that they are finding with their internal Mac users.
Companies must change or die, IBM and Microsoft are no longer the dominant forces they once were. From my perspective, Microsoft is nothing more than an over-glorified utility company. I suppose their next big market will be municipal water supply embedded systems.
Heck, Corning started off in the 1850s as a provider of glass optics, such as with headlamps, glass bowls, and ceramics. They kept up with changing technologies, and provided the glass for television picture tubes, the glass for the primary mirror in the Hubble Space Telescope, and eventually fiber-optics when the internet became a thing. Today, they are still in optics, ceramics, and glass, and are best known for Gorilla Glass, featured in the iPhone. Apple has invested nearly half a billion dollars into Corning. That's a successful company transformation over nearly two centuries.
Apple is changing too. However, I'd argue that Apple has handled their transformation far better than their rivals. Apple has stayed profitable in the mature segments. For example, growing market share each year with the Mac and hitting all-time revenue records, reinvigorating the line with Apple Silicon, while introducing compelling products into new markets. The Mac business, in isolation, would be a Fortune 100 company by itself.
Microsoft still has Windows, IBM still has mainframes, but only Apple has managed to grow traditional businesses along with introducing next generation products and services, leveraging their historical vertical integration strategy. Juggling that many plates while adding more isn't easy to do.
And people would've been right back then, because today people don't know what IBM even was? There are now multiple generations of people, who don't know what it means to rewind a cassette tape with a pencil or how to use a rotary phone. And that was basic knowledge at a time. How many people ever knew that the Wintel-Monopoly grew upon the corpse of the IBM-compatible PC clones? To most people the Clone Wars are something from "old" Star Wars. The movie, not "Star Wars" the SDI initiative by Ronald Reagan.
Look Microsoft won't go bankrupt anytime soon and Azure might even be a longterm success or not, I don't know. But the Windows PC as a standard of computing is gone. Looking at my old PCs always felt like visiting a museum. But now they don't even have a connection to the new computing paradigm anymore. An iPhone 14 Pro is not just a faster PC, it's a more advanced iPhone from 2007. That's the year when Microsoft died.
I am speaking of the future. things will change. if not, a razer and macbook air fit nicely in my 5.11 Xray Messenger Bag
Yes, Microsoft will realize that Windows on ARM isn't catching up and they will shut it down like Windows Phone OS. That's the future.