I'll admit I was a hold-out because of my need for running Windows workloads in a VM. But with the launch of the M4, and Microsoft having really picked up the pace of migrating to Arm architectures (a pretty useful emulator on Win11 Arm and almost fully native toolchain within VS for Arm) I decided make the switch. Going from an Intel 2019 MBP 16" to the high spec M4 MBP was quite a jump. I can honestly say that there's nothing I cannot do on this machine that I need to do. There would have been plenty had I jumped earlier, but not now. Performance is incredible. Big solutions compile in VS for Arm running natively on Win11 Arm in about 20 seconds compared to about 2 minutes on the Intel. Heat? What heat? I know the M4 has a fan but I've never heard it and I've hit the machine pretty hard at times. Battery life is crazy. I can spend a whole day in the VM compiling code continuously and drop about 10% battery. In a day. The Intel would have managed about 2 hours and be begging for power, fans screaming.
You were absolutely right to wait today, the Windows ARM environment is finally mature enough for serious, productive use. But let’s be honest:
that’s not thanks to Microsoft. The truth is,
Apple is the one who jump-started the ARM desktop ecosystem.
Windows on ARM has existed
since 2012, starting with Windows RT and later with devices like the Surface Pro X. But for
eight years, Microsoft left that platform in a half-baked state:
- no proper emulator,
- incomplete development tools,
- limited support in Visual Studio,
- and almost no native ARM software from third-party developers.
Users were stuck with slow x86 emulation, and developers had little to no incentive to adapt. 😣
Then in
2020, Apple launched the M1 chips — and took a completely different approach:
- blazing performance, even in Gen 1,
- dev tools ready on day one,
- Rosetta 2, an emulation layer that actually worked,
- and above all, real pressure on the software industry to recompile for ARM.
Within months, major developers who had ignored Windows ARM for years were suddenly pushing native ARM builds (but for macOS). The key is that many of those apps and frameworks (Electron, Chromium, Unity, Qt, etc.) are cross-platform. So now,
those same native builds also work on Windows ARM, by extension. But only because Apple forced the market to move.
So yes today Windows ARM is actually viable. But let’s be clear:
we got here because of Apple’s momentum, not Microsoft’s vision. If we had waited for Microsoft alone to lead the ARM transition, we might still be waiting in 2030. 😜
