That might be the situation for your business but overall businesses aren't re-imaging Macs with Windows. There's no benefit for them to spend more money on Apple hardware only to run Windows. Your interest in doing this for your business is unique to you. It's not common for businesses in general to do this. When you used the word "Businesses" in your earlier post I thought you were referring to companies, not entrepreneurs because big corporations will buy a Mac if needed or a Windows machine if needed. Also Bootcamped Windows was terrible in terms of drivers. The computer gets hot, trackpad drivers weren't great. There's no real benefit for a business to use Windows in this fashion. Bootcamped Windows was better for home users.
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Microsoft confirms that Windows 11 will not support Apple M1
- Thread starter Javi74
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Every customer is a potential customer. They make money through subscription services. Neglecting millions of potential customers just because it's Apple seems petty to me. They could at least give it a chance and see what they make and they can also cut their losses later if it's not meeting expectations. Also please stop defending Microsoft, it's annoying.
Oh yep, I see PTT on my settings too. There are several options and nothing says TPM at all. This is going to take some research to figure out what to set and what not. How is the general user expected to do this? Windows 11 is going to have VERY LOW numbers for quite some time if my 2020 motherboard did not come with it enabled by default.
I read somewhere this is an attempt to muster up some hardware sales. Who knows if it does or not. For VMs on M1 it will depend on if something can get spoofed CPU-wise and is compatible enough to run partially emulated if they block support for Apple Silicon. I suspect that's very possible to do as I see Hackintoshers spoof CPUs all the time.
At some of the more developer friendly companies like Google, Facebook or Dropbox the default developer machine is a Mac. Even some Banks are giving their developers Macs. MacOS is still Unix and still comes with many standard Unix development tools. Someone has written a nice package manager that you can use to install the tools that are missing.
As you point out, Microsoft offers a number of its development tools on MacOS, Xamarin for mobile and .NET Core for web services. You can't develop Windows desktop apps on Mac but pretty much everything else is possible.
I agree that the way forward is containers and Docker has excellent support for their tools on the Mac. There is a Linux VM to run the containers of course but its not really visible to the developer. The docker command line tools are accessible from a MacOS shell and they work the same as they do on Linux. Docker even bundles Kubernetes with Docker Desktop for Mac.
There is of course a Docker Desktop for Windows and the embedded WSL VM. Microsoft are even going to support Linux GUI applications such as IDEs.
This is all great but the fact that Microsoft has gone to so much effort to support Linux and MacOS with its development tools does suggest that they understand that many developers don't see Windows as the best choice for a developer workstation. Obviously that does not apply to AAA Game developers, PC and Xbox are huge gaming platforms.
I have Windows 10 on a bootcamp partition of my Mac. Right now it is unable to apply a security update from August. I find using Windows a constant source of irritation.
The Intel Mac era is not over yet and some people are buying Intel Macs because they can run bootcamp. Someone who posts on this forum replaced an M1 MBA with a 16" MBP because he wanted access to Bootcamp.
Actually Apple just fixed the Magic Trackpad drives for T2 Macs, they work great now. Pretty much all recent Intel MacBooks get hot these days even in MacOS.
Then he bought the wrong computer. To spend a lot more money on a 16" just to run Windows makes no sense. Buy a Windows PC. End of story.
You are not much of a customer to Microsoft. They don’t make money of Windows.
It is why Microsoft doesn’t even care if people pirate Windows nowadays.
I am not defending Microsoft, I am just saying how it is. Windows is nothing more than a promotion for Microsoft nowadays rather than a cashcow.
...and they sell subscription services to MacOS users, too. Most of those “millions of potential customers” are perfectly well served by the MacOS native and web-based products MS already produce. Yes, things are missing from the Mac, but maybe, just maybe, they are missing because of low demand? Yes, some people need them - and one of the solutions to not having Windows on a Mac is to pay MS for Windows-in-the-cloud (more dosh for MS - but also likely to become the most practical solution for users over the coming years).
...whose common denominator is that a huge amount of their development work is using ”web technologies” that don’t depend on Windows. I’ll bet you an internet that they have PCs for developing their Windows clients. ...but even Google is a drop in the ocean c.f. the huge army of developers working in-house in industry and finance.
Well if you are developing software specifically targeting Windows you will of course be developing it on Windows. If you are a console or PC game developer you will using Windows too. If you are developing Mac or iOS apps you need a Mac and Microsoft has plenty of Macs in-house for that reason.
In general you are right about developers working in Finance but even at some banks they give developers Macs. Most of the in-house apps developed by large enterprises now target web clients and the backends often use cross platform technologies like Java or .NET core. What keeps many developers on Windows in these organizations is their unwillingness to give Macs to their developers.
I don't know how many developers would chose Windows over Mac if they had the freedom to chose but I suspect many or most Web & Mobile devs would choose a Mac. I think the reason Microsoft is working so hard on embedding Linux into Windows is because they suspect the same thing.
Exactly. The way this news story is being reported implies that Microsoft currently "officially support" Bootcamp and X86 virtualisation of Windows OSes, which I don't believe they do. (never tried so maybe wrong).
Has anyone tried contacting Microsoft with a Bootcamp or VM problem and received any help?
The support for these comes from Parallels and VMWare, and Apple, as I expect it to in the future.
Whatever the level of support Microsoft offers for its retail version of Windows on Bootcamp or a VM solution, the important difference is running the Intel version of Windows with a retail or other non-OEM license on an Intel Mac is legal. Running an OEM licensed version would not be.
Microsoft only provided its ARM version of Windows with an OEM license so there is no way to legally run an ARM version of Windows on an M1 Mac.
You: nobody does this
Them: But I do
You: Well you don't count!!!!! Nobody who matters does it!
I take the point. But Microsoft only said they wouldn't support it, not that they wouldn't license it. It is currently legal because it is an evaluation copy and shows as activated. I am expecting to have to buy a license at some point, although also hear rumours Windows 11 may be a free upgrade from 10.
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I don't think you will be able to buy a license anytime soon. Windows 11 may be a free upgrade if you have a licensed copy of Windows 10 but Microsoft has never sold a retail license for Windows 10 on ARM.
You may be able to keep using evaluation versions indefinitely of course.
MS licenses Windows on ARM to OEMs making ARM PCs (HP and Lenovo have announced WoA laptops, not sure if they are actually shipping). Only MS really knows why they don't offer a retail license for WoA but about the only customers would currently be people running Parallels on M1 Macs (current support status: "unsupported insiders preview version works for me" says someone on internet forum) and Raspberry Pi owners (who might install the insiders preview for bragging rights but ain't gonna buy it).
Next step would be for Parallels to put their money where their mouth is and ask Microsoft for a license to sell a Parallels + Windows 11 bundle. History does not relate whether they've asked and been rebuffed or if they just haven't asked yet... Sounds like VMWare have decided that the only way to win is not to play.
As I said earlier Microsoft has never supported Windows on Mac in any form so there is nothing unusual about the current M1 Mac situation, which is as expected.
Current licensing status is clearly a temporary one, but a bit more than me (as a typical "someone on an Internet forum"
) saying 'works for me'. It is clearly stated to be an evaluation copy and is activated, so not a lucky hack. I am willing to pay for a license if that becomes a requirement.Obviously Microsoft could make Windows ARM illegal on M1 Macs very easily, but they haven't done that in 15 years of X86 Windows on Intel Macs, and I don't believe they will with ARM. But anything could happen ?♂️
Perhaps, but that does not mean you want them as a customer.
It's probably an ROI issue. The cost to develop and support WoA that runs on AS probably means iy simply won't be profitable enough and they are better of investing that money in something else.
Actually, the license does not allow running it on a VM on AS; it just happens to work but it is a violation of the license agreement.
It will be interesting to see if they do or simply keep it as an OEM product and eventually kill the evaluation copy. I don't se them doing that unless there is a big enough demand for Arm machines from their Wintel base that roll their own to make it a viable option.
Microsoft has probably and inadvertently gotten themselves the best crowdsourcing model for ironing on WoA bugs all thanks to us M1 users. They would never have gotten that many Surface WoA users to sign up for the sheer reason they don't exist in that high a number. So will Microsoft give up that opportunity when Windows11 is released? I don't think so...not if they envision a future in which Arm based PCs will have a substantial market share, and Microsoft wants that to be part of their TAM.
Errr. It is not some particularly complicated guessing game.
1. The "old" model for Windows was to sell upgrades for money. So there was a substantive market of selling upgrades to end users through the retail market. Windows 10 shifted that model to " free upgrades of Windows 10 for the life of your machine". The focus is far more so on selling through OEMs with one time payments ( bury the OS cost in the system price) than on selling copies to end users ( through upgrades).
[ Can also see the problem when 6-9 years out have gotten no recent funds from folks and have to do quirkier and quirkier work on obsolete hardware to get them update. Turns more and more into a Ponzi scheme where new folks have to pay for work done for the "old" folks. So also not particuarly surprisng trying to get off of that path with Windows 11. ]
2. There is a large retail market of PC system componets. End users can go to Newegg or Microcenter or various other retail sites and see dozens and dozens of motherboards to buy. To to buy, HDD to buy. And there is a cottage industry of building systems for users . So lots of really small "OEM" that get their whole supply from retail stores as opposed directly from the parts manufacturers. So there is an "OEM" edition ( Microsoft doesn't provide first tier support because suppose to talk to the system maker first)
3. Windows on ARM has mainly been laptops. ( there is an Windows IOT version, but again it has really been a 'side show' ) . There is not really much of a "put together at home with thermal paste and your trusty screwdriver" market for laptop components. There are no desktop "box with slots" ARM logicboard market. There are cheap home hacking kits like Raspberry Pi , but where are the logicboards with Windows 11 certified supported ARM processors? Pragmatically there is none.
The major supported ARM CPU for Windows ARM is Qualcomm . They are as much interested in selling celluar radios as CPUs. Retial desktop logic boards are not on their priority list. It isn't on Apple's either.
4. To date the vast majority of Windows ARM systems have had just enough "horsepower" to run Windows on bare metal. The number of folks trying to run heavyweight virtualization workloads probably would buy different hardware.
I'm sure some major cloud providers with ARM servers have talked to Microsoft about doing a WoA service offering. That is corporate to corporate license delivery chain and no retail hardware stores.
Yeah.... if there are pragmatically few paying customers then it shouldn't be a surprise the product isn't offered.
VMware has decided not to step on Microsoft toes in case they need them later. If Microsoft wants to go forward later VMware will go forward with them as a trusted partner. Parallels highly likely isn't gong to sign up to be a Tier 1 Windows support provider that the OEM license binds them to. They don't do it for x86 why would they start for ARM? Parallels is also not going to the front of the trusted partner line by pushing Windows into places where Microsoft hasn't green-lighted support to.