I think the first bit is a misquote/bad wording by Anandtech. To boot natively on Apple Silicon, Windows needs extensive kernel modifications as well as drivers to support Apples proprietary hardware. I don’t thing there is much chance of Apple opening up their internal hardware documentation to Microsoft, and the far reasonable interpretation would be that „technologies“ mentioned are virtualization.
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No M1 Mac's are not locked down. You can run other kernels/OS. Like Linux.
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I think the first bit is a misquote/bad wording by Anandtech. To boot natively on Apple Silicon, Windows needs extensive kernel modifications as well as drivers to support Apples proprietary hardware. I don’t thing there is much chance of Apple opening up their internal hardware documentation to Microsoft, and the far reasonable interpretation would be that „technologies“ mentioned are virtualization.
Anandtech? The Ars interview while not quoting the questions sure seems to imply that they directly asked about running Windows natively. I suspect that Apple was saying that the kernel tools exist and Apple is willing to license whatever Microsoft needs to dual boot if they want to.
Sorry, yes, Ars. I misquoted. As to the rest, I’d be careful with assuming all these things. It’s a really big leap of faith you are taking there
I thought maybe there was an interview by Anandtech that I might have missed.Sorry, yes, Ars. I misquoted. As to the rest, I’d be careful with assuming all these things. It’s a really big leap of faith you are taking there
It does seem like a change from what Apple and specifically Craig Federighi said earlier but that was before they opened up the kernel too. I find it plausible that Apple wouldn’t mind promoting Arm Windows as a way to break Intel’s near monopoly. We’ll probably never know unless Microsoft makes some sort of announcement. They are being awfully quiet about supporting Apple silicon.
That's a big 'Admittedly': It wasn't just on Intel CPUs, it was on a platform that was just a firmware patch away from being a PC compatible, that used generic or third-party Windows drivers for GPU, networking, disc controllers, sound, I/O... Even the EFI firmware was a close relative of the up-and-coming replacement for the PC BIOS, which doubtless helped make the BIOS emulation firmware module feasible (which was worked out by hackers prior to Apple announcing bootcamp). It was a very low-hanging bit of fruit - a large part of BootCamp is point-and-drool assistants for disc partitioning, tweaking the Windows installer, downloading the correct drivers etc. which could be done manually or with open source tools if you were a masochist.
Later on, some of those drivers would have to be replaced to work with T1/T2, but key things like graphics still used existing Windows drivers. Running Windows or Linux native on the M1 would require bespoke drivers for pretty much everything - which in turn would require Apple to publish stable low-level information on Apple Silicon hardware - as it is, they can change their internal specs with every new Mac, which will always come with the appropriate MacOS drivers.
Running in a virtual machine is much easier since most drivers can just be "stubs" which call the hypervisor, which in turn calls the official interfaces to MacOS drivers.
At the moment, MS don't even sell a generic, standalone Windows-for-ARM license - you can use the "insiders preview" and MS won't ask too much about whether your license is valid, but if it breaks you get to keep both pieces. Even with virtualisation, I think it is more likely that Parallels or VMWare will sign up with Microsoft to distribute Windows 11 bundled with their hypervisors.
Well, no, it was in the past, and back in the days when the iPhone was a rumour, Android was shaping up to be a BlackBerry knockoff, and when most Mac users' prior experience with "virtual machines" was through full-software-emulation like SoftWindows, which sucked. Boot Camp made sense to Apple in 2006 - just as switching Macs from PPC to Intel processors made sense back then.
Windows is still important, but the rise of mobile and browser-based apps after 2007 ended its days of being the only game in town. One big change is the death of Internet Explorer (ding dong!) so the days of Windows-only websites and webapps are coming to an end. Macs have also picked up in popularity and there's better support and a better choice of MacOS native software. Widespread fast broadband and improved software makes using remote desktop to connect to a work Windows PC a realistic possibility. For apps aimed at consumers the words "Available for Windows PCs" are increasingly being replaced by "Available for iOS and Android".
That doesn't mean that Windows isn't vital for some people, but from the point of view of Apple the number of customers for whom that is an issue is dwindling, and maintaining Windows support is a drag that they can live without. Come 2021, tighter integration with iOS and the ability to run iPhone apps is more important to Apple's customer base than running Windows.
...meanwhile, Apple and Parallels seem to have done everything they can to make Windows-on-ARM virtualisation possible and it's over to MS to allow licensing (which now probably ain't gonna happen until Windows 11 is publicly launched or maybe until all the lingering ARM32 code has been stripped from Windows). Again, while it sucks if you want to run AAA games or demanding pro media production apps on Windows, virtualisation is the more practical solution for most people who just have 1-2 awkward Windows apps preventing them from going all-MacOS.
I don't see that makes economic sense.
- Because it would be made in relatively small quantities, it would be expensive c.f. commodity PC hardware
- It would need its own RAM
- It would need clever driver-fu to let Windows use the Mac as a graphics card, sound card, SSD etc. which would likely lead to performance and compatibility issues (Maybe it could use a PCIe GPU directly, but Apple have made it pretty clear that the future is Apple Silicon GPUs).
- You'd have a Intel space heater warming up your nice cool-running Apple Silicon box
- Virtualisation, even with modern x86 translation running on ARM, is better for general use that doesn't need bare-metal performance - and a 'PC' card would still have extra layers of software managing graphics & SSD so you probably won't get "bare metal" performance out of it.
(FWIW I was using an ARM-based machine with a 'PC card' 25 years ago, and the advantage was wafer thin then - and that was a machine that had managed to reduce the 'PC card' to a x86 chip and a single ASIC & shared RAM with the host system, but still the faster 586 cards cost nearly as much as a full PC system - I think the affordable 486-clone one was subsidised so Acorn could check the 'Windows' box on education tenders).
Someone is also working on NetBSD (and OpenBSD given what marcan says) too.