On the topic of VMware Fusion for ARM

[vigilant]

People have Windows 10 running on a raspberry pi today. It works, I fully expect someone will have Windows 10 up and running in Parallels.

The gap that needs to be serviced for Parallels is getting the drivers in place for Linux and Windows.

I do fully expect Microsoft to provide support for Windows on Parallels or just sell their own solution that utilizes the Apple Hypervisor. It's a no brainer. Microsoft already supports using Hyper-V on Windows on ARM. I fully expect Microsoft to release a way to run Windows VMs on Apple Silicon. I think they are able to setup kernel extensions to get enhanced video, audio, and Camera support but I'd need to review the latest from the Hypervisor.framework to see if there's anything else that would let them get enhanced device support natively.

I FULLY expect Microsoft to be on board for Windows on Apple Silicon. x86 emulation works today on a raspberry pi, so I don't think it would take that much effort to get that up and running on Apple Silicon.

 

[AVonGauss]

Deleted.

 

[Janichsan]

People have Windows 10 running on a raspberry pi today. It works, I fully expect someone will have Windows 10 up and running in Parallels.

Windows 10 on ARM != the full Windows 10 on Intel.

 

[Alwis]

People have Windows 10 running on a raspberry pi today. It works, I fully expect someone will have Windows 10 up and running in Parallels.

But you would still need the applications used on Windows in an ARM version. No chance to get old software running on Windows for ARM

 

[vigilant]

Windows 10 on ARM != the full Windows 10 on Intel.

It isn't ideal, but it handles x86 to ARM emulation. It can run many x86 binaries.
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But you would still need the applications used on Windows in an ARM version. No chance to get old software running on Windows for ARM

It's doing x86 emulation. I am curious to see if this was running on Apple Silicon what would that look like. Windows on ARM x86 emulation appears to be working on the raspberry pi.
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[Janichsan]

It can run many x86 binaries.

But many it can't run. And those it can, perform badly.

 

[eoblaed]

I guess I don't see the big Linux use case. Wouldn't one typically do that in a Docker container these days?

I run quite a few linux VMs for a variety of services, dev goofing around, etc. Docker is not ideal for me as I need/want persistent systems.

That said, even though at least one of my in-use VMs is Fusion, I've started using Parallels for the rest and have been quite happy with it so far.

 

[vigilant]

But many it can't run. And those it can, perform badly.

I can't speak for everything, but I know that Microsoft is planning on support x64 to ARM64. Adobe is also working on ARM64 variants of some of their applications.

I know it's going to take time, but treating Intels shoddy architecture as the eternal golden goose is ridiculous. That line of thinking is what got Blackberry to where they are today.

 

[burgerrecords]

But outside of media work

That isn't exactly new - people have been using remote headless servers for various tasks from low-resource machines for a while (the common one admittedly isn't windows, it's a Linux VM to run a dev environment with just the IDE locally). But, it's a big step back for plenty of scenarios. Not saying it doesn't work for some, but it's also not a silver bullet, and I'd be surprised if many had low enough latency network connections to make it usable for anything that's particularly interactive via a GUI.



I can't be sure but I assumed @chucker23n1 meant, "why do you need Parallels to support <Pro Features> for a Linux VM, wouldn't you just use Docker (which provides it's own VM and thus implicitly has all the features required for a dev environment", rather than "why use a VM at all, just use Docker".

For certain expensive, small professional practice software that runs on Windows, I’m seeing turnkey solutions directly from vendors to host traditional 32 bit applications and use them over Citrix/parallels client that integrates into Windows. The benefits of this are a very stable, tested, sandboxed environment for the app, as well as no need to have IT infrastructure on the customer end. The downside is it's obviously not as snappy.

In addition, 60% of my remaining revenue generating software is rendered via a browser with a cloud based back end.

Obviously for media based work this infrastructure isn’t going to have pros that outweigh the cons, and it's unfortunate to ultimately see my Ryzen 3900x so underutilized. However, it makes a lot of sense for these applications that would have to be rewritten at great cost, and for no real worthwhile improvement in function, to live on in that type of environment. It will be interesting to see if vendors go that route with mac users

 

[vigilant]

But outside of media work


For certain expensive, small professional practice software that runs on Windows, I’m seeing turnkey solutions directly from vendors to host traditional 32 bit applications and use them over Citrix/parallels client that integrates into Windows. The benefits of this are a very stable, tested, sandboxed environment for the app, as well as no need to have IT infrastructure on the customer end. The downside is it's obviously not as snappy.

In addition, 60% of my remaining revenue generating software is rendered via a browser with a cloud based back end.

Obviously for media based work this infrastructure isn’t going to have pros that outweigh the cons, and it's unfortunate to ultimately see my Ryzen 3900x so underutilized. However, it makes a lot of sense for these applications that would have to be rewritten at great cost, and for no real worthwhile improvement in function, to live on in that type of environment. It will be interesting to see if vendors go that route with mac users

I like this response a lot.

If someone has a use case for work, that is highly dependent on running code that for whatever reason wasn’t moved to 64 bit on Mac, and it exists for Windows if it’s that important then it’s probably time to get a low price, low powered Windows machine that can help with those tasks.

Microsoft doesn’t even want to support win32 anymore. I can tell you for an absolute fact that Microsoft has been trying to get people to move on for years.

Just as an example, Windows 10x won’t even run win32/win64 apps “natively”. Anything that isn’t built in a modern way is going to be put into a container and share resources there, while Microsoft pushes for applications using their latest tool chains and the like.

Now, Windows 10x won’t be for every user, but it absolutely shows you where Microsofts head is in all of this. It’s been a very long time since I’ve delved into the Windows App stack, but there have been so many dead ends. The problem is they’ve burned out a lot of users.

It’s funny to me that Apple is able to get all of their platforms to 64 bit, and Microsoft is so far over their legacy that it’s essentially a “compatibility” mode for what they think is the future of computers.

One more thing worth adding. It is so incredibly easy to get working Windows environment easily that it’s not even funny.

I’m typing this on my iPad, and I can be on a Windows environment by simply going into AWS Workspaces. I use that for a couple odd ball apps, and log off. I don’t think I’ve ever been changed more than $10 a month to do that. You can do similar things with a Windows PC at home for free.

 

[Alwis]

I know it's going to take time, but treating Intels shoddy architecture as the eternal golden goose is ridiculous. That line of thinking is what got Blackberry to where they are today.

I agree and in fact I like the change to ARM processors, I am looking forward to some small laptops with great battery life. But it still have to deal with my every day problems and running some legacy Windows Software once in a while ist part of this.

I could buy a Laptop with Linux or Windows and use VMWare or VirtualBox on this. But this is highly inconvenient, there is an other machine I have to maintain and the whole handling is not lightweight anymore.

 

[vigilant]

I agree and in fact I like the change to ARM processors, I am looking forward to some small laptops with great battery life. But it still have to deal with my every day problems and running some legacy Windows Software once in a while ist part of this.

I could buy a Laptop with Linux or Windows and use VMWare or VirtualBox on this. But this is highly inconvenient, there is an other machine I have to maintain and the whole handling is not lightweight anymore.

Honestly, I don't think I'll even by a laptop. I'll probably build a small Optiplex maxed out on ram, and as many cores that can fit in it.

It isn't convenient, but it's also something I feel very comfortable with doing.

 

[Alwis]

Honestly, I don't think I'll even by a laptop. I'll probably build a small Optiplex maxed out on ram, and as many cores that can fit in it.

I guess , it depends on the use case. Most of the time Tthe Optiplex would be another useless device cluttering my desk and I would need a screen for it.

On the other side, while thinking about it, I could mount it in my server cabinet and use screen sharing to access it. Might be the way to go...

 

[StratusActual]

Honestly, I don't think I'll even by a laptop. I'll probably build a small Optiplex maxed out on ram, and as many cores that can fit in it.

Problem with this or another remote RDP session in Azure/AWS, is there is a lot of us that run legacy OS‘s for specific hardware / software that can’t be stretched across an RDP session. Connecting a USB device across an RDP session is virtually impossible without very specialized setups. It’s great to say oh just get an updated driver but a lot of this stuff is too old for that to be possible.

If VMWare cannot find a way to support x86 OSes on an ARM processor I likely will not be buying another Mac. The days of VirtualPC to run Windows on a PowerPC Mac was awful and I have no desire to repeat that. This seems like it’s going to take Mac back to the old days of being best suited / targeted for Artistic experts (Graphics Design / Video editing) and basic office users.

Guess it may be time to start looking back into the “H”ell Latitude line of Laptop’s and 2-in-1s.

 

[Yebubbleman]

But many it can't run. And those it can, perform badly.

Right, but much of that bad performance merely stems from the fact that the processors running Windows 10 for ARM64 are just not that powerful. Apple's ARM implementation ought to remedy that. And if Microsoft is smart, they'll try to work with Apple to leverage Apple Silicon Macs to be able to run that OS better than it has on anything else (to prove to OEMs and developers alike that Windows 10 for ARM64 is worth investing in).

 

[thenewperson]

Right, but much of that bad performance merely stems from the fact that the processors running Windows 10 for ARM64 are just not that powerful. Apple's ARM implementation ought to remedy that. And if Microsoft is smart, they'll try to work with Apple to leverage Apple Silicon Macs to be able to run that OS better than it has on anything else (to prove to OEMs and developers alike that Windows 10 for ARM64 is worth investing in).

Wouldn’t be surprised to see a Windows 10 for Apple Silicon announcement from MS/Apple myself.

 

[vigilant]

Problem with this or another remote RDP session in Azure/AWS, is there is a lot of us that run legacy OS‘s for specific hardware / software that can’t be stretched across an RDP session. Connecting a USB device across an RDP session is virtually impossible without very specialized setups. It’s great to say oh just get an updated driver but a lot of this stuff is too old for that to be possible.

If VMWare cannot find a way to support x86 OSes on an ARM processor I likely will not be buying another Mac. The days of VirtualPC to run Windows on a PowerPC Mac was awful and I have no desire to repeat that. This seems like it’s going to take Mac back to the old days of being best suited / targeted for Artistic experts (Graphics Design / Video editing) and basic office users.

Guess it may be time to start looking back into the “H”ell Latitude line of Laptop’s and 2-in-1s.

A Dell Optiplex is with loads of cores for remote use can just as easily handle the virtualization required for the use case you listed. I’m almost positive that that the same vmdks you use on the Mac will run as is on Windows inside of VMWare Workstation, and almost certain can run as is on ESXI.

Trust me, I get it, but I think you maybe over generalizing if you sincerely think that the only companies that will be updating their apps for companies that focus on “Artistic” software.

 

[dogslobber]

You don't develop software for a product which has no market. Nobody uses ARM Windows so it's a waste of money. Only Microsoft have the resources to waste to get you there. Third party solutions like qemu will support HV Hooks Apple exports in the kernel but that's it.

Commercial virtualization is dead. Get over it.

 

[StratusActual]

A Dell Optiplex is with loads of cores for remote use can just as easily handle the virtualization required for the use case you listed. I’m almost positive that that the same vmdks you use on the Mac will run as is on Windows inside of VMWare Workstation, and almost certain can run as is on ESXI.

I may not have explained myself well here. Those of in an IT Tech role that need the ability to run Windows occasionally in the field are hosed here. There are many situations where I need to connect up via USB to another device to manage it and they often only support Windows. Examples, building automation systems, phone systems, routers, etc.

There’s also times where it’s nothing to do with USB but the management application is Windows only and for security reasons the device isn’t internet accessible.

Yes common everyday office users, students, etc will be fine using a web browser and office productivity software. That’s probably a large bit of the landscape. Maybe those of us in the enginerring / technician roles are a vast minority. However I remember the PowerPC days trying to get VirtualPC to run a minimal copy of Windows and it was awful.

Apple has always had a closed architecture. Their OS, on their hardware, with the App Store pushing only trusted apps they vetted. That’s great for stability and minimizing super calls. With the Intel chips, there was enough flexibility for us power users to navigate around gatekeeper and install apps downloaded from the internet and virtualization was powerful and easy. It was a leg up over PC that you could legally run the best OS for the need you had at that time. PCs couldn’t legally run MacOS.

Now in effect that flexibility is gone. That’s just simply not a trivial issue for my work flows. Perhaps Microsoft will jump on board and get serious with ARM too. Industry trends suggest they will, but today it’s mostly just a few crippled surface devices.

 

[chucker23n1]

I may not have explained myself well here. Those of in an IT Tech role that need the ability to run Windows occasionally in the field are hosed here. There are many situations where I need to connect up via USB to another device to manage it and they often only support Windows. Examples, building automation systems, phone systems, routers, etc.

There’s also times where it’s nothing to do with USB but the management application is Windows only and for security reasons the device isn’t internet accessible.

For those use cases, emulation will probably be fast enough. By today's standards, they're neither CPU- nor I/O-heavy.

Yes common everyday office users, students, etc will be fine using a web browser and office productivity software. That’s probably a large bit of the landscape. Maybe those of us in the enginerring / technician roles are a vast minority. However I remember the PowerPC days trying to get VirtualPC to run a minimal copy of Windows and it was awful.

Sure, but that was in an era where year-over-year CPU leaps were much higher. Most code, even today, cannot take much advantage of parallelism, and the clock rate can't be scaled that much higher either (in 2000, Intel thought they'd reach 10 GHz by 2010; instead, we're basically stuck at various CPU tiers between 1 and 5 GHz), so CPU designs find other ways to eke out a little more. That's quite different from the 1990s, where we went from ~20 MHz to 1,000 on top of other optimizations. By the time Apple switched to Intel, most Macs were still single-core.

Apple has always had a closed architecture. Their OS, on their hardware, with the App Store pushing only trusted apps they vetted. That’s great for stability and minimizing super calls. With the Intel chips, there was enough flexibility for us power users to navigate around gatekeeper and install apps downloaded from the internet and virtualization was powerful and easy. It was a leg up over PC that you could legally run the best OS for the need you had at that time. PCs couldn’t legally run MacOS.

Now in effect that flexibility is gone. That’s just simply not a trivial issue for my work flows. Perhaps Microsoft will jump on board and get serious with ARM too. Industry trends suggest they will, but today it’s mostly just a few crippled surface devices.

My guess is the Surface Pro X exists largely as a yellow warning sign to Intel: "get your act together, or we'll do more ARM stuff". It isn't by itself a serious-enough contender; there's a reason they released it at the same time as the Surface Pro 7. There's various efforts to move more stuff to ARM, but not enough of a concerted effort. You don't see announcements like making Visual Studio a first-class citizen on ARM, and I don't think we will for another several years, if at all (consider that Windows RT shipped in 2012 — they've had quite a bit of time).

But, regardless of how Apple ends up doing, other companies will watch closely. Both on the CPU hardware side (be it Samsung or Dell, Intel or Nvidia) and the software side (particularly Microsoft). This could be the impetus for Microsoft to get more serious about Windows on ARM. They almost certainly have DTKs (if only to help port Office, but probably also to look into getting Windows running, at least virtualized), and sooner or later, they might want to get into talks.

 

[jerryk]

I may not have explained myself well here. Those of in an IT Tech role that need the ability to run Windows occasionally in the field are hosed here. There are many situations where I need to connect up via USB to another device to manage it and they often only support Windows. Examples, building automation systems, phone systems, routers, etc.

You probably want to keep an old Windows laptop for that. One with the specific version of the OS and drivers that work and is never updated. That what I did at a manufacturing plant whose robots only spoke to certain utilities that only supported old versions of windows (XP in 2016!!!).

 

[vigilant]

I may not have explained myself well here. Those of in an IT Tech role that need the ability to run Windows occasionally in the field are hosed here. There are many situations where I need to connect up via USB to another device to manage it and they often only support Windows. Examples, building automation systems, phone systems, routers, etc.

There’s also times where it’s nothing to do with USB but the management application is Windows only and for security reasons the device isn’t internet accessible.

Yes common everyday office users, students, etc will be fine using a web browser and office productivity software. That’s probably a large bit of the landscape. Maybe those of us in the enginerring / technician roles are a vast minority. However I remember the PowerPC days trying to get VirtualPC to run a minimal copy of Windows and it was awful.

Apple has always had a closed architecture. Their OS, on their hardware, with the App Store pushing only trusted apps they vetted. That’s great for stability and minimizing super calls. With the Intel chips, there was enough flexibility for us power users to navigate around gatekeeper and install apps downloaded from the internet and virtualization was powerful and easy. It was a leg up over PC that you could legally run the best OS for the need you had at that time. PCs couldn’t legally run MacOS.

Now in effect that flexibility is gone. That’s just simply not a trivial issue for my work flows. Perhaps Microsoft will jump on board and get serious with ARM too. Industry trends suggest they will, but today it’s mostly just a few crippled surface devices.

I hear you, completely. I'm a sales engineer focused on Cloud, so I can imagine someone on the Data Center side would have very different problems.

Honestly, I largely expect Microsoft to either work with Parallels, or use Apple's Hypervisor framework to let Microsoft build their own solution dedicated to Windows on ARM. To me, I think it would be dumb of them to not do it. It would signal to Qualcomm and Intel that they aren't happy.

Today, you can get Windows 10 booting on a Raspberry Pi and it appears to be doing a "fine" job in these early days. Theres very specific limitations that people are learning to workaround to make it better.

I know Microsoft is making Windows on ARM a priority, but it isn't a huge priority right now. Microsoft is already planning on bringing support for 64 bit x64 applications to emulation as well. I wouldn't want to run anything running on Java (in Windows on ARM) running though.

The only thing I can say, is that Apple at least appears to be listening to what everyone wants. Showing Parallels Desktop running ARM Linux is actually a great first step.

I believe Parallels is using Metal for 3D graphic support on Intel today. Hopefully that makes getting hardware accelerated graphics easier. But we'll see.

Trust me, I get that if you need certain tools, this is a bit of a let down. I hope, and expect that we'll see additional options start to emerge as we get deeper into product release time.

 

[vigilant]

For those use cases, emulation will probably be fast enough. By today's standards, they're neither CPU- nor I/O-heavy.



Sure, but that was in an era where year-over-year CPU leaps were much higher. Most code, even today, cannot take much advantage of parallelism, and the clock rate can't be scaled that much higher either (in 2000, Intel thought they'd reach 10 GHz by 2010; instead, we're basically stuck at various CPU tiers between 1 and 5 GHz), so CPU designs find other ways to eke out a little more. That's quite different from the 1990s, where we went from ~20 MHz to 1,000 on top of other optimizations. By the time Apple switched to Intel, most Macs were still single-core.



My guess is the Surface Pro X exists largely as a yellow warning sign to Intel: "get your act together, or we'll do more ARM stuff". It isn't by itself a serious-enough contender; there's a reason they released it at the same time as the Surface Pro 7. There's various efforts to move more stuff to ARM, but not enough of a concerted effort. You don't see announcements like making Visual Studio a first-class citizen on ARM, and I don't think we will for another several years, if at all (consider that Windows RT shipped in 2012 — they've had quite a bit of time).

But, regardless of how Apple ends up doing, other companies will watch closely. Both on the CPU hardware side (be it Samsung or Dell, Intel or Nvidia) and the software side (particularly Microsoft). This could be the impetus for Microsoft to get more serious about Windows on ARM. They almost certainly have DTKs (if only to help port Office, but probably also to look into getting Windows running, at least virtualized), and sooner or later, they might want to get into talks.

I largely agree with just about everything you've said!

 

[vigilant]

Problem with this or another remote RDP session in Azure/AWS, is there is a lot of us that run legacy OS‘s for specific hardware / software that can’t be stretched across an RDP session. Connecting a USB device across an RDP session is virtually impossible without very specialized setups. It’s great to say oh just get an updated driver but a lot of this stuff is too old for that to be possible.

If VMWare cannot find a way to support x86 OSes on an ARM processor I likely will not be buying another Mac. The days of VirtualPC to run Windows on a PowerPC Mac was awful and I have no desire to repeat that. This seems like it’s going to take Mac back to the old days of being best suited / targeted for Artistic experts (Graphics Design / Video editing) and basic office users.

Guess it may be time to start looking back into the “H”ell Latitude line of Laptop’s and 2-in-1s.

After doing some rereading, I think I'll do some experimenting tonight.

I know AWS Workspaces is pretty mature now. Microsoft seems to be doing all kinds of crazy things to make WVD be a success, I'm curious if they've expanded on what you can do to support more niche use cases.

I'll mess around, and let you know.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Personally, I think VMWare should go ahead and add x86 emulation code, so users can install x86 guest OS's. It will be slow as heck, but that's okay—as long as I can use it in a pinch.