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jerryk

macrumors 604
Nov 3, 2011
7,421
4,208
SF Bay Area
Personally, I think they should go ahead and add x86 emulation code. It will be slow as heck, but that's okay—as long as I can use it in a pinch.

Rosseta2 is x86 emulation. Apple's bullet points at WWDC for it were:
  • Fast performance
  • Translation at install time
  • Dynamic translation for JITs
  • Transparent to user
Supposedly it also lets them run iOS and iPadOS apps on AS Macs
 
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Wowfunhappy

macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2019
1,747
2,090
Rosseta2 is x86 emulation. Apple's bullet points at WWDC for it were:
Right, but it doesn't work with VMs. Emulating an OS will be lower-level and slower.

Edit: I don't believe Rosetta has anything to do with iOS/iPadOS compatibility though.
 
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vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
Personally, I think they should go ahead and add x86 emulation code. It will be slow as heck, but that's okay—as long as I can use it in a pinch.

I hear ya. Who knows, maybe in macOS 12. We'll see. I do largely think everyone will start doing ARM and x64 binaries long term. It's early, but long term, why deal with the problems of x64 when ARM appears to be just as capable
 

Wowfunhappy

macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2019
1,747
2,090
I do largely think everyone will start doing ARM and x64 binaries long term. It's early, but long term, why deal with the problems of x64 when ARM appears to be just as capable

...because sometimes I just need to open some esoteric EXE that hasn't been updated in 25 years and will probably never be updated again. It happens. And that's exactly what Virtual Machines are for!
 

vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
...because sometimes I just need to open some esoteric EXE that hasn't been updated in 25 years. It happens. And that's exactly what Virtual Machines are for!

I hear you, and if Windows ends up running in a VM, it can use it’s built in x86 emulator to run that 25 year old application, and it will still be significantly faster than it was running on native hardware.

I must state this again... people have Windows on ARM running on a Raspberry Pi! It’s doing full x86 emulation and everything.

I know it’s not perfect. But I think we can expect as equally of a crappy experience dealing with it hopefully sooner than we expect.

Apple’s Hypervisor isn’t doing emulation. Theres NOTHING stopping developers from using solutions that have emulation to not run under Apple’s Hypvervisor.

Trust me, I do truly get it. I don’t want to diminish that by any means. Right now we have to wait and see where the crappy cards fall.

I’d say if it runs on a Surface Pro X, theres a good chance we could see it SING on Apple Silicon.
 

Kostask

macrumors regular
Jul 4, 2020
230
104
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
I am mostly from the Windows world, from running Windows 2.04 to Windows 10 today, my entire working life has been Windows. And the only uniform things about Windows thorughout that time is that is that it is crappy, and that Microsoft will find a way to screw up anything that should (most of the time, accidentally) work well.

All that being said, if the new AS Macs turn out to be really, really, good, the PC industry will react. When vendors like HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. start to see sales dropping off significantly, they will start to look at ARM based designs of their own, just to try to either regain the lost market share, or to prevent any future erosion of their profits. Either way, it will put pressure on Microsoft to come up with a "good" version of Windows on ARM. An x85-x64 emulator will be part of that. So running x86-x64 Windows apps will be possible.

Windows on AS is not a technical issue; it is a licensing issue, and is supposedly under discussion between Apple and Microsoft right now, if Rene Ritchie is to be believed. I don't think that Apple would even be talking to Microsoft if Windows apps had no possibility of running on AS Macs. I realize that this is probably part of a massive discussion between Apple and Microsoft on a number of things, including the X Box Game service onto the iPhone App Store, getting Office 365 running natively on AS Macs, etc., but it is in there. If there is an x86-x64 emulator running (probably crawling would be a better description) on a Raspberry Pi under ARM Windows, it isn't a far reach to see the same for an AS Mac with a VM running ARM Windows doing the same. Microsoft could easily license that emulator, and bring it into a customized version of ARM Windows made for AS Macs. Microsoft has a little history of doing things like that. They built an Intel emulator back in the day of the 68K Macs for the Mac version of Office. Instead of re-writing the code for Office to run on a 68K CPU, they wrote an Intel emulator for the 68K, and used the same code for the Windows and Mac versions. So none of this would be new to Microsoft. And it is in Microsoft's best interest to do so; they would sell enough Windows copies to make it worthwhile, I think.
 
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vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
I am mostly from the Windows world, from running Windows 2.04 to Windows 10 today, my entire working life has been Windows. And the only uniform things about Windows thorughout that time is that is that it is crappy, and that Microsoft will find a way to screw up anything that should (most of the time, accidentally) work well.

All that being said, if the new AS Macs turn out to be really, really, good, the PC industry will react. When vendors like HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. start to see sales dropping off significantly, they will start to look at ARM based designs of their own, just to try to either regain the lost market share, or to prevent any future erosion of their profits. Either way, it will put pressure on Microsoft to come up with a "good" version of Windows on ARM. An x85-x64 emulator will be part of that. So running x86-x64 Windows apps will be possible.

Windows on AS is not a technical issue; it is a licensing issue, and is supposedly under discussion between Apple and Microsoft right now, if Rene Ritchie is to be believed. I don't think that Apple would even be talking to Microsoft if Windows apps had no possibility of running on AS Macs. I realize that this is probably part of a massive discussion between Apple and Microsoft on a number of things, including the X Box Game service onto the iPhone App Store, getting Office 365 running natively on AS Macs, etc., but it is in there. If there is an x86-x64 emulator running (probably crawling would be a better description) on a Raspberry Pi under ARM Windows, it isn't a far reach to see the same for an AS Mac with a VM running ARM Windows doing the same. Microsoft could easily license that emulator, and bring it into a customized version of ARM Windows made for AS Macs. Microsoft has a little history of doing things like that. They built an Intel emulator back in the day of the 68K Macs for the Mac version of Office. Instead of re-writing the code for Office to run on a 68K CPU, they wrote an Intel emulator for the 68K, and used the same code for the Windows and Mac versions. So none of this would be new to Microsoft. And it is in Microsoft's best interest to do so; they would sell enough Windows copies to make it worthwhile, I think.

I love this, we're mostly on the same page, but I have no idea what you mean by 68k as that was the processor Apple left to go to PPC.

Windows 10 running on a Raspberry Pi is very much a thing. It isn't standard installation. It's something you flash onto an SD card with an image other people created. The x86 to ARM translation is what Microsoft is running on Surface Pro X.

Yes, I do agree that if Apple is successful, it will cause the other market forces to ask why aren't PCs running on ARM.
 

Kostask

macrumors regular
Jul 4, 2020
230
104
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Yes, way back when, I had a Mac II. 68020 CPU, so 68K (68000) family. The rest is pretty much as it was stated. Word had all sorts if oddball things in it, diagnostics, a screen saver, etc. Pretty much everything ran lightning fast (System 6, 7, and 8) on tye Mac II. Word didn’t, because of the VM.
 

chrfr

macrumors G5
Jul 11, 2009
13,707
7,278
They built an Intel emulator back in the day of the 68K Macs for the Mac version of Office. Instead of re-writing the code for Office to run on a 68K CPU, they wrote an Intel emulator for the 68K
Microsoft did not write an Intel emulator to run Office. Office for Mac was built from the same source code as Office for Windows and compiled to run on Mac but unlike earlier versions of Office, the code was poorly optimized for Mac and performance suffered tremendously as a result.
 
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Kostask

macrumors regular
Jul 4, 2020
230
104
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
MacWorld and MacUser bot ended up writing articles on those old versions of Office, and both came to the conclusions that there was either an emulator, or a VM type environment that loaded prior to any of the Office programs running. I never had the skills to be able to do that kind of detective work, but they figured it out, and wrote the articles. Eventually, Microsoft did get fully native compiled code onto the Macs, but that was later on.

I'm more of a hardware guy than a software guy, anyway. I just figured they knew what they were talking about. From an end user's perspective, the very odd user interface (breaking a lot of Apple's UI rules) seems to point to either as a possibility.
 

chrfr

macrumors G5
Jul 11, 2009
13,707
7,278
MacWorld and MacUser bot ended up writing articles on those old versions of Office, and both came to the conclusions that there was either an emulator, or a VM type environment that loaded prior to any of the Office programs running. I never had the skills to be able to do that kind of detective work, but they figured it out, and wrote the articles. Eventually, Microsoft did get fully native compiled code onto the Macs, but that was later on.

I'm more of a hardware guy than a software guy, anyway. I just figured they knew what they were talking about. From an end user's perspective, the very odd user interface (breaking a lot of Apple's UI rules) seems to point to either as a possibility.
Remember, this was before the days of Apple providing its own developer tools, and Microsoft clearly decided that it was more important to have a relatively common appearance in Office across platforms than to have an app that was more ”Mac like.”
 

Tech198

Cancelled
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,151
if no one choose to follow Apple, then you'll be stuck on laptop 4K's that only get a mere 2 hours..XPS has 4K mode, but battery life sucks... (...so we know that's a flop.)

This could be WHY Apple hasn't got 4K laptops yet (only iMac have), their probably waiting for Apple silicon

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.

If no one can use Widows comfortably, why would VMWare do it ? Rosetta 2 is not gonna stay around forever.. Even f it ran slow with Rosetta 2, VMWare would sill have to find a long-term solution..


Rosetta didn't last with the transition from PowerPc to Intel neither, (Apple abandoned Rosetta shortly after. I remember it on Snow Leopard, so why would it be different now.?)

 
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throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,198
7,353
Perth, Western Australia
What would I use it for?

  • Linux VMs
  • MacOS VMs for testing new (or, in the future old ARM based) releases
  • Connectivity to vSphere (Fusion can act as a vSphere remote console)
  • Maybe an ARM copy of Windows if one is available, but likely not really needed as all my network admin tools are now either powershell, web apps or Java for the most part. Windows is less relevant for me now.
 

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 20, 2010
6,024
2,616
Los Angeles, CA
I hear you, and if Windows ends up running in a VM, it can use it’s built in x86 emulator to run that 25 year old application, and it will still be significantly faster than it was running on native hardware.

I must state this again... people have Windows on ARM running on a Raspberry Pi! It’s doing full x86 emulation and everything.

I know it’s not perfect. But I think we can expect as equally of a crappy experience dealing with it hopefully sooner than we expect.

Apple’s Hypervisor isn’t doing emulation. Theres NOTHING stopping developers from using solutions that have emulation to not run under Apple’s Hypvervisor.

Trust me, I do truly get it. I don’t want to diminish that by any means. Right now we have to wait and see where the crappy cards fall.

I’d say if it runs on a Surface Pro X, theres a good chance we could see it SING on Apple Silicon.

Two things:

1. The version of Windows 10 that is supported on Raspberry Pi is not the same version of Windows 10 that would otherwise run on any other ARM64 based PC (such as the aforementioned Surface Pro X). The one for Raspberry Pi is a Windows 10 IoT release supported and optimized for different tasks than say Windows 10 Home/Pro for ARM64. Yes, the underlying codebase is the same, but the update cadence and feature set is not (as IoT largely uses LTSC and is stripped down a bit). Apple would not want users running an IoT version of Windows 10 on an Apple Silicon Mac. They might go for an ARM64 version of Windows 10 Home or Pro though.

2. Your last point "if it runs on a Surface Pro X, there's a good chance we could see it SING on Apple Silicon" is something I completely agree with. We didn't see Boot Camp until ten months after the Intel transition was announced. It's possible that Microsoft and Apple may come to some kind of arrangement that allows this to happen (say, via the Mac App Store) at some point down the road. It won't be as widely useful as x86-64 versions of Windows 10 are at the onset, but Microsoft could use this to gather interest and developer support for Windows 10 for ARM64 in ways that it hasn't been able to do before. Apple proving that a custom ARM64 implementation can blow the lid off of x86-64 could be an industry game-changer. But it has to happen first...


I am mostly from the Windows world, from running Windows 2.04 to Windows 10 today, my entire working life has been Windows. And the only uniform things about Windows thorughout that time is that is that it is crappy, and that Microsoft will find a way to screw up anything that should (most of the time, accidentally) work well.

All that being said, if the new AS Macs turn out to be really, really, good, the PC industry will react. When vendors like HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. start to see sales dropping off significantly, they will start to look at ARM based designs of their own, just to try to either regain the lost market share, or to prevent any future erosion of their profits. Either way, it will put pressure on Microsoft to come up with a "good" version of Windows on ARM. An x85-x64 emulator will be part of that. So running x86-x64 Windows apps will be possible.

Windows on AS is not a technical issue; it is a licensing issue, and is supposedly under discussion between Apple and Microsoft right now, if Rene Ritchie is to be believed. I don't think that Apple would even be talking to Microsoft if Windows apps had no possibility of running on AS Macs. I realize that this is probably part of a massive discussion between Apple and Microsoft on a number of things, including the X Box Game service onto the iPhone App Store, getting Office 365 running natively on AS Macs, etc., but it is in there. If there is an x86-x64 emulator running (probably crawling would be a better description) on a Raspberry Pi under ARM Windows, it isn't a far reach to see the same for an AS Mac with a VM running ARM Windows doing the same. Microsoft could easily license that emulator, and bring it into a customized version of ARM Windows made for AS Macs. Microsoft has a little history of doing things like that. They built an Intel emulator back in the day of the 68K Macs for the Mac version of Office. Instead of re-writing the code for Office to run on a 68K CPU, they wrote an Intel emulator for the 68K, and used the same code for the Windows and Mac versions. So none of this would be new to Microsoft. And it is in Microsoft's best interest to do so; they would sell enough Windows copies to make it worthwhile, I think.

I mostly agree with this. I think we probably shouldn't be comparing Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi (Windows 10 IoT) and Windows 10 for ARM64 as they are not the same. Though it isn't a terrible performance indicator. Just not fully Apples to Apples.

What would I use it for?

  • Linux VMs
  • MacOS VMs for testing new (or, in the future old ARM based) releases
  • Connectivity to vSphere (Fusion can act as a vSphere remote console)
  • Maybe an ARM copy of Windows if one is available, but likely not really needed as all my network admin tools are now either powershell, web apps or Java for the most part. Windows is less relevant for me now.

I mean, those are the right answers. And certainly the best case scenario use case for it on an Apple Silicon Mac. I just hope that VMware sees it as being worth developing for. That Twitter post did not seem optimistic...
 
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Janichsan

macrumors 68040
Oct 23, 2006
3,126
11,927
We didn't see Boot Camp until ten months after the Intel transition was announced.
Not because Apple needed to time to prepare it, but simply because they had been unprepared for their users having the desire to install Windows on their Intel Macs. Only after there had been several hacks to do this, they decided to create an official way.
 

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 20, 2010
6,024
2,616
Los Angeles, CA
Not because Apple needed to time to prepare it, but simply because they had been unprepared for their users having the desire to install Windows on their Intel Macs. Only after there had been several hacks to do this, they decided to create an official way.

Right. I wouldn't be shocked to see such a thing happen with Apple Silicon Macs too. Sure, Microsoft doesn't make Windows 10 Home or Pro for ARM64 available to the masses, but anyone with the Microsoft Volume Licensing center can download a copy of Windows 10 Enterprise for ARM64 and try to tinker it onto an Apple Silicon Mac (either native boot or via Parallels, assuming VMware doesn't join this particular party).
 

vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
Two things:

1. The version of Windows 10 that is supported on Raspberry Pi is not the same version of Windows 10 that would otherwise run on any other ARM64 based PC (such as the aforementioned Surface Pro X). The one for Raspberry Pi is a Windows 10 IoT release supported and optimized for different tasks than say Windows 10 Home/Pro for ARM64. Yes, the underlying codebase is the same, but the update cadence and feature set is not (as IoT largely uses LTSC and is stripped down a bit). Apple would not want users running an IoT version of Windows 10 on an Apple Silicon Mac. They might go for an ARM64 version of Windows 10 Home or Pro though.

2. Your last point "if it runs on a Surface Pro X, there's a good chance we could see it SING on Apple Silicon" is something I completely agree with. We didn't see Boot Camp until ten months after the Intel transition was announced. It's possible that Microsoft and Apple may come to some kind of arrangement that allows this to happen (say, via the Mac App Store) at some point down the road. It won't be as widely useful as x86-64 versions of Windows 10 are at the onset, but Microsoft could use this to gather interest and developer support for Windows 10 for ARM64 in ways that it hasn't been able to do before. Apple proving that a custom ARM64 implementation can blow the lid off of x86-64 could be an industry game-changer. But it has to happen first...




I mostly agree with this. I think we probably shouldn't be comparing Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi (Windows 10 IoT) and Windows 10 for ARM64 as they are not the same. Though it isn't a terrible performance indicator. Just not fully Apples to Apples.



I mean, those are the right answers. And certainly the best case scenario use case for it on an Apple Silicon Mac. I just hope that VMware sees it as being worth developing for. That Twitter post did not seem optimistic...

I hear you completely.

The version of Windows 10 that runs on the Raspberry Pi isn’t IOT. It appears to be the binaries for the Surface Pro X that someone was able to get to boot on the Raspberry Pi.

It appears to work, but it’s very very very unofficial. Theres odd limitations, like it can’t see more then 3 or 4 GB of RAM even if you have 8GB.


I’ll say that when I clicked the link when I saw this, I thought it was IOT as well.
 
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Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 20, 2010
6,024
2,616
Los Angeles, CA
I hear you completely.

The version of Windows 10 that runs on the Raspberry Pi isn’t IOT. It appears to be the binaries for the Surface Pro X that someone was able to get to boot on the Raspberry Pi.

It appears to work, but it’s very very very unofficial. Theres odd limitations, like it can’t see more then 3 or 4 GB of RAM even if you have 8GB.


I’ll say that when I clicked the link when I saw this, I thought it was IOT as well.

Crazy. It IS possible to download an ISO for Windows 10 Enterprise for ARM64 from the Microsoft Volume License Center. That might be a better thing to test with. Though drivers still remain a problem, even on this future Apple Silicon version of Parallels Desktop.

If they do, they do, if they don't i'll no longer be a customer.

*shrug*

Same. Though, I guess that's the case for everyone as far as VMware Fusion goes. It has to exist in order for us to buy it. I could see them canning it saying that those wanting to remotely manage and/or connect to run VMs on an ESXi host can just do so via the web GUI. Though, I've never been a huge fan of the web GUI.
 

vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
Crazy. It IS possible to download an ISO for Windows 10 Enterprise for ARM64 from the Microsoft Volume License Center. That might be a better thing to test with. Though drivers still remain a problem, even on this future Apple Silicon version of Parallels Desktop.



Same. Though, I guess that's the case for everyone as far as VMware Fusion goes. It has to exist in order for us to buy it. I could see them canning it saying that those wanting to remotely manage and/or connect to run VMs on an ESXi host can just do so via the web GUI. Though, I've never been a huge fan of the web GUI.

Yup, I expect that drivers is going to be the big issue.

With that said, I think Apple is smart enough to see the importance of having Windows running on Apple Silicon using virtualization, and give them enough information to make the drivers happen.

With that said, I think Microsoft at this point realizes how important Apple is to the survival of Windows as well.
 

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 20, 2010
6,024
2,616
Los Angeles, CA
Yup, I expect that drivers is going to be the big issue.

With that said, I think Apple is smart enough to see the importance of having Windows running on Apple Silicon using virtualization, and give them enough information to make the drivers happen.

With that said, I think Microsoft at this point realizes how important Apple is to the survival of Windows as well.

I don't believe that Apple, let alone their cooperation with getting Windows 10 for ARM64 running in whatever capacity (be it native booting a la Boot Camp for Intel Macs or virtualization via Parallels or [hopefully] VMware Fusion) on Apple Silicon Macs is important to Windows' survival. It is likely important to Windows 10 on ARM64's survival, however. If Microsoft cares about adoption and growth of that operating system on that architecture, then they need to play their next hand tactfully here. Thankfully Satya Nadella is not Steve Ballmer.
 

A1MB1G

macrumors 6502
May 13, 2020
290
99
This whole ARM thing really puts a wrench in things for me. I recently moved my entire business over to MacOS but using Parallels to run an Intel-based app that only works in Windows. This application that I'm using is a must for my business and only runs on intel based windows machines.

I just purchased the 2020 Macbook Pro 13" but now I worry what will happen when this computer dies or needs to be ugpraded in the future. Without Parallels or VMWare being able to provide an Intel-based VM for Windows, I'm literally screwed.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,521
19,675
This whole ARM thing really puts a wrench in things for me. I recently moved my entire business over to MacOS but using Parallels to run an Intel-based app that only works in Windows. This application that I'm using is a must for my business and only runs on intel based windows machines.

I just purchased the 2020 Macbook Pro 13" but now I worry what will happen when this computer dies or needs to be ugpraded in the future. Without Parallels or VMWare being able to provide an Intel-based VM for Windows, I'm literally screwed.

I am fairly sure that we will have Windows on ARM with Intel-app translation running on Macs (either natively or in a VM) by the end of 2021. Your 13" is still new and assuming you got extended warranty (which you probably should), you are all set at least until the end of 2022. In two years you can reevaluate your needs and strategy for the eventuality you need a new machine.

The will be a lot of things happening in the next couple of years. With Intel and AMD releasing new architectures, ARM having just announced desktop-level IP designs and multiple startups rushing to bring new high-performance CPUs to the market, we might see some innovation in the PC world. For the user, the smartest thing is to wait a bit and see what's happening.
 

A1MB1G

macrumors 6502
May 13, 2020
290
99
I am fairly sure that we will have Windows on ARM with Intel-app translation running on Macs (either natively or in a VM) by the end of 2021. Your 13" is still new and assuming you got extended warranty (which you probably should), you are all set at least until the end of 2022. In two years you can reevaluate your needs and strategy for the eventuality you need a new machine.

The will be a lot of things happening in the next couple of years. With Intel and AMD releasing new architectures, ARM having just announced desktop-level IP designs and multiple startups rushing to bring new high-performance CPUs to the market, we might see some innovation in the PC world. For the user, the smartest thing is to wait a bit and see what's happening.
This sounds a bit reassuring. I did not purchase extended warranty on my macbook as I had done so in the past with other laptops and found I never had to use them. I suppose it's too late to add Apple Care+ to this device or purchase any extended warranty? Picked this up in April/May of this year.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,521
19,675
This sounds a bit reassuring. I did not purchase extended warranty on my macbook as I had done so in the past with other laptops and found I never had to use them. I suppose it's too late to add Apple Care+ to this device or purchase any extended warranty? Picked this up in April/May of this year.

If I remember correctly, the limit was 90 days. But you can always ask if you decide it's a good idea. Then again, you will also probably be fine without the extended warranty anyway.
 
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