Two More Reasons today that show Microsoft is getting behind Windows on ARM!

[donawalt]

Native 64-bit Office for ARM Announced today
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/252511/microsoft-announces-native-64-bit-office-for-arm

Today, Microsoft is announcing ARM64EC (“Emulation Compatible”), a new way to build apps for Windows 11 on ARM. With the latest Visual Studio tools in preview and the Windows 11 Insider SDK, you’ll be able to take advantage of ARM64EC to incrementally transition your app to running with native speed on ARM, even if you have dependencies or plugins that don’t support ARM yet.

Announcing ARM64EC: Building Native and Interoperable Apps for Windows 11 on ARM

Today, we’re announcing ARM64EC (“Emulation Compatible”), a new way to build apps for Windows 11 on ARM. With the latest Visual Studio tools in preview and the Windows 11 Insider SDK, you'll be able to take advantage of ARM64EC to incrementally

blogs.windows.com

 

[Gerdi]

I have not yet tried it, but i looks like this new ARM64EC target allows you to load x64 DLLs into your ARM64 process. I wonder if this is totally transparent for the programmer. On paper this sounds very cool to say the least

 

[poorcody]

Native 64-bit Office for ARM Announced today
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/252511/microsoft-announces-native-64-bit-office-for-arm

That's interesting... a clever approach to a real problem.

The amount of resources Microsoft commits for backward compatibility is kind of amazing. The Apple way is so much "cleaner" by just chucking old stuff... It's probably good that there are two platforms taking different approaches.

 

[falainber]

Native 64-bit Office for ARM Announced today
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/252511/microsoft-announces-native-64-bit-office-for-arm

Today, Microsoft is announcing ARM64EC (“Emulation Compatible”), a new way to build apps for Windows 11 on ARM. With the latest Visual Studio tools in preview and the Windows 11 Insider SDK, you’ll be able to take advantage of ARM64EC to incrementally transition your app to running with native speed on ARM, even if you have dependencies or plugins that don’t support ARM yet.

Announcing ARM64EC: Building Native and Interoperable Apps for Windows 11 on ARM

Today, we’re announcing ARM64EC (“Emulation Compatible”), a new way to build apps for Windows 11 on ARM. With the latest Visual Studio tools in preview and the Windows 11 Insider SDK, you'll be able to take advantage of ARM64EC to incrementally

blogs.windows.com

Microsoft has been behind ARM for many years now. It's the customers that don't care. This time may be different since Microsoft may find new customers in Apple Mac owners who can't use x64 stuff anymore (not natively). Perhaps these people might be able to install ARM windows on their Macs at some point.

 

[jdb8167]

I have not yet tried it, but i looks like this new ARM64EC target allows you to load x64 DLLs into your ARM64 process. I wonder if this is totally transparent for the programmer. On paper this sounds very cool to say the least

That’s interesting. Rosetta 2 can’t do in process x86-64 translation from an Arm executable. It can work if the plug-in runs in a separate process.

 

[adr1974]

and this on my M1 mini running parallels...

 

[bobcomer]

and this on my M1 mini running parallels... View attachment 1799370

My M1 MBA installed it with no problems.

 

[spiderman0616]

I was thinking of maybe grabbing a copy later. Never hurts to have all the options available. On the other hand, I hate Windows, so......

 

[xraydoc]

and this on my M1 mini running parallels... View attachment 1799370

Very cool. I'll likely do the same thing this weekend. I installed Windows for ARM on my M1 MBA as I used Windows frequently for work when I had my Intel MacBook Pro. And the M1 MacBook Air replaced a Microsoft SurfaceBook 2 that I used for work. But sometime after getting the SurfaceBook 2, all the work applications I needed Windows for were added to our system's Citrix server, so they work just fine on my M1 MBA without launching Windows at all. So since my Windows VM is no longer work-critical and rarely gets used, I think I'll install Windows 11 on it and play with it for a while.

 

[AVonGauss]

Deleted.

 

[KPOM]

Microsoft has been behind ARM for many years now. It's the customers that don't care. This time may be different since Microsoft may find new customers in Apple Mac owners who can't use x64 stuff anymore (not natively). Perhaps these people might be able to install ARM windows on their Macs at some point.

Customers didn't care for Windows on ARM PCs because up until recently, Windows on ARM didn't run 64-bit x86 applications at all, and didn't run 32-bit x86 applications all that well, either. ARMv9 should enable the next generation of "off-the-shelf" ARM chips to run Windows on ARM and legacy x86 apps well enough (still not up to the M1, but close).

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes Windows on ARM available for retail purchase. M1 Mac owners would be the logical target market. Microsoft and Apple appear to be drifting apart again after years of mostly peaceful coexistence, but enabling Macs to "officially" keep running Windows could still be a smart business decision.