from the you-say-that-like-it's-a-bad-thing dept.
Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp:
Apple will start switching its Macs to its own ARM-based processors later this year, but you won't be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on them. Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to PC makers to preinstall on new hardware, and the company hasn't made copies of the operating system available for anyone to license or freely install.
"Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to OEMs," says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. We asked Microsoft if it plans to change this policy to allow Windows 10 on ARM-based Macs, and the company says "we have nothing further to share at this time."
[...] Apple later confirmed it's not planning to support Boot Camp on ARM-based Macs in a Daring Fireball podcast. "We're not direct booting an alternate operating system," says Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering. "Purely virtualization is the route. These hypervisors can be very efficient, so the need to direct boot shouldn't really be the concern."
Previously: Apple Announces 2-Year Transition to ARM SoCs in Mac Desktops and Laptops
Related Stories
Apple announces Mac architecture transition from Intel to its own ARM chips, offers emulation story
Apple has just announced its plans to switch from Intel CPUs in Macs to silicon of its own design, based on the ARM architecture. This means that Apple is now designing its own chips for iOS devices and its Mac desktop and laptops. Apple said it will ship its first ARM Mac before the end of the year, and complete the Intel -> ARM transition within two years.
Apple will bring industry leading performance and performance-by-watt with its custom silicon. Apple's chips will combine custom CPU, GPU, SSD controller and many other components. The Apple silicon will include the Neural Engine for machine learning applications.
[...] "Most apps will just work".
The Next Phase: Apple Lays Out Plans To Transition Macs from x86 to Apple SoCs
[From] an architecture standpoint, the timing of the transition is a bit of an odd one. As noted by our own Arm guru, Andrei Frumusanu, Arm is on the precipice of announcing the Arm v9 ISA, which will bring several notable additions to the ISA such as Scalable Vector Extension 2 (SVE2). So either Arm is about to announce v9, and Apple's A14 SoCs will be among the first to implement the new ISA, otherwise Apple will be setting the baseline for macOS-on-Arm as v8.2 and its NEON extensions fairly late into the ISA's lifecycle. This will be something worth keeping an eye on.
[...] [In] order to bridge the gap between Apple's current software ecosystem and where they want to be in a couple of years, Apple will once again be investing in a significant software compatibility layer in order to run current x86 applications on future Arm Macs. To be sure, Apple wants developers to recompile their applications to be native – and they are investing even more into the Xcode infrastructure to do just that – but some degree of x86 compatibility is still a necessity for now.
The cornerstone of this is the return of Rosetta, the PowerPC-to-x86 binary translation layer that Apple first used for the transition to x86 almost 15 years ago. Rosetta 2, as it's called, is designed to do the same thing for x86-to-Arm, translating x86 macOS binaries so that they can run on Arm Macs. Rosetta 2's principle mode of operation will be to translate binaries at install time.
See also: Apple Announces iOS 14 and iPadOS 14: An Overview
Apple's First ARM-Based (Mac) Product Is a Mac mini Featuring an A12Z Bionic, but Sadly, Regular Customers Can't Buy It
Previously: Apple Will Reportedly Sell a New Mac Laptop With its Own Chips Next Year
Apple Announces The Apple Silicon M1: Ditching x86 - What to Expect, Based on A14
The new processor is called the Apple M1, the company's first SoC designed with Macs in mind. With four large performance cores, four efficiency cores, and an 8-GPU core GPU, it features 16 billion transistors on a 5nm process node. Apple's is starting a new SoC naming scheme for this new family of processors, but at least on paper it looks a lot like an A14X.
[...] Apple made mention that the M1 is a true SoC, including the functionality of what previously was several discrete chips inside of Mac laptops, such as I/O controllers and Apple's SSD and security controllers.
[....] Whilst in the past 5 years Intel has managed to increase their best single-thread performance by about 28%, Apple has managed to improve their designs by 198%, or 2.98x (let's call it 3x) the performance of the Apple A9 of late 2015.
[...] Apple has claimed that they will completely transition their whole consumer line-up to Apple Silicon within two years, which is an indicator that we'll be seeing a high-TDP many-core design to power a future Mac Pro. If the company is able to continue on their current performance trajectory, it will look extremely impressive.
Linus Torvalds doubts Linux will get ported to Apple M1 hardware:
In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?"
If you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, Apple released new versions of the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac Mini featuring a brand-new processor—the Apple M1.
The M1 processor is a successor to the A12 and A14 Bionic CPUs used in iPhones and iPads, and pairs the battery and thermal efficiency of ultramobile designs with the high performance needed to compete strongly in the laptop and desktop world.
"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."
[...] In an interview with ZDNet, Torvalds expounded on the problem:
The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it, because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up... [that] seems unlikely, but hey, you can always hope.
[...] It's also worth noting that while the M1 is unabashedly great, it's not the final word in desktop or laptop System on Chip designs. Torvalds mentions that, given a choice, he'd prefer more and higher-power cores—which is certainly possible and seems a likely request to be granted soon.
Previously: Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @01:23PM (4 children)
If you listen really carefully, you'll hear the sound that the world's smallest violin makes.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:09PM (3 children)
Why would someone buy an overpriced piece of shit that isn't even compatible with what they want to use it for. If Apple only sold iDildos that rings, whistles, and blows bubbles... you wouldn't go out and buy it to hammer a nail in the wall. Or would you?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:19PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @04:36PM
Fuck... I totally forgot about limpwristedness. Besides... Apple added a throb button for driving nails.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:33PM
Mac people who are in charge of hardware purchasing. My friend who works for a college I.T. department just told me a story about a guy like this. I asked him if there was anyone above this jackass he could talk to, and he said no-one would. So he had to support Windows 10 in whatever the current Macs use for virtualization, and he said it was a pita.
I'm sure 99% of I.T./customer support wish Apple would fuck off with this kind of bullshit.
Buying a Mac to do things only Windows can do goes to show the idiotic mentality of some Mac fanboys.
FTW, if you use Macs to do Mac things, more power to you.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @01:36PM (3 children)
The less Microsoft there is, the better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by coolgopher on Saturday June 27 2020, @01:39PM (1 child)
The less systemd there is, the better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @01:54PM
those are not mutually incompatible goals.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:09PM
Yeah but, MS has "embraced" Linux, and Linux runs on ARM. So I'm not sure where this leads, but with MS involved, it can't be good for us. Well, maybe it will create more jobs (doing even more frustrating IT work...)
(Score: 5, Informative) by SomeGuy on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:25PM (18 children)
Microsoft Windows, at least the versions real computer users care about, only runs on x86 based CPUs.
Yea, Microsoft has an ARM port, but if anyone cared about non x86 Windows, we would have all jumped on the 64-bit DEC Alpha CPU in the late 1990s. That is buried in the same cemetery as Windows Phone, and most Windows CE devices.
Virtualization? You can't "virtulaize" x86 on an ARM CPU. Perhaps they mean emulation or translation? That is what Rosetta does, and don't expect that to be speedy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:08PM (3 children)
> You can't "virtulaize" x86 on an ARM CPU.
That's my understanding too, but what do I know. Maybe the new Mac will send Windows applications off to a server in the cloud running Win 10 or Win XP (64 and 32 bit respectively)?
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday June 27 2020, @07:32PM (2 children)
Aside from the fact that TFA was talking about Windows on ARM which should virtualise perfectly well on ARM if/when Microsoft deigns to license it... yes, remote desktop to a Windows x86 instance in the cloud* is probably the way to go
This is 2020 and live game streaming services are a thing... the interwebs should cope running that one, obstinate, 10-year-old business application that is keeping you stuck to having an Intel space-heater melting the keyboard in your Macbook... and if you're running anything more demanding on Windows, then why did you pay a 50%+ premium to get a computer who's only USP these days is that it can run MacOS?
Meanwhile, PCs may outnumber Macs 10:1, but Surface Pro Xs and the other handful of Windows ARM machines...? Not so much. Macs are still about the #4 bestselling brand of personal computer and have disproportionate media presence, so if ARM Macs are even moderately successful c.f. current Macs, Microsoft might want to jump on that boat at some stage...
* ...or even in the basement of your secret volcano base under a tinfoil cover if you're working on the recipe for KFC-flavoured Coca Cola.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:13PM (1 child)
How much do you expect it to cost per user per month to lease 1. such a Windows x86-64 VPS, and 2. a cellular Internet connection through which to run Remote Desktop to a Windows x86-64 VPS while out of Wi-Fi range?
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:10PM
Ans: "as much or as little as the market will bear" because the cost of providing one more container instance (for someone already in that business) is pretty small, while software licenses have zero marginal cost (Microsoft could easily bundle Windows up with the Office subscription that the majority of customers will need anyway). This isn't bleeding edge new technology - it's 90% packaging and marketing.
Going rate for game streaming services - which are probably more technically demanding - seems to be $10/month, so $20/mo for this would probably be a nice little earner for Microsoft (who did you think was going to be running this?)
If you need this for work then it will be a business expense (and easier to claim than trying to argue that some fraction of your personal Mac was for work) and the accountant will be delighted to file this under "cost of doing business" and get the tax back immediately rather than faffing about with the capital expenditure rules. Actually, a year or three down the line, don't be surprised if your employer requires this method of working "because data protection" and the VPS is provided for all employees (far more accountable keeping your data on MS Azure's check-box compliant service than scattered around individual laptops).
$0 because it's 2023 (or will be by the time Intel Macs vanish) and the typical person needing to run Windows will already need it.
Or, Apple can keep the Mac tethered to Intel for the foreseeable future for the sake of a niche of users who (even given 2-3 years notice) can't give up x86 - and the ability to move forwards without being held back by the corporate computing drag-anchor is Apple's main USP over PC.
(Score: 1) by petecox on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:15PM
The Apple guy quoted isn't talking x86 emulation. He's simply talking about virtualizing ARM, e.g. running aarch64 Linux inside a Parallels hypervisor.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:26PM
I assumed he was talking about running the ARM version of Win10 in a virtual machine on the ARM equipped Mac. I guess we interpreted it differently.
Not sure how the Rosetta translation of x86/64 to ARM will be but if they say they can do it then I guess they can do it. But then there is always a giant performance hit. But it might hold people over until things get recompiled for the right processor.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Samantha Wright on Saturday June 27 2020, @06:20PM (1 child)
Running ARM Windows on a Mac will be a disaster no matter how you do it. Customers will immediately complain they can't run x64/x86 programs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday June 27 2020, @06:58PM
x86/x64 emulation on ARM is possible. Intel even threatened to sue Qualcomm and Microsoft over it.
https://www.androidauthority.com/windows-on-arm-review-1074547/ [androidauthority.com]
Even if there is a performance hit, ARM chips are becoming powerful. Certainly the rumored Apple 12-core SoC [soylentnews.org] would be powerful, as well as standard ARM Cortex-X1 [soylentnews.org] cores at 3 GHz. Fast forward 5-10 years, and there will be monolithic 3D ARM SoCs, delivering a performance increase so large that most people won't know what to do with it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @08:47PM (1 child)
Nowadays when people talk about "virtualization" in the context of PCs they almost certainly are referring specifically to paravirtualization (a type of virtualization where the hardware is mostly not emulated). However it is not wrong to call emulation of an x86 PC on an ARM platform "virtualization", and prior to the widespread deployment of CPUs with hardware support for paravirtualization over the past decade or so, this would have been what most PC users meant by the term.
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:36AM
The danger of paravirtualization is if your 'chute crashes at 40,000 feet, you'll become a splat of strawberry jam on the runway.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 27 2020, @09:32PM
Of course not, but a lot of times there's this 15+ year old legacy app, nobody even knows what it was written in anymore, but half the company sorta depends on it for stuff they think they need to do (to make money), so... if you can just get that thing running in the new system - even if it's ugly - it will probably be more than good enough to run a 15+ year old app.
What I think this move really says is that OS-X has grown up, they have their own market, and their market mostly isn't angsty about maybe having to jump back to Windows like they were in 2006. In 2006 I was asked to sign off on the concept of committing the company to buy a bunch of Mac hardware, with the "new" x86 triple boot capability that was a no-brainer decision.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Kitsune008 on Saturday June 27 2020, @10:19PM (6 children)
Maybe you're not holding it right?
Uhm, it needs rounded corners to work right?
;-)
All bad jokes aside, there are many businesses and individuals that have signed onto the MS Windows way, for good or bad, that is reality. This is going to hurt Apple some, IMHO.
I understand the desire to go to ARM, and their 'walled garden' approach, but until MS gets with the ARM architecture in a serious way, my advice to Apple would be to offer both x86 and ARM until MS catches up.
Then again, I don't really know much about this issue, maybe it's more difficult than it seems to me. :-)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 28 2020, @02:22AM (4 children)
I dunno, Apple people are special. I think this comic still holds true:
https://www.stickycomics.com/wp-content/uploads/update_for_your_computer.jpg [stickycomics.com]
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday June 28 2020, @03:47PM (3 children)
But Windows 10 costs $150 while every update to Mac OS X has been free* for a decade or more now?
*after the price of admission.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:20PM (1 child)
Yeah, that comic is 10 years old. I wasn't trying to be so specific- just that Apple people are strongly loyal, and I doubt that Apple will lose any market share if they don't support Windows... or if it's snail-slow in x86 emulation mode.
We need to clarify- MacOS updates may be free, but they stop updating after only a few years. My first inclination is to give MS big credit for OS updates coming far more years later than Apple does.
But, then I remember one of my major beefs with almost everything anymore: why was it so broken in the first place? Maybe the more updates you supply (and sizes thereof) you should be penalized somehow (for releasing something so horrible in the first place).
Will we ever live to see a fully mature piece of major software? Like even as we're all beta-testers, couldn't someone make it a goal to fully debug something major?
(Score: 2) by helel on Monday June 29 2020, @04:59AM
Sadly the age of (relatively) mature software seems to be past and things are only getting worse, year by year.
As for loss of market share - Chances are most people didn't purchase a mac with the intent of running Windows anyway. The bigger problem, to my point of view, is the damage this will do to WINE and other interpreters which, right now, makes it fast and (relatively) easy to run Windows executables in OS X and that's not a problem most people are going to realize until the latest spyware media app doesn't get released for the mac long after they bought it.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:20PM
Updates to macOS have been without charge* on supported hardware since OS X 10.7 "Lion". However, replacing no-longer-supported Mac hardware with supported hardware continues to be an ongoing cost. Windows, by comparison, hasn't noticeably increased its system requirements since Windows Vista 6.0SP1 "Mojave". There was a bit of a jump at 8.1 when PAE, NX, and CMPXCHG16B became required, but that's it.
* An update to macOS involves a download of multiple gigabytes at standard data rates. This could cause rural users stuck on satellite or cellular to incur substantial overage fees.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:57PM
Both Apple and Microsoft have a walled garden approach on ARM machines. Or has that changed recently? We're just seeing two walled gardens collide.
Linux itself has no walled garden approach. But even they have trouble with some of the GPU's on ARM machines. And some Linux-based operating systems have put a walled garden on top of Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:34PM (7 children)
Apple is going to be selling the new iPC accessory, capable of running Solitaire, Minesweeper, Lotus 1-2-3 and other popular x86 productivity apps on its powerful Intel 386 processor, available with 320K of RAM for $3999.99 (or $4999.99 with Windows 3.1 pre-loaded by an Apple-Certified Genius).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:46PM (6 children)
Don't forget the pinball game. Even to this day, that was the best game they ever included in a windows release. It is as much fun to play now (if you can find an executable) as it was then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @04:10PM
Space Cadet pinball, right? I think I remember that on ME.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @04:42PM
Chip's Challenge, yo.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:24PM (3 children)
if you can find an executable
Should be right there on your Win95 CD.
Runs on Win10 just fine
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @08:57PM (2 children)
No it shouldn't. You would first find this game in the Microsoft Plus! addon pack for windows 95.
Or Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows ME and Windows XP which all included the game (not sure if every flavour of these versions had it).
Alternately you could recognize that 3D Pinball for Windows is basically just a stripped down version of Maxis Full Tilt! Pinball with only very minor changes and just track down that game instead.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday June 27 2020, @09:17PM
Facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIKUhvdjAJY [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday June 27 2020, @09:38PM
Oh yeah, forgot about the Plus pack
I knew it was totally stripped down, but it played well enough (flawlessly, very smooth) on a 486sx that I didn't care.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @04:15PM (2 children)
So can I run my (legally owned) MacOS image on a hypervisor running Linux?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:45PM (1 child)
https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM [github.com]
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @06:33PM
Very nice, looks like my Snow Leopard image with Rosetta support, still running on a decrepit 2007 MBP, could move to a VM. Wonder how it deals with the original graphics card not being present on the host.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday June 28 2020, @12:45AM
I run OSX for 'serious' stuff, and Windows 10 for games, mostly because a few of the games I like are not available on OSX. If I can't do that then I need to seriously think about my next purchase...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by zion-fueled on Sunday June 28 2020, @02:14PM (1 child)
Funny now because you can't run windows. Not so funny when you can't run linux due to security chips. Apple wants to go back to OSx or nothing and kill that pesky OSx86
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @04:06PM
I was going to post something like that. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but the bigger question here is whether the new Apple ARM laptops and desktops will allow dual-booting any alternative OS. If they will not, this is just one more industry step in the wrong direction. It also makes Microsoft look less evil than Apple, if for no other reason than that Microsoft has failed to get OEMs to lock down x86_64 motherboards to only boot Windows.