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VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

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Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#61

Post by jlokier »

ubermonkey wrote: post #38

I still don't understand why people thought the hypervisor vendors would magically be able to provide x86 Win environments on M1 Macs that worked like x86 Win environments on Intel macs. Virtualization isn't emulation. Expecting seamless execution of x86 Win code on an M1 Mac seems unreasonable to me. I was initially concerned about this, but I realized that I've almost completely stopped using local VMs at all in fa…

Virtualization isn't emulation, but emulation can be used for the same effect, to run VM images.

That's where VMware started: The original VMware product started the whole x86 VM field before Intel provided any virtualization capabilities. VMware's first product, able to run Windows VMs smoothly in a window, was amazing compared to what had come before, and they did it before there were any x86 features for virtualization, using clever code scanning and emulation techniques. It's not at all obvious that they couldn't use similar clever techniques again, combined with Rosetta 2 style JIT - if they wanted to.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#63

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Mindwipe wrote: post #31
shawnz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is available for ARM, and it supports emulation of x86 apps just like Rosetta. I am using it right now on Parallels and it works fine for me. I suspect they just don't want to publicly commit to Windows compatibility due to licensing issues.

> Windows is available for ARM, and it supports emulation of x86 apps just like Rosetta. Not really. It is a long way behind Rosetta. (Partially because Apple only built the M1 to be optimised for running Mac apps in emulation, partially because Apple had spent five years deprecating older software very aggressively so nobody expected those things to work, partially because it's genuinely hard, and partially because…

It's not really readily available either, only a preview build.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#64

Post by tonyedgecombe »

nottorp wrote: post #17

I wonder if Apple realizes where this is going for developers that don't only do web stuff. No x86 VMs from either virtualization product means I also need a x86 box around. What does that lead to? I'm no longer a Mac Pro customer, just a Mac Mini customer. And I'll be running Linux as the main OS on the x86 box, which I haven't done in ages. Are they trying to push Linux/x86 adoption? :) Edit: at least they were hon…

When they announced the transition they said the number of users installing Bootcamp had plumetted. Presumably it's the same for people running Windows under a VM. My guess is they looked at this and decided it wasn't that important.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#65

Post by mrpippy »

m_st wrote: post #21
stefan_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a bold move. I would have expected that 90% wanted a Fusion exclusively to be able to run x86 operating systems .

Same here. Remember Connectix (later Microsoft) Virtual PC? To run x86 Windows on your PPC Macintosh? That's the sort of gap I thought VMware was waiting to fill before releasing the new VMware Fusion. What a let down.

This is a tech preview (“public beta”), not a release. And they won’t be releasing a new paid version of Fusion this year, so this will stay a free public beta for a while.

Also, VMware is ready to add ARM64 Windows support if Microsoft creates a legitimate way to license it.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#66

Post by salamandersauce »

ubermonkey wrote: post #38

I still don't understand why people thought the hypervisor vendors would magically be able to provide x86 Win environments on M1 Macs that worked like x86 Win environments on Intel macs. Virtualization isn't emulation. Expecting seamless execution of x86 Win code on an M1 Mac seems unreasonable to me. I was initially concerned about this, but I realized that I've almost completely stopped using local VMs at all in fa…

I don't think people were expecting magic but when we had x86 emulators to run Windows/DOS VMs back in the PPC and even 68k days with programs like SoftPC and Virtual PC being readily available and usable for business applications at least I can't really blame people for expecting Parallels and VMware to pivot their products to meet that need that was essentially what most people were using it in the first place for.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#67

Post by vintagedave »

stefan_ wrote: post #5
protomyth wrote: post #4

We don’t plan to support installing or running x86 VMs on Macs with Apple silicon. What about x86 emulation? We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs. It makes total sense… If Apple can emulate x86 with Rosetta 2, surely VMware can do something too, right? Well, the short answer is that there isn’t exactly much business value relative to the engineering effort that is required, at least for the time be…

That seems like a bold move. I would have expected that 90% wanted a Fusion exclusively to be able to run x86 operating systems .

Very much. I have a bunch of Windows x64 VMs that I do not want to convert to ARM (even just for the time it would take to migrate over to new VMs), plus a x64 Windows 7 VM.

The value of virtual machines is to be able to virtualise a specific platform! That Win7 machine has software that needs to keep running. There is no Win10 porting or equivalent.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#68

Post by ubermonkey »

salamandersauce wrote: post #66
ubermonkey wrote: post #38

I still don't understand why people thought the hypervisor vendors would magically be able to provide x86 Win environments on M1 Macs that worked like x86 Win environments on Intel macs. Virtualization isn't emulation. Expecting seamless execution of x86 Win code on an M1 Mac seems unreasonable to me. I was initially concerned about this, but I realized that I've almost completely stopped using local VMs at all in fa…

I don't think people were expecting magic but when we had x86 emulators to run Windows/DOS VMs back in the PPC and even 68k days with programs like SoftPC and Virtual PC being readily available and usable for business applications at least I can't really blame people for expecting Parallels and VMware to pivot their products to meet that need that was essentially what most people were using it in the first place for.

I mean, I've definitely met a number of folks who just assumed that running x86 Windows on M1 would work just the same as running it on an Intel Mac.

As you note, emulation products existed prior to the Intel switch, and they would do in a pinch, but they were VERY slow because emulation != virtualization. Doing anything complex in an emulated environment was PAINFUL.

Running Windows in a Parallels or VMWare virtual machine on my Intel Mac works VERY well, but no emulation product will deliver that level of performance.

You could of course virtualize ARM Windows on an M1, I suppose, but then you're not in an Intel environment, and the ARM Windows software landscape is thin.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#69

Post by whydid »

rsync wrote: post #58
protomyth wrote: post #4

We don’t plan to support installing or running x86 VMs on Macs with Apple silicon. What about x86 emulation? We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs. It makes total sense… If Apple can emulate x86 with Rosetta 2, surely VMware can do something too, right? Well, the short answer is that there isn’t exactly much business value relative to the engineering effort that is required, at least for the time be…

"We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs." Sort of like Ford gets asked regularly about driving their cars on interstate highways ? This is not a fringe feature or some weird corner-case ... this is the reason people buy your product .

Right? Their response comes off a bit arrogant.

Re: VMware Fusion for Apple Silicon Public Tech Preview Now Available

#70

Post by zamadatix »

michelb wrote: post #44
shawnz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is available for ARM, and it supports emulation of x86 apps just like Rosetta. I am using it right now on Parallels and it works fine for me. I suspect they just don't want to publicly commit to Windows compatibility due to licensing issues.

I believe Parallels has chosen to ignore/sidestep the licensing issues by using the Windows Client ARM64 Insider Preview builds. We'll have to see what happens when the Insider Preview builds stop being produced.

The Insider program has offered continuous builds since 2014 when they moved to a regular release cadence so it's not likely this will change unless something drastic happens to the versioning in which case licensing models would also change anyways.

What the Insider ARM builds did give you that hasn't been in a release version (until tomorrow) was x86-64 emulation support and a few other minor ARM improvements and an easy way to source a compiled ISO directly from Microsoft.

As far as activating a standard Windows 10 license will activate Windows 10/11 for ARM even if the EULA says it won't and, regardless, switching to Insider builds doesn't sidestep licensing as you need to be licensed to join a PC to the program and the ISO installer has the same licensing and EULA requirements as a normal installer ISO.

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