51–60 of 276 posts
I think it’s very hard to reverse engineer all the parts of m1. Such projects are fun research, but they won’t be able to use the full m1 potential. The software must be optimized as well.
1. Most of the people able to do this sort of thing probably work in Linux/FreeBSD/etc land. 2. You’re really working doubly against the tide here. You have proprietary stuff on the Mac and on the Windows side. 3. (Personal opinion) Dear God that sounds like a lot of work for something that is a fairly unfriendly experience on a few levels.
At least they have Linux/BSD people trailblazing here (they acknowledge as much).
If they can actually pull this off without changing something deeper than a what’s already exposed to kernel driver developers without horrible hacks or inefficiencies, I would be surprised.
Disclaimer: Not really a kernel dev of any sort.
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Apple is in a very different position than they were with the switch to Intel. Some versions of Microsoft Office lack "legacy" features like Excel macros [1] and collaborative editing [2]. Microsoft would love to run Office inside a version of Windows on the Mac, as part of an on-ramp to people buying Surface-branded hardware. Apple isn't going to be an euthastic provider of this. [1] Works-ish on Mac, not at all on…
I'm confused by this comment. Apple seems to be fine with Windows running on M1, it's MS that doesn't provide licenses, although they do provide easy access to software images. And anecdotally, I can say that x86 windows apps running on ARM windows running on Parallels on an M1 mac works fine for the most part. And on my mac/in my org, collaborative features of Office (both in-browser and in-app) work equally well in…
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Windows (really: NT) has always been hardware independent. So it's a matter of a) having binaries and a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for aarm64 (this exists -- Microsoft already sells arm-based devices such as the Surface Pro X), and b) having the necessary set of device drivers. These may exit already from MS, or may need to be compiled from source already used for x86, or may need to be written from scratch if…
That's only true up to a certain point. ARM is a very weird target, because a lot of standardized stuff we take for granted in x86/PC land aren't standardized on ARM. In particular, take the Interrupt Controller: x86 has a standard for it (well, technically has two, the PIC and APIC). The "standard" in ARM-land is the GICv3 or GICv4, but many different CPU vendors have their own. Apple has the "Apple Interrupt Contro…
As the OP said, all of this is abstracted by the Windows HAL, so it's just a matter of replacing the HAL (a separate binary). The problem is that the HAL is closed source. Outside of simple binary patches, I don't think anyone has come close to writing a new one.
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You don't have to pirate windows, you have to buy Parallels, which then downloads and installs Arm windows onto your M1 - and Arm Windows will run x86 binaries. I used this to run FPGA bitstream-creation software on my Mac Studio. Worked like a dream. I'm generally fine with running on the PC on the bookshelf and serving s/w via MS Remote Desktop, but having it on the machine itself is a bit more useful in terms of s…
Parallels in operating in a legal gray area and using Insider builds of Windows on ARM that are not licensed for M1 hardware. There is currently no legal way, from a licensing standpoint, to have an ARM build running on a device that Microsoft does not have an existing agreement with. If you're running an M1 with Parallels in any type of business or money-making environment then you're putting yourself at risk.
It's totally possible that I'm just missing something but I don't really see what it is – as far as I can tell I purchased and activated a copy of Windows 11 21H2 directly from Microsoft.
Can't microsoft work on this instead? I don't get it.
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Apple has stated that they won't stand in the way of Microsoft porting Windows to M1 Macs[0], and indeed M-series Macs have the bits needed to boot alternative operating systems that M-series iDevices lack. Currently Microsoft only licenses Windows for ARM to device makers (and potentially has an exclusivity agreement with Qualcomm[1]) and has stated that they don't support Windows on M-series. The ball in is Microso…
Currently Microsoft only licenses Windows for ARM to device makers Apple is a device maker. I wonder if Apple could buy a license from Microsoft. I'd like to see either Apple or Microsoft officially support Windows on the M-series machines. Not because I give fig one about Windows. But I'd like to see the chaos that follows. The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up.
Can't microsoft work on this instead? I don't get it.
Microsoft aren't going to write drivers for the M1 - it's not their job , even if Apple provided sufficient documentation.
It's absolutely their job to make Excel less of a P.O.S. on Mac.
Why Windows? Why not ReactOS?
ReactOS is nowhere near enough the quality you'd need - you don't want to waste time figuring out if you are fighting a bug in ReactOS or in your own code.
0.4.11 did run a lot of Windows software that I use (including my own) & I was impressed with what they'd achieved, but it regularly corrupted the file system and required a full reformat & reinstall, so not something I could actively use.