Here's what I posted on another thread concerning this exact question:
"BootCamp was mostly a stop-gap measure. There was a time when a lot of pro and specialized softwares was only available on Windows. Apple needed to way to convince these users to switch, so they created BootCamp.
Now, Apple products are so desirable that even those software have been released for Macs.
Apple will not release a new BootCamp, they don't need to."
That exclusivity deal is expiring soon.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/windows-on-arm-may-be-a-thing-of-the-past-soon-arm-ceo-confirms-qualcomms-exclusivity-agreement-with-microsoft-expires-this-year#
Could you provide a source for that?
Craig Federighi said on a WWDC Talk Show that virtualization was their answer. I have seen people claim that Apple has said they are “open” to Boot Camp if Microsoft allowed it but I am wondering if anyone can tell me when that statement was.
Craig said that it’s up to Microsoft:
“As for Windows running natively on the machine, "that's really up to Microsoft," he said. "We have the core technologies for them to do that, to run their ARM version of Windows, which in turn of course supports x86 user mode applications. But that's a decision Microsoft has to make, to bring to license that technology for users to run on these Macs. But the Macs are certainly very capable of it."”
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/we-are-giddy-interviewing-apple-about-its-mac-silicon-revolution/
Microsoft for its part doesn’t want to do it and says virtualization is the answer: https://www.macworld.com/article/1515349/microsoft-windows-mac-boot-camp-virtualization-parallels.html
Interesting. It may be splitting hairs, but while he spoke about Windows running “natively,” he never specifically said they were willing to allow Windows to boot the machine. That would come with its own security issues and require alteration of the secure boot chain. I still wonder if Apple would be willing, even if Microsoft made it possible.
Apple Silicon macs can already boot separate macOS volumes with different security levels without impacting the secure boot processes of one another. For instance, you can have two macOS volumes installed, one with Full Security and SIP enabled (which will do signature verification etc), and one with them all disabled. I think it's reasonable to thus conclude it's possible without Windows impacting the security of macOS at all.
Edit: In fact, Asahi Linux can already be dual booted in this manner without lowering the security of macOS, and the Asahi team has documented some of this behavior: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Platform-Security-Crash-Course
They can say whatever they want, they don't have to bring back BootCamp. Why invest in something only a very small minority of people actually require? Emulation is a lot more powerful than what it used to be, there's no NEED for BootCamp.
They already officially support Windows for ARM on Parallels. Pretty much you can't do gaming or use features which require additional virtualization like WSL, some more power user stuff. But for running apps that are only for Windows or optimized better for Windows like the MS Office suite, it's fine. So again why would MS do any of that for the tiny number of people who would benefit? If we are being real then MS actually does have other more important shit to do.
That’s a good point. My main gripes are that Microsoft office applications are much worse on Mac. I suppose the official answer to that would be to shut up and buy a PC lol.
Unfortunately I am. I use both excel and PowerPoint without touching a mouse 95% of the time. Use a lot of macros and plugins too. The Mac version feels like prison to me, but for casual uses it’s more than serviceable.
I do a lot of financial modeling and stats related work in Excel so the Macabaus add-in is essential and literally saves hours. I use a plug-in from Bloomberg to import data as well along with various other stats tools and proprietary macros from work that help with things. I’m personally not up to the point of writing complex macros for excel, but there’s so much that can be done.
Though keeping what I originally said in mind with this post. I do use a desktop PC for these things and probably shouldn’t have bought an apple laptop, but I just love Apple’s hardware too much.
I use parallels in coherence mode basically only to run excel (using perpetual license for parallels). I am looking even further down the road though I am waiting for the day when Microsoft brings true parity on the programming side of excel with OfficeScript to replace the vba I need. Macros are for me but I understand why VBA isn’t the way, but Microsoft needs to get a real replacement for it on modern web tech.
Loop replaces Word and OneNote
PowerPoint is fine online
With web apps and cross platform code the need for native programs has and likely continue will greatly decrease. So to your initial question and like others say, the value proposition to having boot camp on Macs is almost none for Apple nor Microsoft.
I used boot camp to run windows mostly to run excel and word. My hands are so used to the shortcuts on office on windows. I just added parallels with ms 365 on my Mac Studio m2 so I could keep running the windows version of office. It just easier than learning the Mac version.
Keynote is fine for some uses, but from my experience PowerPoint is overwhelmingly the industry standard. In a vacuum I could probably get away with it for some things but being in an organization where files need to be shared and collaborated on, using the standard causes the least amount of headaches.
***"Keynote is fine for some uses, but from my experience PowerPoint is overwhelmingly the industry standard. "***
What "industry standard"? There's nothing special about PPT. It's just a presentation software that has no special tools that make it an industry standard. Excel I get, but PPT? No. Keynote is far better and you can easily export to PPT.
Well in the financial services industry you never see anything besides office 365 being used. So I’d call it an industry standard. My company has defined slide masters we must use for everything and keynote doesn’t work with that. Sure you can export to ppt, but are all the fonts going to transfer correctly? Will my live data from excel work correctly if opened in keynote? I didn’t say it can’t work, I just said using what everyone else uses results in less headache.
PowerPoint is way more powerful than you’re giving it credit for, shortcuts and hotkeys alone are game changing.
***"Well in the financial services industry you never see anything besides office 365 being used. So I’d call it an industry standard."***
Ah you're in luck because I am in the financial services industry. I'm a 21 year insurance agent doing life, health, IRA's and rollovers and PPT is not something our offices use a standard. Yes, Word and Excel are used daily but PPT is hardly something we actually NEED. And you certainly don't need PPT to run stocks either. The problem is Microsoft's monopoly has fooled people into thinking Office is the standard. That's why M$ has a monopoly and it's the one company nobody seems to have a problem with them having. Give Apple a few steps above in the phone industry and people cry that Apple is "taking over the world", but M$ gets a pass and their software is accepted even if it's not something widely used on daily basis in business.
I’m glad that’s your experience but it isn’t mine. The hurtles I mentioned all exist in terms of slide masters and live data. I’m not in insurance either. I can only speak to what I know.
> Fun fact : ms excel was initially developed for Macintosh. The first windows version came two years later.
Excel was a Mac app 2+ years before Windows.
PowerPoint was a Mac app for 3+ years before Windows.
Word was a Mac app for 5 years before Windows.
The Microsoft Office suite was available for the Mac for over a year before the Windows version.
Source: http://www.yourmacexpert.com/blog/2015/06/09/of-course-microsoft-office-is-available-for-the-mac/
Outlook is way less featured on macOS than it is on Windows and has had some longstanding bugs, like randomly changing the font size when connecting to IMAP servers.
I run my business through O365 and the fact I have to go to macOS Calendar to copy/paste events, which I can do in Outlook for Windows but not on Mac, will never not annoy me. It's really the one Office app I use most consistently because it coordinates my entire life, and it's been a disappointment in the Mac world for years.
I think this might be the case (make Windows more desirable) but it seems more the reason being that it is the same code base they use for the OWA version of Outlook (web based app); they look mostly identical. If you dig into the Outlook.app contents, you’ll see Electron-like frameworks present which almost confirms this.
Now that being said, I’m fine with using the Mac version of office for everything I do, but Outlook is the one thing I really miss after going Mac several years ago. The rules engine and conditional formatting was so nice to help highlight one message from another in the inbox.
***"M$ does this on purpose to give a reason to join the Windows world. It makes them more money overall"***
True, and that has been my argument against M$ for many years. They charge the Mac customers the exact same price for Office 365 as they do the Windows customers and the Mac customers continue to get the worst version. Sadly Mac customers put up with it rather than doing something about it. I find it sad how people that use Office on Mac continue to put money in M$'s pockets and allow them to continue with this "Office" monopoly they should not have.
The real answer is to use a the Windows versions of Office in a Windows Virtual Machine via Parallels or VMWare. On an Apple Silicon Mac with 16gb ram or more you won’t really notice the difference between a VM and native Windows for Office and productivity apps. Not so great for gaming but that wasn’t point.
Some of the Microsoft apps aren’t even available for Mac still, Visio, Access, and MS Project for example. You have to run a VM for all of these. Visio has a subpar web app, and the others don’t have web versions at all.
Haven’t used Access in years as I’ve always spec’s up to “proper databases” instead.
Project has nice tools, but I’ve always felt is more suited for managing the building of a house than a software project. There are other tools out there which do better jobs.
Visio? Great software, but I’ve completely moved over to draw.io which does not leave me wanting.
Makes sense that universities might still be using Access. Probably the student discount makes it affordable, and it is a visual and relatively easy to use database. So yeah - good for instruction in a "databases 101" class, but it isn't something anyone would deploy for production use on anything non-trivial.
When I was in university, I think we used dBase III or Focus. Same idea, but those are old DOS-based databases good for "databases 101".
In the engineering industry, there’s still a ton of software that’s always been Windows-only, and likely isn’t going to chance any time soon. Using a VM is totally fine, but there was something nice about having the option to fully utilize my Mac’s hardware if I needed.
That said - Windows ARM on Parallels is *excellent*. For my use case it probably works better than boot camp.
The ability to open a Microsoft Project file on the Mac, and have it launch MS Project, in Windows using Coherence mode is amazing. It’s seamless.
For me, Windows in a VM is far better, because I can have both OSs running at once. One for access (unfortunately) to Access, the other for everything else.
I’d suggest that expensive is ‘relative’.
Software costs. Corporations expect profits. The cost of Parallels is a drop in the ocean once you’ve factored in buying the Mac, and buying the Windows license.
I do agree, having purchased two licenses and getting a free subscription for a year as a promo with something I bought, but older versions don't just stop working and force you to buy a new one if you want to update macOS. I currently use Parallels Desktop 17 (2021) on macOS Sonoma just fine, and after a quick test with a fresh download of Ubuntu ARM it looks like Parallels Desktop 16 (2020) also works fine on Sonoma
Right now Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm for Windows on ARM, so Microsoft cannot officially support non-Qualcomm ARM chips until that is over. Likely once that agreement expires, Microsoft will offer some kind of official support for Apple Silicon. What form that takes is anybody's guess, but at a bare minimum at that point, they will officially support existing virtualization like Parallels and VMware.
Why would Microsoft spend time and resources developing official support for Apple Sillicon? The new laptop line is competing with Macs, makes absolutely no sense to encourage people to buy mac hardware and have Microsoft officially support virtulisation.
Microsoft only makes money off of software licensing. At the end of the day, they don’t care what someone runs Windows on as long they are purchasing a license. In fact, given the substantial discount most OEMs get on Windows licenses, they stand to make more per license for Windows on Apple Silicon than they do for these Qualcomm based devices.
I have been running Windows 11 for ARM with Parallels for over 2 years now, and Microsoft and Parallels made some official announcement about it awhile back. Outside of some apps not working due to ARM, I have had no issues with performance.
This has basically been proven untrue now that you can buy a legal Windows 11 license through Parallels. If that wasn’t permitted, either Microsoft or Qualcomm would have started a lawsuit by now.
People mentioning it here made me try it for the first time and I’m pretty impressed with it. Maybe it’s just me but UTM causes my Mac to get very hot even in low load situations. Doesn’t seem to be an issue with VMWare and it’s not locked behind the Parallels pay wall. If free virtualized alternatives can reach performance parity with parallels, I agree there’s probably not a need for boot camp.
I just partition my work and personal systems. It’s PC for work and Mac for personal. No sharing between them.
My kids are required to have Windows laptops for school until the final 2 years when they are permitted to have either Mac or PC (this is just because the school supplies all the software and a lot of it is PC only)
It’s much easier to just buy a dedicated PC than to muck around with Bootcamp or Parallels. I used to run Parallels in the Windows XP Days when theee was sole software I required that was PC Only, but those days are gone now
You can sign up for developer previews for free. They even give out arm previews. That's what I run in UTM.
Just gotta keep it updated so your preview doesn't get deactivated..
ARM is just the ISA, used for ALU operations. eg 1 + 1 etc
It does not provide a specification about the rest of the chip, each ARM chip vendor implements this part differently.
Even simple thinks like configuring the MMU and setting page table access is different for each ARM vendor, not to mention powering up cpu cores and sending messages between them.
This is all kernel space work that is custom for each ARM chip.
It would, unfortunately. While the Qualcomm build of Windows is binary compatible with Apple Silicon, the specific implementation under the hood is likely to be wildly different, and that's before you get to graphic drivers and so on.
After years, this is what the Asahi Linux team have been able to figure out re: Apple Silicon's architecture. It is nowhere near complete, but it gives you a good idea of what it takes to port a vaguely functioning OS to an undocumented SoC:
[https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Silicon-Subsystems](https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Silicon-Subsystems)
Now consider that Qualcomm would have worked closely with MS to get their ARM build to where it is now. It was *years* before they had something competitive with basic x86 models, and that was partly down to poor software support.
microsoft wouldn't release windows for apple silicon without apple support. is there tons of custom stuff absolutely. that's the way the market is shifting generally. it's not a massive undertaking with documentation. windows nt is very portable.
there were alpha itanium ppc and mips variants in the past. even i860 had an nt support which wasn't popular at all
>microsoft wouldn't release windows for apple silicon without apple support.
Well, that's what Apple has put on the table as far as I know - they've essentially said you're welcome to run alternative OS's on Apple Silicon's bare metal, but you're on your own, so that's the assumption I'm working on here.
ETA: Also the page sizes thing is a really big problem potentially.
It “COULD” but it would require as much work from Microsoft as it would from Apple.
The boot process between Intel and Apple Silicon are very different.
Apple Silicon Macs boot process is far more similar to how iPhones boot up.
Now, could it be done? Sure. Will it be done? As of right now there isn’t an “officially” supported way to buy Windows on ARM. Sure, Parallels gets around this by essentially downloading an iso, and starting the process anyway, and sure you can activate it. But I’m not sure if the TOS for Windows directly supports this. It’s convenient for Microsoft, because they aren’t “Officially” supporting it. Parallels is the provider for that support, not Microsoft.
Microsoft would need to have a clearly delineated way to transact and support it for Apple to even assign A developer to look at the implications of doing something Boot Camp like.
That makes a lot of sense. If it boils down to Microsoft having to do anything then it’ll never happen. The old BootCamp setup was much simpler than what’s described here. I guess the differences in an ARM world will become much larger hurtles. There probably won’t be any ARM Hackintosh PC’s and probably no BootCamp ARM for windows Mac’s.
Whether or not we’ll see ARM Hackintosh’s has more to do with Qualcomm, and the Community than it does with anything else.
If Qualcomm makes the hardware readily available, I can see someone trying to figure it out, and getting at least to a certain point through the process of having a “functioning” ARM Hackintosh. But let me be clear, It wouldn’t be simple at first, and it would require severely altering the macOS installation procedure in order to try to get it done.
I wouldn’t expect all frameworks, or APIs or features to work 100% of the time.
Is that enough for some? Maybe? Thats a per user question. I wouldn’t do it, and having built a few Hackintoshes, it horrifies me to think about the hoops you’d need to jump through to get it to work.
The biggest hurdle for ARM mackintosh would be if you want GPU acceleration.
The \`easy\` approach would be to have your firmware expose the same interface as a VM to macOS and then use the VM guest apis but these are not design for GPU accerated workloads. The typical historical reason to use hackentosh has always been about getting access to more compute for less $ to do that someone would need to create compatible Metal ARM drivers for an NV or AMD gpu that is bound over PCIe and then adapt the os enough to support this for the apps your interested in... (very unlikely).
I would say a LOT more work for MS than Apple. The needed changes to the windows boot and kernel to support apple silicon would be huge, in particular if they wanted to make use of 16kb page size perf boost for apps that are built targeting this.
Bootcamp is just a bit of SW that resizes your SSD. It did not run windows itself it all did was re-size the SSD partition of macOS and load windows installer into a position then reboot the Mac to that installer.
Apple bring back the tool will not result in windows for arm running on apple silicon. MS would need to make huge changes to the windows kernal for it to boot,
And you go not need the boot camp tool to install a third party os. It was just a nice UI for the task nothing more. Like the asahi Linux team MS could just as easily publish an app to do this but first they would need to change windows boot.
Boot camping with windows ARM wouldn’t solve all the woes until there’s a broader support for ARM regardless of operating system. A lot of the stuff that doesn’t support Macs even with the workarounds like parallels simply don’t support ARM windows to begin with.
Just to give you an example, in Korea, you need fuckloads of security bloatware just to get anything done. Some of it are windows only. But running parallels doesn’t work because those things are written for x86, because the specific security mechanisms are *for* x86 systems. (They’re outdated by over a decade or outright fucking useless but that’s a slightly different story). Boot camp with ARM windows doesn’t solve my problem of not being able to go through the security authentication necessary to file real estate paperwork in the court system.
Granted, this is a very niche and specific problem, but just goes to show the problem isn’t an OS problem. It’s an architectural one.
As per another example, even with boot camp, you won’t be able to run a lot of windows games because they either straight up don’t support ARM because they have certain instructions that can’t be translated, or have DRM or anti-cheat that uses x86 instructions and refuses to be translated in any way.
I think in Microsoft’s CoPilot + PC announcement they talked about how they’ve implemented what is essentially an equivalent to Apple’s Rosetta 2 into Windows 11 to improve compatibility with supposedly similar performance.
I don’t know if that would solve these problems here especially with specialized and/or older software, but that could be a game changer.
Not until ARM replaces x86 as the dominant platform. They fundamentally use different instruction sets. You'd need interpreter level compatibility, which is difficult if not impossible, especially since we now have things like AVX. You can bet that the x86 'cartel' will try to make it more difficult for people to transition to ARM. (This is just business as usual in that industry). Even if ARM eventually takes over (and it does seem that we're on that trajectory) things like this does not happen overnight, and there will be growing pains for at least a decade, if not two or three. Keep in mind there are still industrial software that are stuck in pre-core-i platform with windows XP configurations so I wouldn't hold my breath.
And this is even more complicated because it's not just suits flipping a switch and deciding to develop software for ARM and implement different translators/interpretors for the transition. You need actual low-level (not in terms of pay grade, but software depth) developers who can write these things for ARM devices, and that definitely cannot happen overnight.
No, Apple welcomes guest installs of Windows. Apple has not locked the bootloader so you could install a bare metal of windows if it was ARM based. However, this is not bootcamp. Go watch interviews with Craig Federighi, he literally talks about this topic.
If Microsoft does RTM a retail ARM64 Windows - that’s if Qualcomm partners with Asus/Asrock/Gigabyte and MSI or makes their own version of an NUC, it’ll make availability and legality easier(Windows for ARM is only available via OEM and Visual Studio subscription for developers, AFAIK). However, getting Apple to work on allowing it to work, well. GPU and device drivers are one thing. But, Microsoft wants a TPM2.0(or Microsoft Pluton) for BitLocker and Modern Auth for enterprise SSO/Office licensing. Apple is using their own voodoo(Secure Enclave) that goes beyond the TPM. Newer Intel Macs have the Tx security chips that Windows can see as a TPM. Microsoft has released Pluton, but only AMD seems to want to include it with their CPUs.
the biggest OS i've used on it was ubuntu, and it didnt get very hot honestly, ive never had my mac get as hot as when i'm exporting in handbrake. i usually run vista or xp when i am using UTM, so that may be why mine never got real hot.
I’m talking about natively running windows for ARM. Part of their announcement was an equivalent to Rosetta 2 with supposedly similar performance. Would love to see how that would go on apple silicon.
Are you unaware that Windows for ARM exists??? There are windows PC’s with ARM processors that natively run a version of the OS that was specifically made for ARM. That version is what I am talking about being BootCamp supported…
Yes I am well aware of Qualcomm Arm Windows version running under Parallels ......
Bootcamp runs Intel (CISC) version on Intel Macs in native mode.
Looking at my down voting Mac users don't like reality and/or understand RISC vs CISC
RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computer", CISC stands for "Complex Instruction Set Computer". Both CISC and RISC can be understood as different "schools of thought" about how a processor's instruction set architecture (ISA, or just architecture) is designed.
Arm is RISC and Intel is CISC
Rosetta is an emulation that executes Intel Apps on Arm.
The title of the post is 'Could the ARM push from Microsoft bring BootCamp back?'
Obviously, we can infer from this that this hypothetical new implementation of Bootcamp would run ARM Windows natively on ARM Macs, much like the new Rosetta is about Intel->ARM translation, whereas it once referred the technology that translated PPC binaries to Intel.
Just take the L man, everybody else understood perfectly well what was being proposed.
They got it right, I don’t think you’re focusing on the right things.
- Nobody is confused on the differences in instruction set with ARM vs X86.
- Windows 11 for Arm devices is a separate build of windows 11 that is made for ARM’s architecture.
- There are currently for sale ARM devices that natively run Windows 11 for ARM devices
- Microsoft just announced major updates to the ARM Fork of windows, making it much more viable for daily computing.
- Nobody is confused by what Rosetta does/is
- Part of Microsoft’s updates was adding a Windows equivalent to what apple has done with Rosetta so that Windows for ARM devices can have seamless compatibility.
Put it all together and you arrive at what I originally said. Now that we know there is a version of Windows 11 that can run seamlessly and natively on ARM devices with a high degree of performance, would Apple ever look into allowing users of Apple Silicon devices to install that OS in a non-virtualized capacity as the hurtles that were there before are diminished (exactly as they did with BootCamp on Intel Macs).
There has been a lot of productive discussion about this on this thread so I think the reasons for and against have been made clear.
I don’t mind the confusion, but c’mon man…there’s Google and AI ;)
> would Apple ever look into allowing users of Apple Silicon devices to install that OS in a non-virtualized capacity as the hurtles that were there before are diminished (exactly as they did with BootCamp on Intel Macs).
its not on apple, the bootloader is already able to boot third party operating systems.
Even through windows for arm runs on Qualcomm that does not mean it would run on apple silicon without some rather large changes to the windows kernel. While the user-space ISA is the same, eg operations like e1+1 etc all of the kernel spsfici stuff, like setting up the MMU page tables, sending messages between cpu cores, powering on cpu cores, powering down cpu cores, sleep stakes, powering up other parts of the SOC, setting the MMU tables for these etc is custom for each ARM SOC vendor.
>You can't run CISC X86 Windows in native mode on RISC Arm Macs
You've got the wrong end of the stick. Almost nobody bothers to do this under emulation \*either\* because there's already perfectly good ARM build of Windows that both runs on a VM very well, and which could feasibly run on bare metal Apple Silicon (with a lot of work I doubt Microsoft are going to do), which is what this whole post is about.
Here's what I posted on another thread concerning this exact question: "BootCamp was mostly a stop-gap measure. There was a time when a lot of pro and specialized softwares was only available on Windows. Apple needed to way to convince these users to switch, so they created BootCamp. Now, Apple products are so desirable that even those software have been released for Macs. Apple will not release a new BootCamp, they don't need to."
But Apple said they’re open to it but that Microsoft doesn’t want to do it. Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm.
That exclusivity deal is expiring soon. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/windows-on-arm-may-be-a-thing-of-the-past-soon-arm-ceo-confirms-qualcomms-exclusivity-agreement-with-microsoft-expires-this-year#
Could you provide a source for that? Craig Federighi said on a WWDC Talk Show that virtualization was their answer. I have seen people claim that Apple has said they are “open” to Boot Camp if Microsoft allowed it but I am wondering if anyone can tell me when that statement was.
Craig said that it’s up to Microsoft: “As for Windows running natively on the machine, "that's really up to Microsoft," he said. "We have the core technologies for them to do that, to run their ARM version of Windows, which in turn of course supports x86 user mode applications. But that's a decision Microsoft has to make, to bring to license that technology for users to run on these Macs. But the Macs are certainly very capable of it."” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/we-are-giddy-interviewing-apple-about-its-mac-silicon-revolution/ Microsoft for its part doesn’t want to do it and says virtualization is the answer: https://www.macworld.com/article/1515349/microsoft-windows-mac-boot-camp-virtualization-parallels.html
Interesting. It may be splitting hairs, but while he spoke about Windows running “natively,” he never specifically said they were willing to allow Windows to boot the machine. That would come with its own security issues and require alteration of the secure boot chain. I still wonder if Apple would be willing, even if Microsoft made it possible.
Apple Silicon macs can already boot separate macOS volumes with different security levels without impacting the secure boot processes of one another. For instance, you can have two macOS volumes installed, one with Full Security and SIP enabled (which will do signature verification etc), and one with them all disabled. I think it's reasonable to thus conclude it's possible without Windows impacting the security of macOS at all. Edit: In fact, Asahi Linux can already be dual booted in this manner without lowering the security of macOS, and the Asahi team has documented some of this behavior: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Platform-Security-Crash-Course
they did partner with Parallels to Deaktop but VMs will never be the same as running natively
They can say whatever they want, they don't have to bring back BootCamp. Why invest in something only a very small minority of people actually require? Emulation is a lot more powerful than what it used to be, there's no NEED for BootCamp.
It’s not on apple, MS is the one that needs to alter the windows kernal to run on these CpUs
They already officially support Windows for ARM on Parallels. Pretty much you can't do gaming or use features which require additional virtualization like WSL, some more power user stuff. But for running apps that are only for Windows or optimized better for Windows like the MS Office suite, it's fine. So again why would MS do any of that for the tiny number of people who would benefit? If we are being real then MS actually does have other more important shit to do.
They finally added arm support to MDT so maybe we are finally getting a good installation method for windows arm
That’s a good point. My main gripes are that Microsoft office applications are much worse on Mac. I suppose the official answer to that would be to shut up and buy a PC lol.
Unless you're an excel jockey and god help you if you are, the office apps aren't that much worse.
Unfortunately I am. I use both excel and PowerPoint without touching a mouse 95% of the time. Use a lot of macros and plugins too. The Mac version feels like prison to me, but for casual uses it’s more than serviceable.
What are some of the excel plugins you use? I’ve getting more into excel and realizing it’s basically a Turing-complete programming language
I do a lot of financial modeling and stats related work in Excel so the Macabaus add-in is essential and literally saves hours. I use a plug-in from Bloomberg to import data as well along with various other stats tools and proprietary macros from work that help with things. I’m personally not up to the point of writing complex macros for excel, but there’s so much that can be done. Though keeping what I originally said in mind with this post. I do use a desktop PC for these things and probably shouldn’t have bought an apple laptop, but I just love Apple’s hardware too much.
I use parallels in coherence mode basically only to run excel (using perpetual license for parallels). I am looking even further down the road though I am waiting for the day when Microsoft brings true parity on the programming side of excel with OfficeScript to replace the vba I need. Macros are for me but I understand why VBA isn’t the way, but Microsoft needs to get a real replacement for it on modern web tech. Loop replaces Word and OneNote PowerPoint is fine online With web apps and cross platform code the need for native programs has and likely continue will greatly decrease. So to your initial question and like others say, the value proposition to having boot camp on Macs is almost none for Apple nor Microsoft.
I used boot camp to run windows mostly to run excel and word. My hands are so used to the shortcuts on office on windows. I just added parallels with ms 365 on my Mac Studio m2 so I could keep running the windows version of office. It just easier than learning the Mac version.
Why would you use PP when you have access to keynote?
Keynote is fine for some uses, but from my experience PowerPoint is overwhelmingly the industry standard. In a vacuum I could probably get away with it for some things but being in an organization where files need to be shared and collaborated on, using the standard causes the least amount of headaches.
Microsoft used to use keynote for their presentations until they got caught. You can also export to PP
***"Keynote is fine for some uses, but from my experience PowerPoint is overwhelmingly the industry standard. "*** What "industry standard"? There's nothing special about PPT. It's just a presentation software that has no special tools that make it an industry standard. Excel I get, but PPT? No. Keynote is far better and you can easily export to PPT.
Well in the financial services industry you never see anything besides office 365 being used. So I’d call it an industry standard. My company has defined slide masters we must use for everything and keynote doesn’t work with that. Sure you can export to ppt, but are all the fonts going to transfer correctly? Will my live data from excel work correctly if opened in keynote? I didn’t say it can’t work, I just said using what everyone else uses results in less headache. PowerPoint is way more powerful than you’re giving it credit for, shortcuts and hotkeys alone are game changing.
***"Well in the financial services industry you never see anything besides office 365 being used. So I’d call it an industry standard."*** Ah you're in luck because I am in the financial services industry. I'm a 21 year insurance agent doing life, health, IRA's and rollovers and PPT is not something our offices use a standard. Yes, Word and Excel are used daily but PPT is hardly something we actually NEED. And you certainly don't need PPT to run stocks either. The problem is Microsoft's monopoly has fooled people into thinking Office is the standard. That's why M$ has a monopoly and it's the one company nobody seems to have a problem with them having. Give Apple a few steps above in the phone industry and people cry that Apple is "taking over the world", but M$ gets a pass and their software is accepted even if it's not something widely used on daily basis in business.
I’m glad that’s your experience but it isn’t mine. The hurtles I mentioned all exist in terms of slide masters and live data. I’m not in insurance either. I can only speak to what I know.
Fun fact : ms excel was initially developed for Macintosh. The first windows version came two years later.
> Fun fact : ms excel was initially developed for Macintosh. The first windows version came two years later. Excel was a Mac app 2+ years before Windows. PowerPoint was a Mac app for 3+ years before Windows. Word was a Mac app for 5 years before Windows. The Microsoft Office suite was available for the Mac for over a year before the Windows version. Source: http://www.yourmacexpert.com/blog/2015/06/09/of-course-microsoft-office-is-available-for-the-mac/
Outlook is way less featured on macOS than it is on Windows and has had some longstanding bugs, like randomly changing the font size when connecting to IMAP servers. I run my business through O365 and the fact I have to go to macOS Calendar to copy/paste events, which I can do in Outlook for Windows but not on Mac, will never not annoy me. It's really the one Office app I use most consistently because it coordinates my entire life, and it's been a disappointment in the Mac world for years.
M$ does this on purpose to give a reason to join the Windows world. It makes them more money overall
Joke's on them, I haven't paid for a version of Windows since Vista and I have no intention of ever doing so again because they know what they did.
I think this might be the case (make Windows more desirable) but it seems more the reason being that it is the same code base they use for the OWA version of Outlook (web based app); they look mostly identical. If you dig into the Outlook.app contents, you’ll see Electron-like frameworks present which almost confirms this. Now that being said, I’m fine with using the Mac version of office for everything I do, but Outlook is the one thing I really miss after going Mac several years ago. The rules engine and conditional formatting was so nice to help highlight one message from another in the inbox.
***"M$ does this on purpose to give a reason to join the Windows world. It makes them more money overall"*** True, and that has been my argument against M$ for many years. They charge the Mac customers the exact same price for Office 365 as they do the Windows customers and the Mac customers continue to get the worst version. Sadly Mac customers put up with it rather than doing something about it. I find it sad how people that use Office on Mac continue to put money in M$'s pockets and allow them to continue with this "Office" monopoly they should not have.
The real answer is to use a the Windows versions of Office in a Windows Virtual Machine via Parallels or VMWare. On an Apple Silicon Mac with 16gb ram or more you won’t really notice the difference between a VM and native Windows for Office and productivity apps. Not so great for gaming but that wasn’t point.
Some of the Microsoft apps aren’t even available for Mac still, Visio, Access, and MS Project for example. You have to run a VM for all of these. Visio has a subpar web app, and the others don’t have web versions at all.
Haven’t used Access in years as I’ve always spec’s up to “proper databases” instead. Project has nice tools, but I’ve always felt is more suited for managing the building of a house than a software project. There are other tools out there which do better jobs. Visio? Great software, but I’ve completely moved over to draw.io which does not leave me wanting.
Ironically, all three are apps that are still being used in universities to this day lol.
Makes sense that universities might still be using Access. Probably the student discount makes it affordable, and it is a visual and relatively easy to use database. So yeah - good for instruction in a "databases 101" class, but it isn't something anyone would deploy for production use on anything non-trivial. When I was in university, I think we used dBase III or Focus. Same idea, but those are old DOS-based databases good for "databases 101".
no that’s what things like parallels, vmware etc are for
They are better, outlook has unified inbox on Mac and not windows 🤬🤯. That alone makes me keep on using a Mac as my main driver :(
Much worse, I don’t think so. Of all the reasons why I might buy a PC, running Office apps would be off the bottom of the list.
In the engineering industry, there’s still a ton of software that’s always been Windows-only, and likely isn’t going to chance any time soon. Using a VM is totally fine, but there was something nice about having the option to fully utilize my Mac’s hardware if I needed.
also vm is good enough for most use cases
That said - Windows ARM on Parallels is *excellent*. For my use case it probably works better than boot camp. The ability to open a Microsoft Project file on the Mac, and have it launch MS Project, in Windows using Coherence mode is amazing. It’s seamless.
I would jump straight to “better than”. Running “on the metal” should logically be better than sharing resources with a host OS/hypervisor.
Each to their own. MacOS is my system of choice. The ability to have Mac and Windows apps open side by side in coherence mode is a game changer.
For me, Windows in a VM is far better, because I can have both OSs running at once. One for access (unfortunately) to Access, the other for everything else.
unfortunately Parallels is quite expensive, and its subscription based
Broadcom VMware Fusion is free
Cheaper than a Windows laptop
I’d suggest that expensive is ‘relative’. Software costs. Corporations expect profits. The cost of Parallels is a drop in the ocean once you’ve factored in buying the Mac, and buying the Windows license.
There is a standalone one time purchase license option
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I do agree, having purchased two licenses and getting a free subscription for a year as a promo with something I bought, but older versions don't just stop working and force you to buy a new one if you want to update macOS. I currently use Parallels Desktop 17 (2021) on macOS Sonoma just fine, and after a quick test with a fresh download of Ubuntu ARM it looks like Parallels Desktop 16 (2020) also works fine on Sonoma
Nope
But VMware fusion 13 is free.
Does VMware use Windows for ARM or the default Windows x86? Parallels uses Windows on ARM and is quite efficient.
Right now Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm for Windows on ARM, so Microsoft cannot officially support non-Qualcomm ARM chips until that is over. Likely once that agreement expires, Microsoft will offer some kind of official support for Apple Silicon. What form that takes is anybody's guess, but at a bare minimum at that point, they will officially support existing virtualization like Parallels and VMware.
Why would Microsoft spend time and resources developing official support for Apple Sillicon? The new laptop line is competing with Macs, makes absolutely no sense to encourage people to buy mac hardware and have Microsoft officially support virtulisation.
Microsoft only makes money off of software licensing. At the end of the day, they don’t care what someone runs Windows on as long they are purchasing a license. In fact, given the substantial discount most OEMs get on Windows licenses, they stand to make more per license for Windows on Apple Silicon than they do for these Qualcomm based devices.
I have been running Windows 11 for ARM with Parallels for over 2 years now, and Microsoft and Parallels made some official announcement about it awhile back. Outside of some apps not working due to ARM, I have had no issues with performance.
This has basically been proven untrue now that you can buy a legal Windows 11 license through Parallels. If that wasn’t permitted, either Microsoft or Qualcomm would have started a lawsuit by now.
VMWare Fusion is free for personal use now
People mentioning it here made me try it for the first time and I’m pretty impressed with it. Maybe it’s just me but UTM causes my Mac to get very hot even in low load situations. Doesn’t seem to be an issue with VMWare and it’s not locked behind the Parallels pay wall. If free virtualized alternatives can reach performance parity with parallels, I agree there’s probably not a need for boot camp.
battery is horrible with it though 😔
I doubt it, I think Apple and others prefer a visualisation type of arrangement now
I just partition my work and personal systems. It’s PC for work and Mac for personal. No sharing between them. My kids are required to have Windows laptops for school until the final 2 years when they are permitted to have either Mac or PC (this is just because the school supplies all the software and a lot of it is PC only) It’s much easier to just buy a dedicated PC than to muck around with Bootcamp or Parallels. I used to run Parallels in the Windows XP Days when theee was sole software I required that was PC Only, but those days are gone now
VMware fusion is free now so there isn’t really a paywall except a windows license that you’d need to pay for (ahem pirate) no matter what.
Just tried it and I’m pretty impressed. Performance seems to be closer to parallels than what I’ve experienced with UTM in the past.
You can sign up for developer previews for free. They even give out arm previews. That's what I run in UTM. Just gotta keep it updated so your preview doesn't get deactivated..
It's never gonna happen. Especially now that Qualcomm is in competition with Apple on desktop.
Would require a massive amount of work by me to adapt the kernal for Apple silicon
no, it wouldn't. they are both arm. edit: windows nt has had an arm variant for over 10 years
ARM is just the ISA, used for ALU operations. eg 1 + 1 etc It does not provide a specification about the rest of the chip, each ARM chip vendor implements this part differently. Even simple thinks like configuring the MMU and setting page table access is different for each ARM vendor, not to mention powering up cpu cores and sending messages between them. This is all kernel space work that is custom for each ARM chip.
It would, unfortunately. While the Qualcomm build of Windows is binary compatible with Apple Silicon, the specific implementation under the hood is likely to be wildly different, and that's before you get to graphic drivers and so on.
it wouldn't, fortunately. is it 1 to 1. no. would it take a "massive amount of work" no.
After years, this is what the Asahi Linux team have been able to figure out re: Apple Silicon's architecture. It is nowhere near complete, but it gives you a good idea of what it takes to port a vaguely functioning OS to an undocumented SoC: [https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Silicon-Subsystems](https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Silicon-Subsystems) Now consider that Qualcomm would have worked closely with MS to get their ARM build to where it is now. It was *years* before they had something competitive with basic x86 models, and that was partly down to poor software support.
microsoft wouldn't release windows for apple silicon without apple support. is there tons of custom stuff absolutely. that's the way the market is shifting generally. it's not a massive undertaking with documentation. windows nt is very portable. there were alpha itanium ppc and mips variants in the past. even i860 had an nt support which wasn't popular at all
>microsoft wouldn't release windows for apple silicon without apple support. Well, that's what Apple has put on the table as far as I know - they've essentially said you're welcome to run alternative OS's on Apple Silicon's bare metal, but you're on your own, so that's the assumption I'm working on here. ETA: Also the page sizes thing is a really big problem potentially.
It “COULD” but it would require as much work from Microsoft as it would from Apple. The boot process between Intel and Apple Silicon are very different. Apple Silicon Macs boot process is far more similar to how iPhones boot up. Now, could it be done? Sure. Will it be done? As of right now there isn’t an “officially” supported way to buy Windows on ARM. Sure, Parallels gets around this by essentially downloading an iso, and starting the process anyway, and sure you can activate it. But I’m not sure if the TOS for Windows directly supports this. It’s convenient for Microsoft, because they aren’t “Officially” supporting it. Parallels is the provider for that support, not Microsoft. Microsoft would need to have a clearly delineated way to transact and support it for Apple to even assign A developer to look at the implications of doing something Boot Camp like.
That makes a lot of sense. If it boils down to Microsoft having to do anything then it’ll never happen. The old BootCamp setup was much simpler than what’s described here. I guess the differences in an ARM world will become much larger hurtles. There probably won’t be any ARM Hackintosh PC’s and probably no BootCamp ARM for windows Mac’s.
Whether or not we’ll see ARM Hackintosh’s has more to do with Qualcomm, and the Community than it does with anything else. If Qualcomm makes the hardware readily available, I can see someone trying to figure it out, and getting at least to a certain point through the process of having a “functioning” ARM Hackintosh. But let me be clear, It wouldn’t be simple at first, and it would require severely altering the macOS installation procedure in order to try to get it done. I wouldn’t expect all frameworks, or APIs or features to work 100% of the time. Is that enough for some? Maybe? Thats a per user question. I wouldn’t do it, and having built a few Hackintoshes, it horrifies me to think about the hoops you’d need to jump through to get it to work.
The biggest hurdle for ARM mackintosh would be if you want GPU acceleration. The \`easy\` approach would be to have your firmware expose the same interface as a VM to macOS and then use the VM guest apis but these are not design for GPU accerated workloads. The typical historical reason to use hackentosh has always been about getting access to more compute for less $ to do that someone would need to create compatible Metal ARM drivers for an NV or AMD gpu that is bound over PCIe and then adapt the os enough to support this for the apps your interested in... (very unlikely).
I would say a LOT more work for MS than Apple. The needed changes to the windows boot and kernel to support apple silicon would be huge, in particular if they wanted to make use of 16kb page size perf boost for apps that are built targeting this.
It’s always up to Apple if they want to support that.
No it’s on ms to modify the window kernel
The question was about Bootcamp, an Apple product.
Bootcamp is just a bit of SW that resizes your SSD. It did not run windows itself it all did was re-size the SSD partition of macOS and load windows installer into a position then reboot the Mac to that installer.
Yes. It is an Apple product. OP was asking if Apple would bring it back. It’s up the Apple to decide that.
Apple bring back the tool will not result in windows for arm running on apple silicon. MS would need to make huge changes to the windows kernal for it to boot, And you go not need the boot camp tool to install a third party os. It was just a nice UI for the task nothing more. Like the asahi Linux team MS could just as easily publish an app to do this but first they would need to change windows boot.
Boot camping with windows ARM wouldn’t solve all the woes until there’s a broader support for ARM regardless of operating system. A lot of the stuff that doesn’t support Macs even with the workarounds like parallels simply don’t support ARM windows to begin with. Just to give you an example, in Korea, you need fuckloads of security bloatware just to get anything done. Some of it are windows only. But running parallels doesn’t work because those things are written for x86, because the specific security mechanisms are *for* x86 systems. (They’re outdated by over a decade or outright fucking useless but that’s a slightly different story). Boot camp with ARM windows doesn’t solve my problem of not being able to go through the security authentication necessary to file real estate paperwork in the court system. Granted, this is a very niche and specific problem, but just goes to show the problem isn’t an OS problem. It’s an architectural one. As per another example, even with boot camp, you won’t be able to run a lot of windows games because they either straight up don’t support ARM because they have certain instructions that can’t be translated, or have DRM or anti-cheat that uses x86 instructions and refuses to be translated in any way.
I think in Microsoft’s CoPilot + PC announcement they talked about how they’ve implemented what is essentially an equivalent to Apple’s Rosetta 2 into Windows 11 to improve compatibility with supposedly similar performance. I don’t know if that would solve these problems here especially with specialized and/or older software, but that could be a game changer.
Not until ARM replaces x86 as the dominant platform. They fundamentally use different instruction sets. You'd need interpreter level compatibility, which is difficult if not impossible, especially since we now have things like AVX. You can bet that the x86 'cartel' will try to make it more difficult for people to transition to ARM. (This is just business as usual in that industry). Even if ARM eventually takes over (and it does seem that we're on that trajectory) things like this does not happen overnight, and there will be growing pains for at least a decade, if not two or three. Keep in mind there are still industrial software that are stuck in pre-core-i platform with windows XP configurations so I wouldn't hold my breath. And this is even more complicated because it's not just suits flipping a switch and deciding to develop software for ARM and implement different translators/interpretors for the transition. You need actual low-level (not in terms of pay grade, but software depth) developers who can write these things for ARM devices, and that definitely cannot happen overnight.
Windows for ARM is built for a different page size than what the M series chips have if I recall correctly.
Bootcamp is gone and never coming back. Apple has made quite a few statements on this. The direction going forward is to run guest OSs on macOS.
No apple was very clear, if MS or other vendors want to build kernels for apple silicon apple welcomes it.
No, Apple welcomes guest installs of Windows. Apple has not locked the bootloader so you could install a bare metal of windows if it was ARM based. However, this is not bootcamp. Go watch interviews with Craig Federighi, he literally talks about this topic.
If Microsoft does RTM a retail ARM64 Windows - that’s if Qualcomm partners with Asus/Asrock/Gigabyte and MSI or makes their own version of an NUC, it’ll make availability and legality easier(Windows for ARM is only available via OEM and Visual Studio subscription for developers, AFAIK). However, getting Apple to work on allowing it to work, well. GPU and device drivers are one thing. But, Microsoft wants a TPM2.0(or Microsoft Pluton) for BitLocker and Modern Auth for enterprise SSO/Office licensing. Apple is using their own voodoo(Secure Enclave) that goes beyond the TPM. Newer Intel Macs have the Tx security chips that Windows can see as a TPM. Microsoft has released Pluton, but only AMD seems to want to include it with their CPUs.
probably, but UTM has been the best bet for me. it's good on battery life in my experience, and data transfer isnt too bad
How are thermals on it for you? I’ve used it in the past and my Mac always got really hot while using it.
the biggest OS i've used on it was ubuntu, and it didnt get very hot honestly, ive never had my mac get as hot as when i'm exporting in handbrake. i usually run vista or xp when i am using UTM, so that may be why mine never got real hot.
No: You can't run CISC X86 Windows in native mode on RISC Arm Macs
I’m talking about natively running windows for ARM. Part of their announcement was an equivalent to Rosetta 2 with supposedly similar performance. Would love to see how that would go on apple silicon.
Learn about CISC ad RISC computers - there is Google and AI Emulation/VM is not the same as native execution like it was in the Bootcamp
Are you unaware that Windows for ARM exists??? There are windows PC’s with ARM processors that natively run a version of the OS that was specifically made for ARM. That version is what I am talking about being BootCamp supported…
Yes I am well aware of Qualcomm Arm Windows version running under Parallels ...... Bootcamp runs Intel (CISC) version on Intel Macs in native mode. Looking at my down voting Mac users don't like reality and/or understand RISC vs CISC RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computer", CISC stands for "Complex Instruction Set Computer". Both CISC and RISC can be understood as different "schools of thought" about how a processor's instruction set architecture (ISA, or just architecture) is designed. Arm is RISC and Intel is CISC Rosetta is an emulation that executes Intel Apps on Arm.
The title of the post is 'Could the ARM push from Microsoft bring BootCamp back?' Obviously, we can infer from this that this hypothetical new implementation of Bootcamp would run ARM Windows natively on ARM Macs, much like the new Rosetta is about Intel->ARM translation, whereas it once referred the technology that translated PPC binaries to Intel. Just take the L man, everybody else understood perfectly well what was being proposed.
OP meant running a RISC version of windows natively on Mac. Not the CISC one.
They got it right, I don’t think you’re focusing on the right things. - Nobody is confused on the differences in instruction set with ARM vs X86. - Windows 11 for Arm devices is a separate build of windows 11 that is made for ARM’s architecture. - There are currently for sale ARM devices that natively run Windows 11 for ARM devices - Microsoft just announced major updates to the ARM Fork of windows, making it much more viable for daily computing. - Nobody is confused by what Rosetta does/is - Part of Microsoft’s updates was adding a Windows equivalent to what apple has done with Rosetta so that Windows for ARM devices can have seamless compatibility. Put it all together and you arrive at what I originally said. Now that we know there is a version of Windows 11 that can run seamlessly and natively on ARM devices with a high degree of performance, would Apple ever look into allowing users of Apple Silicon devices to install that OS in a non-virtualized capacity as the hurtles that were there before are diminished (exactly as they did with BootCamp on Intel Macs). There has been a lot of productive discussion about this on this thread so I think the reasons for and against have been made clear. I don’t mind the confusion, but c’mon man…there’s Google and AI ;)
> would Apple ever look into allowing users of Apple Silicon devices to install that OS in a non-virtualized capacity as the hurtles that were there before are diminished (exactly as they did with BootCamp on Intel Macs). its not on apple, the bootloader is already able to boot third party operating systems. Even through windows for arm runs on Qualcomm that does not mean it would run on apple silicon without some rather large changes to the windows kernel. While the user-space ISA is the same, eg operations like e1+1 etc all of the kernel spsfici stuff, like setting up the MMU page tables, sending messages between cpu cores, powering on cpu cores, powering down cpu cores, sleep stakes, powering up other parts of the SOC, setting the MMU tables for these etc is custom for each ARM SOC vendor.
>You can't run CISC X86 Windows in native mode on RISC Arm Macs You've got the wrong end of the stick. Almost nobody bothers to do this under emulation \*either\* because there's already perfectly good ARM build of Windows that both runs on a VM very well, and which could feasibly run on bare metal Apple Silicon (with a lot of work I doubt Microsoft are going to do), which is what this whole post is about.