JON HONEYBALL Jon is taken by how smooth Windows runs on his M1 MacBook – but should Microsoft double down on ARM or get out of the game?
Jon is taken by how smooth Windows runs on his M1 MacBook – so should Microsoft double down on ARM or get out of the game?
When you buy into a new technology, there’s often an initial frisson of excitement. I call it the “new shiny toy syndrome” and it’s akin to unwrapping presents to see what’s inside. Is this thing going to be as good as I hoped? Will it deliver what I wanted?
All too often, the initial euphoria is replaced by a sense of disappointment. The timescale for this depends on how significant the issues are, while the depth is defined by the magnitude of the problem or limitations. It’s very rare for a product not to have the “trough of despair” after the initial rush of excitement.
I’m pleased to report that the M1 Apple MacBook Air falls into the rarefied group where there has been no post-purchase regret. It’s a storming device, and I’m struck by its speed and responsiveness every time I switch to it from my 16in MacBook Pro replete with Core i9 processor and 64GB of RAM.
But one key item was missing. Parallels allows me to run Windows 10 for Intel in virtual machines, and I use it all the time on my MacBook Pro and my aged 2013 “trash can” Mac Pro Pro. It’s an ideal environment for f testing Windows software in a safe, contained fashion.
Back at the announcement of the M1, Apple mentioned that tha Parallels would have a new version of its product for the M1 platform. Just before Christmas, the early beta b arrived with those wh who had signed up for testing it. i
As soon as the notification arrived, I downloaded the product prod and installed it. Since then h there has been one m major update, but much functionality is still missing compared to the Intel version; for example, you can’t pause and restart a VM. This is exactly what I’d expect from a beta product in this state and no doubt this additional capability will come.
First things first. Yes, the M1 processor on macOS 11 can run Intel 64-bit macOS code using the Apple Rosetta 2 code-translation software. This is seamless and is significantly helped by the M1 processor being able to run code in the Intel-oriented fashion, rather than the “other way around” addressing of ARM. You can tell that Apple did its homework here.
However, Rosetta 2 can’t be used for a guest operating system in a hypervisor session. Obviously, that’s because Rosetta is part of the core OS of macOS, which is kept far away from a hypervisor session running a guest OS.
As such, Parallels on M1 can only run an ARM-based OS, which means standard Windows 10 isn’t an option. The same is true, in reverse, on the Intel-based MacBook Pro I bought back in the summer – this can run an Intel-based guest OS but can’t run an ARM-based b d one in a VM container.
With Parallels loaded, my first task was to grab an ARM Linux installation. This went very smoothly. I then trundled over to the Microsoft site, where you can download a preview build of Windows on ARM (WOA).
This is the version of Windows 10 compiled natively for ARM processors, as used on the existing Microsoft Surface Pro X computer. You may remember that the Pro X features an ARM-based Qualcomm processor.
Now things get interesting. WOA, as it’s currently shipping, can support a software emulation of Win32 32-bit applications on the WOA platform using a similar translation layer to Rosetta. Microsoft has been promising an improved version of this code translator that supports Win64 64-bit Intel code. This was the “Insider
Build” of WOA I downloaded; finalcode WOA is only available as an OEM installation onto approved hardware. It isn’t available for purchase to download onto other hardware.
A handful of minutes later, I had WOA running in a hypervisor session under Parallels for M1 on my MacBook Air. I’d set it to take 4GB of system RAM and this was what happened in practice: my MacBook ook Air was completely l tely unflustered by Windows ws running alongside l de macOS 11. Still, I was glad d I’d bought the 16GB of f RAM version of the MacBook ok Air rather than the 8GB B base model.
The performance of native Windows ARMbased applications pplications seemed pretty good. In fact, so good that h I fired f red up a Windows Surface Pro X that we bought in 2019 and did a quick k comparison. omparison. Without a doubt, , the MacBook Air M1 was running WOA significantly f antly faster than the OS was running natively on the Qualcomm alcomm processor in the Surface Pro X laptop.
For a giggle, I then fired up some Win64 64-bit Intel Windows applications and tools within the
WOA session. These again ran pretty smoothly and I got quite respectable benchmark results. I’d post them here, but it would be somewhat unfair – an early beta build of WOA with x64 code-translation support running on an early beta of Parallels virtualisation platform. All running on a beta version of macOS 11.1, just to complete the madness.
Yet, in one stroke, it’s become possible to run 64-bit Intel Windows applications in a hypervisor environment on my M1 MacBook Air. And to do so with very respectable performance – in fact, better than running on the Qualcomm processor.
WOA, Nelly!
This leads us to a quandary. WOA isn’t available for licensing from Microsoft: it’s currently only available bundled onto Qualcomm-based hardware. So the million-dollar question is this: will Microsoft relent and allow it to be licensed for installation onto hypervisor platforms such as Parallels on the M1?
From Microsoft’s point of view, this isn’t a particularly easy decision. On the one hand, it spreads the love of Windows out to all users. There will be some revenue from such a move too. On the downside, it means that Microsoft will have to take on the support responsibility for its OS running under a hypervisor on the Apple platform. I neither assume that this is a cheap thing to do, nor that there is will inside Microsoft to do it.
Worse still, it shines a spotlight not only onto the Intel platform, but also onto Microsoft’s own SQ1 system-ona-chip (SoC) created in partnership with Qualcomm.
At this point, I should point out that Microsoft is working on something called “Cloud Windows”. This gives you a Windows 10 or 10X desktop, but running in the Microsoft cloud. You can then use a web browser (or small app) to run your x86 64-bit code in the cloud and to “project” it onto your desktop or laptop/tablet.
Microsoft already offers this to large corporate customers, but is believed to be bringing it to home/ small office users. There are plenty of problems – how to license it, how to manage the cloud instances – but these can be fixed. The advantage for Microsoft is that it turns Windows from an initial-purchase licence fee to a monthly subscription, which is much more in alignment with the firm’s cloud strategy.
So, Microsoft could double down on its cloud-based desktop offering and say that this is its strategic platform moving forward, unless you want the historical Windows 10 on Intel platform. Lots of corporates will be very unwilling to move from that, at least in the short term; in corporate IT, “better the devil you know” is a powerful argument indeed.
On the other hand, Microsoft could decide to push ahead with ARM. Its top priority will then be to create world-class SoC hardware on which to run it – the comparison between M1 and the SQ1 is beyond parody. There’s nothing here that Microsoft can’t do – it just needs to reach into its bank account and fund the work, and then ensure that Qualcomm brings its best work to the table. And find a foundry that can do the 5nm fabrication work. Oh, and then there’s the matter of persuading Dell, HP and the others to walk down this road with it.
If all of that sounds like a lot of hard work then I would agree with you – a lot of spend, a lot of risk and no significant reward for 24 months. At which point Apple will be onto the third generation of the M series processors, with vastly more CPU and GPU cores compared to today and most likely running on the TSMC 3nm fabrication process.
Or Microsoft can say “this is nonsense”, call a halt to WOA, freeze Windows 10 for corporates and then attempt to move everyone else to Cloud Windows. That’s not without significant hurdles, of course, but at least more of it is under Microsoft’s direct control.
All routes out of this mess are littered with landmines, bear traps and other nastiness. Microsoft’s lazy and complacent relationship with Intel has finally come home to roost.
In the meantime, I will continue to marvel at WOA with x64 support, running on Parallels on my Apple M1 devices.
Twitter for customer support
Twitter is a curious thing. I watch it, mostly in read-only mode, only raising my head above the parapet to post to @pcpro followers about forthcoming Thursday lunchtime podcasts. And I sometimes post gastronomic pics to my friends.
But a tweet passed through my timeline that immediately made my eyes open. It was from the @EONhelp account, which is the customer service department of energy supplier E.ON. Someone was asked to provide a meter reading, which they sent to EON as a direct message as per the request. This information included the customer’s account number, date of birth, electricity and gas meter readings – and, of course, their Twitter name.
All of which @EONhelp then publicly retweeted. No, I cannot work out why it would have done that either. The customer politely flagged this (far more politely than I would have done), and after 30 minutes or so @EONhelp deleted the tweet.
I’m not sure what happened here, but the retweet by @EONhelp was most definitely in the public domain. As you’d expect, @EONhelp uses a back-end management tool to handle this account. It would be crazy to try
“All routes out of this mess are littered with landmines, bear traps and other nastiness”