Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Why would Apple want to make it hard to run aarch64 Windows on an M1 device? Their support for Windows in Boot Camp drove a lot of sales of Mac hardware after the switch to Intel. Seems Apple is limiting their hardware sales to not support Windows on M-series Macs.

(Then again, if they are having supply/capacity issues then maybe it's a matter it being on the roadmap but they want their hardware running macOS until that demand is fully met?)

View on HN

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 Microsoft's court on this one.

[0]: https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/20/windows-can-run-natively-m1-m... [1]: https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-exclusivity-deal-mic...

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.

I would guess that this scenario is unlikely at best. Even if Apple expressed interest in purchasing a license, Microsoft would likely not sell one to them because their primary interest in licensing Windows is getting devices to ship with Windows preinstalled, and Apple is most certainly not ever going to do that.

They did, but Microsoft said no.

Fascinating. Source? I would have thought Microsoft would want to get Windows on as many machines as possible.

> The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up.

There is no OS industry anymore. What's left is OS's that ship telemetry and ads to customers (both Apple and MS do this). Linux-based OS's made a lot of progress, but still they're not ready for mass adoption.

I have a pretty good handle on what ads and telemetry MS ships. What ads and telemetry does Apple ship to their customers?

For starters in the telemetry category:

- Every CLI program you start

- Every app you download and run

- Every typo you type

- Every siri conversation you have

Just like Windows, you can opt out with some shenanigans.

I was aware that siri sent voice data to apple by default. Because that's how siri works. But was not aware of the others. Can you link a source?

I don't have the impression that they're doing anything specifically to make it hard. But right now users would have to pirate Windows in order to run it on Apple Silicon hardware, so it's hard to argue for an official solution. And they're not currently publishing specs in the open that would really speed it along.

But the Asahi Linux developers say Apple is helping in some measure[1], so it doesn't seem likely that they're hostile to running Windows on these devices.

[1](https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994)

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 screen real-estate (3x 4K monitors on the Mac).

It's technically pirating because the license of Windows for ARM does not allow end users to run it on arbitrary hardware or virtualize it. I have doubts that they'd ever actually enforce those terms though.

>the license of Windows for ARM does not allow end users to run it on arbitrary hardware

Microsoft does not agree:

>Yes customers can use retail copies to run Windows 10/11 on Macs, including ARM Macs. The Windows retail EULA does not have any use rights restrictions on the type of device you install Windows on.

https://getwired.com/2022/02/03/can-you-run-windows-on-arm-o...

It is a problem for businesses though. If they were going to go after anyone, it would be a business violating the EULA. Same problem with running macOS on Windows.

to be fair unofficial ports like this are never really meant for production use, and I'm going to make sure that's clear moving forward lol

I bought a Windows license and successfully activated WIN10 ARM running in Parallels.

My interpretation of the MS insanity was that windows/ARM is currently exclusively licensed for Qualcomm chips or something similarly absurd?

This isn't quite the intent of the project here, though, which aims to run the ARM build of Windows as close to the hardware as possible. Not through a VM running inside macOS, but rather under a lightweight hypervisor running on the bare metal.

You might not have to pirate Windows to do this, but I feel the rest of your comment is missing the mark.

Parallels uses Insider builds of Windows ARM, which aren't useful if you want a stable system. Additionally, Microsoft only offers those builds for people who have Windows ARM licenses, so you can't use this in a professional setting since you're violating the EULA.

The current version of Parallels uses the stable build of Windows 11 for ARM.

Once you've installed Windows, it's possible to pay for and license Windows directly from Microsoft via the Windows Store app. There might be a brief period where you're technically unlicensed (not sure what the exact verbiage is in the current Windows EULA about trial/grace periods), but the end result is a properly-licensed Windows 11 install.

Last time I checked I could not purchase a license to activate Windows 11 ARM on Parallels on Mac.

It gave all sorts of not founds/errors in the store app.

This was a few months ago. Did it change or am I missing something?

Probably changed-- I had no issues buying a license back in March.

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.

> 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.

That appears to be incorrect[0]:

> Fortunately, they had something to share later, again through an official Microsoft spokesperson (that faceless PR-driven process where press or analysts can ask Microsoft for an official response to a question). A lengthy Twitter thread on the topic[1] (driven by a new ARM64-based mini-desktop computer that ships with Windows 11 but without a license — until that was changed by the manufacturer of the device to say that it did indeed include a license) pointed to a blog post from Wes Miller[2], an analyst and licensing expert with Directions on Microsoft[3]. That post included this quote:

>> Yes customers can use retail copies to run Windows 10/11 on Macs, including ARM Macs. The Windows retail EULA does not have any use rights restrictions on the type of device you install Windows on. Note that the EULA does stipulate that not all versions of Windows are supported on all device types, so theoretically customers could run into compatibility issues with performance & support case by case, but this is not a licensing restriction. Customers can find more details on compatibility at https://aka.ms/minhw.

[0] https://oofhours.com/2022/04/12/microsoft-will-let-you-run-w...

[1] https://twitter.com/mniehaus/status/1512962942165262337

[2] https://getwired.com/2022/02/03/can-you-run-windows-on-arm-o...

[3] https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/

What's the basis for this view? Microsoft will happily sell me a license key for Windows 11, will let me download a Windows arm64 build and activate it, with the license explicitly stating that installation on a single virtual machine is permitted, and with no apparent restrictions on the hardware which can be used.

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.

I don’t get it. Microsoft just refuses to license windows on ARM to end users.

There’s a VS community post about it, and I think there must be some denial or something going on. Lots of deliberately obtuse thinking and circular reasoning for why this can never ever happen, despite 100,000 Parallels users demonstrating that it works.

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Native-ARM-Sup...

No, I bought a license and Windows activated itself running in Parallels. What is the risk?

Interestingly, the availability of Rosetta for Linux suggests a much cleaner solution for FPGA development. :)

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 iPhone.

[2] Collaborative editing on the Mac version works until you point at a file hosted on an on-premise Sharepoint instance, then it's Windows only.

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 Windows and MacOS.

Who says Apple wants to make it hard? Not prioritizing making it not hard probably is enough to make it hard for those outside of Apple (and “not prioritizing” probably comes about because they don’t see many people running essential software on aarch64 Windows that doesn’t run on Apple hardware, or has equivalent tools on Apple hardware)

The limitation may be on the windows side due to their exclusivity agreements with qualcomm.

They're not making it hard but they are definitely not wanting to expose any details of their implementation of aarch64 to any would-be ARM hardware competitors.

They have about a 3 year lead as I see it on performance/watt.

Why would Apple want to go out of their way to make it easy to run Windows on an M1 device? Maybe they just developed the platform to run the intended target OS, and didn't bother to include features that weren't necessary to meet that goal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com