Why are Apple Silicon VMs so different? | Hacker News Reader

Why are Apple Silicon VMs so different?

eclecticlight.co

308 pointsingve247 comments

Doesn't Windows do it more or less the same?

A lot of Windows features depend on Hyper-V, once enabled Windows is not booted directly any more, Hyper-V is started and the main Windows system runs in a privileged VM.

All other VMs need to utilize the Hyper-V hypervisor, because nested virtualization is not that well supported. So even VMware then is just a front-end for Hyper-V.

You are right that Windows itself runs under Hyper-V as a guest when virtualisation-based security is enabled and it even has paravirtual devices that are not massively different to VirtIO.

I think your statement about VMware Workstation is right as of today too with recent versions, although for a long time older versions would simply refuse to start if it detected that Hyper-V was enabled, presumably because it made assumptions about the host virtualisation support.

It's not just security features that need Hyper-V. Also WSL (Linux on Windows) or the Android Subsystem (run any side loaded app or anything from the Amazon App Store) need Hyper-V. Both of them are super useful for me, more and more things are iOS/Android App based only. Linux should speak for itself.

Only WSLv2 needs (or uses) Hyper-V.

But WSL1 is de-facto dead, although it is still supported.

It still makes more sense than v2 for certain patterns.

I still use WSL1 daily. It makes a lot more sense than WSL2 for me. If I want a VM of Linux, I’ll run a VM of Linux. The exciting thing about WSL from the beginning was the notion of actually running Linux processes in Windows without a VM.

> Hyper-V is started and the main Windows system runs in a privileged VM.

What are the performance implications of that?

Minor performance loss. 5% fps on average. MS recommends turning it off if gaming is your primary use.

Even then it's really not that much of a hit if you have half-decent hardware, I've kept it on and I think the only issue I saw was launch day BG3 and it would use much more power from the wall than when I turned it off.

Make sure to have Intel VT-x or AMD-V enabled too.

There are now a lot of BIOS flags that you can have set to off by default that'll silently hinder performance.

There's no way in hell to run any relatively modern hypervisor without VT-x or AMD-V. There are other, newer additions that do provide a performance boost (or well, a smaller loss) but yeah, VT-x/AMD-V is the basis.

Back when I ran Windows in a KVM VM for gaming, a lot of anti-cheat systems didn't take kindly to running in a virtualized environment.

Turning on HyperV to go KVM->HyperV->Windows effectively 'laundered' my VM signature enough to satisfy the anticheats, though the overall perf hit was ~10-15%.

Very interesting. I wonder what sort of (available) CPU would be ideal for such a setup. A 7800x3D or 7950x. Also, was there any hit on the GPU side?

Yeah I'm very curious as to how this effected 99% framerates and frame pacing.

I suspect only a modest hit to average framerate, but I can only imagine it hurt the actual max frametimes which make it "feel choppy" even if the framerate is still higher then your monitor's refresh rate.

More cache never hurts. I'd imagine there were GPU perf gaps, though they were hard to distinguish from CPU-based performance hits. The most notable issues were random latency spikes caused by the multiple layers of hypervisors, which interfered with some games and occasionally caused audio/video desync on Youtube.

I ultimately tore down that setup and just swapped to dual-boot. The steps needed to set up high-performance VFIO (i.e. clearing enough contiguous RAM for 1GB Hugepages) meant most of the benefits of VFIO never really materialized for me.

Is it possible to use hyper v directly? Like could I boot into linux but switch over to Windows with just a key press? I'm guessing no since its not in Microsoft interest to do so

Not with Hyper-V but the thing to be aware of is there is no difference which you initially “boot into” since each is essentially run at the same level.

You can install ESXi (free) to do what you are asking, though.

ESXi is a completely headless system, except some minimal management UI/CLI there is no possibility to directly interact with the VMs on the host system. At least that's my understanding.

And I think a very similar thing can be archived with Windows Server Core. Running Hyper-V with just a minimal Windows installation for management, without the full Windows UI.

Yeah, but it's configurable. I have it pull up the core on a VGA card and then boot up my primary VM on a GPU.

That's an interesting idea, to run Hyper-V completely without Windows. I think it's not possible, at least not without some substantial amount of hacking.

But it's no problem to run Linux on Hyper-V. It's a hypervisor, off course you can start nearly any operating system as a VM. You can also give the VM access to some hardware components. But I don't think it's possible to get a full native Linux desktop experience, with GPU/Screen, Keyboard and Mouse connected to the host system.

Edit: this post seems to answer your question, not sure if it's correct: https://superuser.com/a/1531799

You can soon run Linux on Hyper-V without Windows: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/17/linux_as_root_partiti...

It’s been a few years now, I wonder how far this project has gotten

> Hyper-V is started and the main Windows system runs in a privileged VM

Wait it's all VMs? Always has been?! That is actual one sentence horror.

Sometimes it's hard to tell how many VMs there are between my code and the actual hardware. It seems to be VMs all the way down.

It hasn't always been, nor is it necessarily now. If you enable Hyper-V, that will act as Hypervisor for your machine and boot Windows by default. Applications that use it (VMWare, for instance, or Microsoft ones like WSL2) will add their own guests to the Hypervisor.

It is not the default configuration. And it wasn't even installed before Windows 8.

Isn't virtualization based security the default for Windows 11? I only have upgraded Win 11 systems, so no idea what's the default on a fresh installation.

My fresh install of Windows 11 definitely didn't have Hyper-V active by default. It had to install it and reboot to activate the WSL2 subsystem.

Now, to be fair, this was an install from a couple major updates back. So newer builds might have it active by default.

It is on some hardware on latest feature updates.

> A lot of Windows features depend on Hyper-V, once enabled Windows is not booted directly any more, Hyper-V is started and the main Windows system runs in a privileged VM.

Got a source for this? Not that I don't believe you but other than for the Xbox I haven't seen/can't find any details about this.

Surprised you didn’t find the information, it’s covered in details in Microsoft own docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-...

quote:

“ In addition, if you have Hyper-V enabled, those latency-sensitive, high-precision applications may also have issues running in the host. This is because with virtualization enabled, the host OS also runs on top of the Hyper-V virtualization layer, just as guest operating systems do. However, unlike guests, the host OS is special in that it has direct access to all the hardware, which means that applications with special hardware requirements can still run without issues in the host OS.”

From https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-...

"Virtualization-Based Security: Enabled by Default"

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/virtualization/virtua...

Does anyone know the state of running Windows / Linux x86-64 virtualization on Apple Silicon? This article is super interesting but dances around the most important application for VMs on Mac.

Very slow using qemu. You can run arm64 Linux and run x86_x64 apps inside using Rosetta, if your virtual machine uses Virtualization.Framework (does not work with qemu, AFAIK). I suppose you can do the same with arm64 Windows and Microsoft x86_64 translation technology, but not really sure.

You can use qemu -accel hvf.

You can use Rosetta to run x86 Linux binaries with good performance under a virtualised ARM Linux [0], but if you want to run fully x86 Windows or Linux you’ll need to emulate, not virtualise. It’s possible, but there’s a big performance hit as you might expect.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

I'm not sure how OrbStack does it, but it can run a fully x64 Linux using Rosetta with quite good performance.

IIRC that runs a x86_64 userland (using Rosetta) on a arm64 kernel.

Interesting. uname -a reports x86_64, and lscpu also reports x86_64, although perhaps that's just the kernel being patched to lie about the architecture.

Not the kernel, but yes: the runtime lies about its architecture.

YMMV, but from my own experiments, on an M1 Macbook Air, it did not work well for me. I was trying to compile an Elixir codebase on x86-64 Alpine Linux. Elixir does not have cross-compiling. I tried it in a Docker container, and in a Linux VM using OrbStack. Both approaches fail, as it just segfaults, even on the first `mix compile` of a blank project.

This problem does not exist in ARM containers or VMs, as the same project compiles perfectly in an ARM Alpine Linux container/VM.

It's definitely not plug-and-play for all scenarios. If anyone knows workarounds, let me know.

That’s an underlying QEMU bug, which is used by Lima [1]. Add `ENV ERL_FLAGS="+JPperf true"` to your Dockerfile and it will build just fine cross platform. The flag just changes some things during build time and won’t affect runtime performance.

[1] https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/1034

Thanks. I can confirm that this works. Compiling a new project no longer segfaults, and `Mix.install()` works in `iex` too.

HN just turned into Stack Overflow. :)

In that case can this whole thread be deleted and replaced by a link to an almost completely unrelated issue that used some of the same English words in the description? Just trying to get the full effect here.

What are you really trying to compile? This seems like an X vs Y problem. You should throw out the whole Internet and try again.

> Elixir does not have cross-compiling.

Elixir compiles to beam files, like Erlang, right?

I was pretty sure beam files are bytecode and not platform specific?

You're right that Elixir source code compiles to BEAM bytecode, however, if you run `mix release`, you need to ensure that the release runs on the same target OS and OpenSSL version. My aim was to build a `mix release` on my M1 Mac to run it on an x86-64 server.

From the docs [0]:

> Once a release is assembled, it can be packaged and deployed to a target, as long as the target runs on the same operating system (OS) distribution and version as the machine running the mix release command.

The `mix release` command outputs a directory containing your compiled Elixir bytecode files, along with the ERTS (Erlang Runtime System). The ERTS it bundles is only for your host machine's architecture. Another point to remember is that some dependencies use native NIFs, which means they need to be cross-compiled too. Hence it's not as easy as replacing the ERTS folder with one for another architecture in most circumstances.

There's a project that aims to alleviate these issues called Burrito [1], but when I tried it, I had mixed success with it, and decided not to use it for my deployment approach. It looks like Burrito has matured since then, so it would be worth taking a look into if you need to cross-compile.

The gist is, while possible, its significantly harder to get an Elixir release running on another architecture than say is the case for Go.

[0] https://hexdocs.pm/mix/1.16.0/Mix.Tasks.Release.html [1] https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito

For anything that doesn't need a UI, you're FAR better off having some remote server than trying to emulate, it's far to slow for ARM64<>x86-64 in both directions..

Many things are just so much easier with a remote server/workstation somewhere than trying to deal with VM shenanigans.

ARM64 visualised on the otherhand (Linux works great, macos seems good(?), haven't tried Windows) with UTM is pretty great.

I absolutely agree! I finally went in that direction. The only reason I was trying this whole ordeal was because I was trying to get some private dependencies included in the build without going through the whole hassle of git submodules. Now I just include those deps as a path include in mix.exs. Not a great solution I know...

I’ve been able to do this (build x86/ubuntu targeted elixir) with UTM on my M1 Mac. It ain’t fast, that’s for sure. But it works. Which is interesting because sibling responses to your Lima experience claim it’s because of a qemu “bug”, but utm runs qemu as well.

The bug is triggered by the JIT - maybe you didn’t have it enabled?

Your mileage may vary, but I've been quite happy running x86-64 software in an ARM build of Windows 11 in UTM.

Nothing graphical or all that intensive though, just some productivity tools I can't live without.

What hardware are you running this on out of curiosity?

M1 Macbook Pro

For Linux, and if you only need to run CLI tools, I've been very happy with Lima [0]. It runs x86-64 and ARM VMs using QEMU, but can also run ARM VMs using vz [1] (Apple virtualization framework[2]) that is very performant. Also, along with the project colima [3] you can easily start Docker/Podman/Kubernetes instances, totally substituting Docker Desktop for me.

For desktop environments (Linux/Windows) I've used UTM [4] with mixed success. Although it's been almost a year since last time I used it, so maybe it runs better now

There's also Parallels, and people say it's a good product, but it's around USD/EUR 100, and I haven't tested it as I don't have that need.

And there's VMWare Fusion but... who likes VMWare? ;)

  [0] - https://lima-vm.io
  [1] - https://lima-vm.io/docs/config/vmtype/#vz
  [2] - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization?language=objc
  [3] - https://lima-vm.io/docs/faq/colima/
  [4] - https://mac.getutm.app/
  [5] - https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

Parallels has a bad desktop user experience using Linux because of poor support for continuous scrolling. Lots of users have complained on their forums for years, but they refuse to do anything about it. I bought it for one year, and regretted the experience. It works well with Windows though.

Generally, the experience with MacOS is mediocre thanks to Apple and their Virtualization Framework, with many basic features missing for years.

Can you elaborate on the continuous scrolling? I've actually never noticed anything off about the scrolling.

This is ironic, considering Parallels was originally an Apple first product designed specifically for virtualizing Windows and running it's apps "seamlessly" alongside native Mac ones.

Why is it ironic? The parent says that it works well with Windows, which you say is the original use case. Linux has nothing to do with this.

Ah, I may have misread it. I thought they were saying Parallels on Windows runs Linux fine.

But, re-reading it again, your interpretation is probably correct.

> who likes VMWare?

I do!

I abandoned Parallels when they crippled the perpetually licensed version. "Pro" is only available via subscription for a few years now. Even before then, their store was disgusting with forced bundling of additional hostile products, and later they became optional but were still added to your cart by default.

A correct solution is to remote into instances on dedicated (bare metal) servers (use ECC memory and SSH with a good cipher for your transport, even across your local or VPN/WireGuard.. network!), perhaps using KVM/QEMU for macOS VMs (yep, requires a MacPro to be legal) and KVM/Firecracker for Linux VMs. You could do Windows VMs in KVM/QEMU, but will have less friction remoting into an alternate (HyperV) box for that (using Windows-specific security products). RDP-over SSH for Windows, MPEG-VNC-over-SSH for macOS (and Wayland).

Why? Did you checkout the Privacy Policy for Parallels? The last time I checked, it allowed them to remotely take anything from your systems that they want. If I wanted that, I would just use a VPS running on someone else's machine in a cage somewhere.

VMware, by the way, is now Broadcom, as in they reportedly replaced the staff and ripped up the perpetual licensing model (subscription only now)... Even before that, the Fusion product development had been shifted overseas, presumably to avoid paying higher wage software engineers in Silicon Valley (what a brilliant way for a software company to innovate) --now a company in Singapore is wearing their skin and the C-suite are out of jobs too.

I regularly use Orbstack to develop for x64 Linux (including kernel development). It works transparently as an x64 linux command line that uses Rosetta under the hood, so performance is reasonably good.

It can also run docker containers, apparently faster than the normal docker client, although I haven't used that feature much so I'm not sure.

I run full AMD64 containers using Docker Desktop, which uses Rosetta under the hood. On my M1 Pro they were a bit slow (maybe 25% slower than my work laptop, which is a 12th gen. i9), but good enough in general. I have since upgraded to an M3 Max and AMD64 VMs seem to be a lot faster, maybe even faster than my 12th gen. i9. I really hope Apple doesn’t get rid of Rosetta support in VMs, ever. It’s just too useful.

I wish there was a good GUI-based solution for Windows emulation via Rosetta. My use case isn’t development - it’s running software with an x64-only proprietary driver! (The Oculus remote link drivers, FWIW.) Fusion and Parallels don’t have that feature, so I’m wondering whether there are technical difficulties/blockers there.

ARM Windows runs well with Parallels. And it can run x86 apps.

Yes, this is the best way to do it if possible in my experience. I use some fairly heavy x86_64 apps in the Arm for Windows in Parallels, using Windows’ translation system (rosetta 2 equivalent), and it’s been quite good.

Trying to emulate the whole x86_64 version of an OS (I tried some Docker images that only came in x86 before finding instructions to rebuild them on the ARM base OS) has been super slow on the other hand. This is on a quite decent M2 Pro.

Some x86 apps refuse to run on ARM, having platform detection built-in to their installer.

If it's an MSI-based installer, it's pretty easy to edit the MSI with Orca to remove the check. This is similar to how you'd get client software installs unblocked on Windows Server. In other cases, there are often ways to trick it, but it's contextual.

My personal experience is that Windows 11 for ARM runs extremely well on Parallels. It includes an emulation layer for x86 apps that's completely invisible and just works. I can even still run Cakewalk, a program originally from the 90s, on my M1 Mac to edit midi files.

With that being said, this is just my view as someone who uses simple consumer oriented programs, and I'm not sure how well it'll work for more serious purposes.

Have you tried any Windows games on Apple Silicon? What kinds of Windows apps do you tend to run? I've used the macOS version of World of Warcraft on my '20 Mac Mini (16GB RAM) and even with utilities that adjust the mouse acceleration curve, I still find game play clunky. I was hoping I could run WoW under a VM and have it be somewhat performant.

Not OP, but I use Parallels on M2 and gaming is a bit hit-or-miss. I'd say maybe 80% of games work flawlessly, and 20% have some sort of issue ranging from the annoying to the unplayable.

For non-gaming, Parallels is extremely solid. I use Visual Studio and various productivity apps and they all work perfectly -- although Parallels is enshittified scumware that pops up ads at every available opportunity, so if that kind of thing bothers you, it's worth considering it before buying.

Ads about what? Upgrading to a more expensive tier or like third party ads?

Upgrades and extras, yeah. No third-party ads.

For gaming, you want to use Crossover or the FOSS Whisky app. Parallels only runs Arm Windows which then emulates x86. This is much much slower than using Wine to translate system calls and Apple's Game Porting Toolkit to handle the Vulkan or DirectX graphics. Crossover and Whisky take care of the internals of those for you. Give those a shot, I think you'll find it much better than a full VM. In my experience some games do run better this way than the MacOS versions, though that's usually because the Mac client wasn't compiled for Apple Silicon and so Rosetta is emulating. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure WOW is already Apple Silicon native, so you probably won't get better performance this way.

Crossover is paid but has better compatibility: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/ (or see https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility for compatible games)

Whisky is free, and will work just as well for games it supports, but has compatibility with fewer games (no official list, so you just have to download it and try yourself): https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky

For the mouse stuff, try a USB mouse if you're not already using one, combined with https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels to disable acceleration and fix the scroll wheel.

That works really well for me to get a Windows-like mouse curve.

TLDR skip the emulation and go for translation layers via Crossover, Whisky, and GPT. It'll be much faster. The mouse thing is separate and has nothing to do with the graphics layer.

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Personally though, I'd just pay $20 a month for Geforce Now. It is much much faster than even the highest end Mac. I don't think WOW is on there, but for supported games, it's a phenomenal experience... sold my 3080 desktop and replaced it with GFN on my Macbook. It's fantastic.

Supported games: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/

What is the bandwidth requirement I wonder. Seems too cheap to be true … must have some other catch. Latency as well?

For GeForce Now? Not much:

From https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/system-reqs/:

- 15 Mbps for 720p @ 60FPS

- 25 Mbps for 1080p

- Up to 35 Mbps for 4k/120 FPS

Input latency is there, yes, but it's not too bad especially if you turn on Nvidia Reflex and use the hardware cursor. Totally unnoticeable in many games. For first-person shooters it's definitely noticeable, but IMO still playable as long as you're not doing it competitively. I play shooters on it from time to time... and put it this way, I would much rather do that (on max graphics) and deal with the minor input lag, than to try to get them running on my Mac, all to get super low graphics with low draw distance, etc.

It's never going to beat a 4090 on your desk, but for $20/mo...? It's an incredible value.

I don't know that there really is a "catch" beyond basic network principles/limitations. Game streaming has been developed for more than a decade now... when OnLive first came out, the technology (home internet and hardware encoding) wasn't quite there. Now 35Mbps is commonplace, Nvidia has hardware encoding in all their cards, AND they control the entire stack of their data center like no one else can. Stadia's failure was IMO a Google management problem more than any technical limitation. GeForce Now is a much much better service, both using your existing Steam library and supporting way more games.

The pricing does seem really good, especially compared to Shadow.tech (where you rent a whole gaming VM with a 3070 Ti for $50/mo, but can run anything you want) or AirGPU (similar service). But the games-as-a-service platforms like Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud Streaming, and PS Plus are all comparably priced ($10-$20/mo). There are other third party services like Boosteroid too. Cloud gaming is a maturing technology that's largely already "there", in my experience (have tried nearly all of them over the last 10+ years).

I think Nvidia is uniquely positioned as the only company in this space who can provide the graphics cards first-party instead of needing to buy them from, well, Nvidia. It's possible that the current pricing is a loss leader, but they've already raised the prices from the Founders pricing they had a few years ago, and it's still not too bad. It's not like Nvidia is hurting for cash anyway. My main fear is not that there's a "catch", but that they'll gradually move out of the gaming segment and focus on AI.

In the meantime, while it lasts, GeForce Now really is wonderfully, uh, game-changing :)

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Edit: PS they have a free tier, and you can even use it in a browser tab, no client download needed. That's enough to give you a taste for free, no commitment. If you decide you like it, the Ultimate plan is very much worth it, and the desktop (or mobile) clients offer slightly better UX than the browser tab and higher resolutions.

Thank you for your detailed reply. :)

I will give USW a try. I hadn't heard of that project before.

Also, I'm happy to have read that MS will be making all ActiBlizz titles available once again on GeForce Now once its acquisition is complete.

When I first got it I tested a few games on my 2022 M1 Max 64GB 16" MBP both natively and in Windows ARM.

The only one that I remember is Crusader Kings II. It has a native MacOS version which I tried and it ran pretty rough. Very, very choppy on the map. I didn't tweak any graphics settings from the defaults and put no effort into making it run better, FWIW.

Next, I ran it via Windows ARM in Parallels. Now that I'm writing this I have no idea what I did to test it. I feel like it just ran but I don't think I did anything specific to make an x86 process run on ARM. Maybe Windows ARM does that for you, I forget.

Anyway, it ran really well. Absolutely much, much better than the native app. It felt completely smooth navigating the map, etc. I did NOT play it in a big game that lasted hundreds of years. I probably did 5 turns, mostly checking to see how smooth scrolling the map and the UI/UX stuff was.

I have a 4090'd gaming desktop so it wasn't a big deal to me to be able to game on the mac which is why I put as much effort into this as you can see. lmao.

It's amazing at everything else!

> I feel like it just ran but I don't think I did anything specific to make an x86 process run on ARM. Maybe Windows ARM does that for you, I forget.

Yeah, Microsoft doesn't get nearly enough credit for this, but Windows for Arm just automagically emulates x86 for you! Kinda like Rosetta, but for Windows.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8...

The article is about virtualization, not emulating x86-64, so I'd disagree it's dancing around that. (Also, Windows and Linux have their own x86 emulations - if you boot virtualized Windows/ARM or Linux/ARM, you can get to the native emulation functionalities)

I do my work on Apple Silicon laptops since the first M1 came out.

I use Docker Desktop that can run for me amd64 images as well.

I do run Splunk in it (which is a very enterprise product, written mostly in C++), I was so shocked to see that I was able to run it on Rosetta pretty much from day 1. Splunk worked on macOS with Rosetta from day 1, but had some issues in Docker running under QEMU, now Docker uses Rosetta for Linux, which allows me to run Splunk for Linux in Docker as well.

I use RedHat CodeReady Containers (local OpenShift), which works great as well.

And I use Parallels to run mostly headless Linux to run Kubernetes. And sometimes Windows just to look at it.

In a first two years of Apple Silicon architecture I definitely had to find some workaround to make things work. Right now I am 100% rely only on Apple Silicon, and deliver my software to large enterprise companies who use it on amd64/arm64 architectures.

I'm a big windows guy, pretty much windows only. Recently bought a macbook. I love windows so much that I set up my shell on the mac to be powershell and use Windows Terminal to SSH into the mac.

I'm REALLY happy with parallel desktop. It runs any productivity or programming app I've needed. It also makes it as if it's running natively on the mac, you can just open up some windows app and it pops up like a mac one. It works amazingly fast, and I can develop both x64, x32, ARM apps in visual studio on my VM. Games don't work because of DRM, but I just use Parsec to stream my desktop if I want to game anyways, so it doesn't affect my workflow. And any game I would actually play while traveling is on the mac natively.

For linux I only emulate Kali, and it works good, I love how the VM's pop up as a "Virtual desktop" so I can side swipe it, but linux vm's don't have the native integration like Windows. Once nested virtualization is enabled, i'll probably stick it in WSL, I personally don't use Linux that much since I think it's shit.

The only downside is some asshole at Apple won't put in nested virtualization for the VM's, even though M2 and M3 have support for it on linux.

If you don't mind me asking, why did you buy a macbook?

It's my first Mac, and I bought it because the actual machine is magical. It's so well built and has so many little things that make it great. I thought it was dumb and overhyped until my girlfriend got a M2. I then looked up the virtualization and played around with it a bit, and bar games, it's the best laptop for running Windows apps. And even then, it runs every game I would play on the road.

I also really liked the memory layout they have. I have been messing around a ton with ML/AI, it's able to do local models faster than chatgpt and get like 70% the accuracy. I have a pretty beastly desktop setup, and it's a joy to use such a solid machine in bed while i'm watching TV.

I was able to get a fully functional Windows 11 install using UTM on my M1 MBP. This really helped with some Windows-only android tools with USB passthrough.

I've not tried Linux.

Note: I am not associated with UTM in any way, just a satisfied user.

[1] https://mac.getutm.app/

I've always wondered what the security posture is of UTM, QEMU, etc. Is an escape trivial or is there thought put into security?

There's at least a bit of work put into security, yes.

Probably ARM Win 11 though right?

I wish every OS user logged in their isolated VM of the OS. This way, Adobe could install all their bloatware and take control of their user and I could keep ownership of my Apple’s computer

Isn't that roughly what Qubes OS provides?

Qubes does allow creating a VM for just about any program or service. But, in my experience, it suffers from latency. So, while fine for web browsing, it wasn't too keen on playing videos. YMMV of course, but Adobe products are already hogs without the emu layer.

I daily drive Qubes and will never go back to a normie system again if I can help it!!

Does it support macOS VMs?

What's sad is that processes are already virtual machines, they just need to have a better permissions system. What's really sad is that for the most part those better permissions systems have been built (namespaces/cgroups on linux, gatekeeper on Mac OS) but nobody figured out how to expose that to end users before the business people figured out that there were trillions of dollars available if you charged rent to centrally manage it.

We were so close. Sigh.

Is this not essentially what docker did with cgroups? It’s incredibly tricky securing containers, I’m not at all confident process only sandboxes would be adequate.

There's a big difference between securing containers, and using them to prevent Adobe from polluting they entire system. Containers are an excellent way to provide lower guarantees of security (though still more than is there currently), with higher usability. Microvms also fit into the model very cleanly and could be used transparently when higher security was required.

The fact that VMs are necessary has shown how much OSes have failed. That we need to take an OS and package it into multiple VMs to get any real isolation is a problem that OSes should solve for.

> The fact that VMs are necessary has shown how much OSes have failed.

The fact that VMs exist at all shows how much OSes have succeeded.

Docker makes it really hard to do anything with cgroups. Unless you mean letting Docker manage everything about them, in which case you can configure nothing.

Systemd did the cgroups thing right. Apart from the v1/v2 thing, but if you can use only v2 then you do not need to think about it.

> I could keep ownership of my Apple’s computer

That's a funny slip...

Pun intended

Essentially shipping an entire OS with every app looks horribly inefficient to me. Especially if the only thing you need is sandboxing.

Containers would be a more appropriate solution, and even containers would be somewhat overkill. Simply using UNIX-style permissions and an application-specific UID could do. I think it is how it is done in Android.

I wanted to use a MacOS VM with Parallels for development. It is very easy to install and runs fast, but it's impossible to sign in with an Apple ID, which severely limits its use.

Severely? I use macOS directly on hardware without an Apple ID as my daily driver.

It works fine.

That’s Apple’s decision. It was intentional.

Apple are very weird about MacOS VMs.

One major point which this article failed to mention, is that macOS only lets you run two VMs at the same time.

So if you were thinking of getting a mac mini to use as a build server, just buy the absolutely cheapest model.

Unlike on Linux systems, you're not allowed to have enough VMs to actually fully utilise the hardware. So buying headroom (resource wise) is a complete waste.

Two macos VMs. It you want dozens of Linux VMs for each distro/release and eg the two most recent macOS releases, you're fine.

Thanks, didn't know that.

Sounds like we could potentially get some Windows ARM64 builds happening as well then. Might be a project for a future weekend. :)

What's the progress, or who's behind a virtio layer for windows? Any hope that this will work in the foreseeable future?

There's mature VirtIO drivers for just about everything already, under the virtio-win umbrella: https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-windows

My desktop PC is using libvirt+qemu (on an Arch host. I use Arch, btw) to PCI passthru my RTX 4090 GPU to a Windows guest. I installed the guest initially with emulated SATA for the main drive. Once Windows was up and running, I installed virtio-win and the guest is now using virtIO accelerated drivers for the network interface + main disk. I'm also sharing some filesystems using virtio-fs.

Did you have to use any hacks to get a regular GTX/RTX card to pass through? Last time I tried this with ESXi, it was insanely difficult and poorly documented to get non-Quadro cards to do pass thru (admittedly on a Windows guest).

NVIDIA changed this in 2021: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5173/~/g...

Thanks; that was after I tried to make things work and gave up.

(oh and to answer the other part of your question: I believe Red Hat contribute a lot to virtio-win)

Thanks. I'm sorry if my question wasn't particularly complex to answer ; - )

Do you mean windows using virtio? Then the answer would be red hat and since many years ago:

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_VirtIO_Drivers

> Running older versions of macOS in a VM enables users to run Intel-only apps long after Rosetta 2 support is dropped from the current macOS

Now if they'd offer that for x86 Windows guests... I mean, games are the obvious thing but I guess the architectural differences between Apple's PowerVR-family GPU and NV/AMD are just too large, but there's a ton of software that only has Windows binaries available and which I still need either an Intel macOS device or an outright Windows device to run.

Yes I know UTM exists but it's unusably slow and the Windows virtio drivers it ships are outright broken.

Even if you could get Windows working, what good would ARM Windows do?

Honestly, running virtualized x86_64 Steam (using something like FEX) under Asahi Linux and using Proton seems like the most fruitful way to play Windows games on Apple Silicon hardware (at least once the GPU drivers mature).

There’s one obscure use case that won’t work, sadly - people who have to use proprietary binary only drivers! I’ve been through hell trying to get Oculus Link to work.

I meant x86 Windows of course. No other way to flash Samsung or Mediatek phones, for example - the tools are all proprietary and only run on Windows.

ARM Windows probably already does better than future Asahi+Proton+FEX in that it includes a Rosetta2/FEX like layer of it's own, is otherwise the native Windows without needing to fake that interface, and e.g. Parallels already has DX11 working through Metal without the need for a future version of Asahi drivers combined with the layer in Proton.

The downside to either approach is anticheats. Games without them can run great today, games with them can't run at all because they are kernel level x86 code and emulating the kernel architecture is too slow for games. It looks like Windows is doing another ARM push with higher end chips and less vendor exclusivity this time around - maybe that'll finally get enough market penetration to make this less of an issue going forward, at which point virtualized ARM Windows could be nearly fully viable.

> > Running older versions of macOS in a VM enables users to run Intel-only apps long after Rosetta 2 support is dropped from the current macOS

> Now if they'd offer that for x86 Windows guests...

Hmm the way i read it they're running older ARM versions of Mac OS in the VMs. Not x86 versions. The virtualization infrastructure doesn't do architecture translation, that is done in software by the OS running inside the VM.

As for x86 games... they run pretty well with x86 crossover emulating x86 windows that is then translated by rosetta 2 to arm... is your head spinning yet?

If the op premises partially is about when Rosette v2 no longer support, at least the older vm arm based macOS can run Apple intel App using the now current then obsolete Rosette v2.

Never thought of that but it happened to power pc App …

Tbh they should keep it as unlike powerpc not much people use, intel based app is all around. Having both intel and arm, only one upcoming platform is missing. But supporting a translator as said implicitly in other post is hard. New intel/amd cpu code may appear, ignoring all those amd and nivdia Gpu code which are mostly not supported anyway.

My great confusion is why docker —-platform linux/amd64 is so much faster (almost native performance) than x86 UTM VMs. Can docker somehow leverage Rosetta?

Docker runs an ARM kernel and uses qemu in user mode on the individual binary level. Anything CPU-bound is emulated, but as soon as you do a system call, you’re back in native land, so I/O bound stuff should run decently.

Ditch Docket.. Orbstack is fast..

It does yes, Apple provides Rosetta for Linux: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

Yes, Docker can leverage Rosetta. I haven't used Docker Desktop in a bit (b/c I end up doing my work in a VM on Azure since I work on Azure), but not too long ago there was an option to enable it in the settings panel, not sure if it's default or not these days.

Any Linux VM can use Rosetta[1] you just need to enable it when booting the vm. This creates a shared directory in the vm that you need to mount and then register Rosetta with binfmt_misc (same way Docker uses qemu).

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

I remember seeing it was out of beta in the release notes of Docker Desktop not too long ago.

> Any Linux VM hosted under Virtualization.framework can use Apple's Rosetta 2 for Linux translation binary via binfmt_misc

FTFY

You don't need the mount, it just exposes the Linux binary stored on macOS, which you can copy over. The binary does check for it being run under virt.fw, although some folks managed to hack that away (IIRC running it on AWS whatever)

Note that UTM also supports rosetta. Boot up an aarch64 image with Rosetta support and then load the mounted binfmt handler. Now you can run x86 binaries on your aarch64 UTM VM. Works flawlessly.

If you use NixOS you can simply enable https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=23.11&show=virtuali...

MacOS on Apple Silicon does not allow whole VM Rosetta.

You must run arm64 MacOS or Linux VMs and those VMs can run x86_64 binaries via Rosetta. Apple documented this.

Running an x86_64 virtual machine on MacOS requires software emulation, which is why it is so slow. Docker sets it up correctly so that the Linux VM it uses is arm64 but the binaries in the containers are x86_64, so that Rosetta can be used on those binaries.

Man is this the case.

I have been trying to figure out how to have a single command to make a Qemu VM on an M2 Apple silicon chip for like a year without much luck.

All I want is to run something like Alpine Linux + Sway WM on Qemu while on macOS or AsahiLinux with one command on cli.

On x86-64 its fairly simple :(

I think this is basically what Colima is doing, if you’re willing to run docker containers to get it

It would be silly to install Colima for this though.

If the argument is that Colima --calls--> Lima --calls--> {a ton of different things including kubernetes and docker and ...} --calls--> a QEMU command somewhere deep in the code, then the only thing that is required here is QEMU. Not kubernetes or any other junk on top that just adds complexity and potential insecurity.

One QEMU command should be all that's required.

Lima (1) is a project that packages Linux distros for MacOS and executes them via qemu in the backend. Maybe you could solve your problem by launching one of their vms and inspecting the command line it generates. You might find an option you were missing.

(1) https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

I'll check this out. There are many different systems out there like UTM and such, but I want the most basic / minimal amount of dependencies, which will work basically anywhere - which is just QEMU. Not UTM, or maybe parallels, sometimes Lima, for Mac and then virtualbox for windows, and QEMU Linux type of nonsense. Just QEMU should suffice everywhere, and it's much more secure that way.

Owh waawh. I see this article mentions drivers written by Rusty Russell, who I encourage everyone to follow on twitter (he is @rusty_twit) for his deep insights into software development.

Do all commercial desktop VMs - VMWare fusion/parallels/UTM/Vimy now use this virtio model?

in theory win arm64 should run roughtly the same for all?

If they are using Virtualization.Framework they are all going to have the same performance. Apple made it very easy to create and use VMs with this framework, so I would expect most tools to use it.

Is it possible to virtualize 32 bit?

Virtualize no, there is no hardware support for 32 bit ARM on Apple Silicon. You can emulate it (32 bit ARM or x86) just fine though. Emulating the whole OS will be relatively slow compared to emulating just a userspace binary.

Apple Silicon M2+ has hardware support for nested virtualization.

It's rumored [1] that 2024 iPad Pro will see price hikes of $500-$700 to cover the OLED screen and increases in base memory/storage. If a new iPad Magic Keyboard gains [2] an aluminum shell that looks like a Macbook, that could put iPad Pro into the price tier of Macbook Pros.

If 2024 iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard costs > Macbook Air + Mac Mini, that may allow Apple to untie iPad Pro M3 nested virt for iOS, macOS and Linux VMs.

[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ipad-pro-2024

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/3/23857409/ipad-aluminum-mag...

I don't understand why they're trying to turn iPads into laptops. Just start from their existing laptops and make them more mobile instead of trying to inflate a phone OS into something that does the job? Is this about control over the apps people can run?

Perhaps they are turning laptops into iPads. The price/performance of Apple Silicon laptops was a descendant of early iPad Pro SoCs, with current iPad Pros on M2. A couple of years ago, MacOS on Apple Silicon gained the ability to run iOS apps, either via the Mac appstore or by copying .ipa files.

In many ways, an iPad with a keyboard is probably the perfect home computer for people who don't really care about computers and just have simple requirements. The apps that people generally expect to find are there and a keyboard just makes it that bit more comfortable to sit and bash out an email or letter.

Yeah not to mention it’s way easier to use than macOS.

Macs used to be so easy to use on Classic Mac OS. Mac OS X really left a lot of people behind on the usability front. It became much more of a power user OS. Then iPads came along and stole that group (of ordinary users) away.

But now it seems they’re adding more and more power user features to iOS, complicating things again (with even less discoverability due to complex gestures). History seems to be repeating itself.

As someone who’s never used MacOS fulltime, what did OS9 do better than X? I’ve found modern MacOS fairly similar to windows in common tasks and interface.

That's the problem. For example modern MacOS has in your face notifications and allows applications in the background to steal focus.

I gather classic Mac OS was done so you can get on with whatever you're doing and nothing bothered you.

This is easily remedied.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-a-focus-on-or-...

No. It should be the default. And I bet it only refers to notifications, not to other applications stealing focus (as in bring themselves to the foreground) from the one you're into because they think they're damn important.

Do Not Disturb by default is a question of taste and use case, they probably brought to the desktop what people seemed to like on mobile devices.

Applications stealing focus is a plague though. Maybe Apple will finally figure out that it's not worth having in their API.

Going somewhat off-topic here but classic Mac OS had very precise human interface guidelines[1] which strongly emphasised repeatable behaviours and recognisable patterns. For that matter, so did earlier versions of Windows[2]. A lot of thought went into visual cues and design elements so that things looked and acted predictably system-wide and they were designed so that it would always be obvious which elements were and weren't interactive.

Both Apple and Microsoft have regressed in this respect. Minimalism and prettiness have taken priority over usability in both modern macOS and modern Windows and they are far more inconsistent and harder to learn to use as a result. Often something that you learn in one place place or app now doesn't work in another.

In Apple's case this has been mostly as a result of their efforts to make macOS and iOS more alike and to share applications/components across the two, which often creates weird-feeling results and awkward app designs. In Microsoft's case this is mostly because they have more UI frameworks than sense and each new one introduces more problems than solutions. Electron-adjacent apps probably don't help matters either, since they also generally break all of the platform rules and implement their own UI controls anyway.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/573097 [2] https://ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Micro...

The Classic Mac OS Finder used a spatial metaphor. When Apple moved to OS X, they copied Windows by switching to a browser metaphor [1]. For many Classic fans this was Apple's biggest mistake. Ever since then people generally go out of their way to avoid using the Finder altogether because it's so unpredictable and opaque.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/

Sure, if you want to breed even more generations of computer illiterates. We should be encouraging people to learn about the computers they use so they can do actually useful stuff with it later in their life. Not just "hey here's an app, now go make me more money by looking at ads"

Someone using their phone or tablet with a keyboard to get things done is far from computer illiterate. For the majority of the population computers are a tool. Knowing deeply how they work is about as important as knowing deeply how their car works.

If all they ever have access to is phones then their world consists solely of software they have been allowed to install by their platform overlords. Even if they had the urge to try and create something themselves, they would be forbidden from doing so.

Just keep consuming those ads and don't think about it.

> their world consists solely of software they have been allowed to install by their platform overlords

The same will be true of most cars within a generation, and is effectively true for most car owners now; they do not really know how to do much with their car beyond drive it, use the infotainment as-is and bring it in for repair when anything seems off.

Yes, everything is being fucked by the drive for profit.

> Someone using their phone or tablet with a keyboard to get things done

... if you don't get a lot of things done.

The main quality of a laptop is the keyboard is solidly attached to the screen. That means you can use it anywhere and you don't need to dedicate a desk like space for the keyboard.

With an iPad you need a stand, space for the keyboard and then you're close to the space taken by a monitor with peripherals and a desktop under the desk. Might as well get a desktop then since it's more powerful.

It may be useful for tasks that only need a keyboard 1% of the time though.

> Someone using their phone or tablet with a keyboard to get things done is far from computer illiterate.

Full literacy involves writing, not just reading. At one point the same held for computer literacy. I would not call someone "literate" if they could only read words they already recognized from viewing forms and their writing ability was limited to filling out those forms using a limited but appropriate vocabulary. I would likewise not consider someone computer literate if they were limited to using software written by others.

For more eloquent words in this vein:

https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles...

Does this apply to cars/appliances/medical equipment/any other tools?

I don’t see anything wrong with people excelling at some tasks, such as CAD/medicine/construction/editing media/law/etc, and not excelling at understanding all the details about how their tools work.

Yes. Cars are turning into pieces of shit that need a subscription because techbros made them too complicated for an average person to understand. Appliances, same story. Techbros are turning goddamn printers into a subscription service.

I guess I will have to disagree. My cars have been lasting longer and longer, and the cost per mile keeps going down.

My appliances have also been working fine for 5+ years. LG inverter motor is dead silent in my fridge, and I get the benefits of having a French door fridge on top and freezer drawer on the bottom. Same for all the other appliances I have too. I don’t expect them to last 20 years, but as long as I get 5 to 10, I’m ok with it considering the price I paid.

My brother printers have been working fine for many years, and at least as of 2021, the MFC printers did not need a subscription.

Maybe things have changed and I haven’t needed to buy anything in the last couple years.

> Maybe things have changed and I haven’t needed to buy anything in the last couple years.

It has. Good luck finding a new printer that doesn't (figuratively) spit in your face repeatedly.

I have this one and it works great. No subscription needed or any funny business.

https://www.brother-usa.com/products/mfcl2710dw

Requires DRMd ink cartridges since a recent firmware upgrade[1] and tries to upsell you to a subscription service

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/11nnkix/brot...

That is sad, and shame on Brother.

How would you make a laptop more mobile? I think they've gone too small and too thin in the past, now settling on larger laptops.

If i didn't need to program on my computer, i'd use an ipad as a single computing device for everything. It's perfect for couch consumption, and with stage manager, an external bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it's more than adequate for anything else you'd expect from a computer: office, photo and video editing and watching, internet browsing, email, etc.

For 95% of all use cases, the ipad already is the best laptop.

ipad touchscreen is good for reading documents and the like. While I've been a bit of a "make Macbooks with touchscreens you cowards" person, iOS (iPad OS but w/e) has a _lot_ of nice affordances that are centered around getting you quickly to your work in a couple of taps, and not futzing about with typing things in.

The thing I always think about: how fast it is to play an MP3 from "device in pocket" state with an MP3 player vs a computer (or my phone!). iOS affordances around that are good.

Having said that... maybe there's a new shell that MacOS could use to get there. They seem to be trying with some changes though I don't really enjoy the changes so far

> The thing I always think about: how fast it is to play an MP3 from "device in pocket" state with an MP3 player vs a computer (or my phone!). iOS affordances around that are good.

This is a very important metric! Jeff Hawkins famously walked around with a piece of wood in his pocket the planned size of the Palm Pilot, and when he wanted to do something (write down a note) he would work through how many key presses it would take on the new device. His limit was three.

When I tried a BlackBerry I was infuriated by how many key presses everything took. What a horrible experience.

> Having said that... maybe there's a new shell that MacOS could use to get there

Like it or not, Apple’s plan for this remains Siri.

I use a combo of desktop computers with giant screens and an iPad. I like this better than having a laptop. I don’t think the traditional multi-window paradigm works well on a very small screen (though I am aware it was invented for tiny screens!). When I’m mobile I prefer to have just one app at a time, or at most Stage Manager.

The biggest problems I run into with iPadOS are not related to the OS, but stripped-down apps, or apps that don’t use the file picker and other iPad features. In a few cases I have to use web apps (which work perfectly) instead of iPad apps, for example with Google Docs, since the iPad apps are more like stripped-down phone apps.

Agree that my biggest gripe with iPadOS is third party apps that don’t take advantage of the platform. Cross-platform apps are the most notorious, usually being stretched out phone apps rather than proper tablet apps.

It’s still a far sight better than the Android tablet situation though, where stretched out phone apps are the norm instead of the exception.

It's rumored [1] that 2024 iPad Pro will see price hikes of $500-$700 to cover the OLED screen and increases in base memory/storage.

I am surprised that such a price hike is necessary. You can buy a new Galaxy Tab S9 with an excellent OLED screen from Amazon for $740.

If 2024 iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard costs as much as Macbook Air + Mac Mini, hopefully that will allow Apple to untie the iPad and allow it to run iOS, macOS and Linux VMs.

Unlikely. Apple is in the business of selling you a MacBook, iPhone and iPad. Even more now update cycles are slowing down. So, it's pretty unlikely that they'd go the route of Samsung DeX (which allows you to use a phone or tablet as a desktop).

(Yes, I know that you can hook up an iPad to an external screen, but it is not really a full desktop experience.)

> I am surprised that such a price hike is necessary.

They are adding a 12.9 inch iPad Air, so they have an opportunity to differentiate iPad Pros from Air to justify the price difference, https://www.imore.com/ipad/ipad-air/129-inch-ipad-air-on-tra...

  The grand plans include a supersized iPad Air for the first time, and it seems like we're on track to see it launch in March 2024. Display analyst Ross Young has confirmed that the display shipments of the 12.9-inch iPad Air began in December.

> you can hook up an iPad to an external screen, but it is not really a full desktop experience.

Stage Manager does inch closer to a desktop experience, with apps in movable windows. Imagine a macOS VM in a large window on external monitor, alongside a small iOS app/VM window. With a cheap USB-C capture card, an external video or camera input can appear in an app window.

> Apple is in the business of selling you a Macbook, iPhone and iPad

If Apple can get same-or-better margins/revenue than Macbook+iPad with an iPad Pro, with less physical hardware thanks to virtualization, why not save on atoms and shipping? The iPad Pro has long been overpowered for the few iOS-approved use cases. Virtualization would finally unlock that power. Avoids carrying multiple devices. Eliminates any dependency on sidecar Raspberry Pi or cloud VM for Linux workloads.

It’s rumored that the OLED panel used in the new iPad revision won’t be a bog standard OLED, but instead a variant that emphasizes longevity and burn-in resistance by stacking two OLED layers atop each other (on top of the usual binning Apple does). That makes the price hike sound more plausible.

> (Yes, I know that you can hook up an iPad to an external screen, but it is not really a full desktop experience.)

I have defaulted to iPad as mobile computer for a while now, instead of carrying a laptop around. It works well enough for most office tasks, with some trickery even for light on-call support. And it’s definitely improving over time. The major pain point for me is currently file management.

Why not just use a MacBook Air or something? It's basically the same price.

I tried switching to iPad and the only thing I keep thinking about was "this is just my Mac, but worse in every single way"

I use the small iPad Pro, even the MacBook Air doesn’t come close in terms of weight and form factor. I did use the tiny MacBook Air, and I’d love a 12” MacBook, but they no longer exist.

On top of that, the combination of iPad, pen and paperlike screen protector is really nice for taking notes. The option to undock from the keyboard and just take the tablet is also nice.

I agree that it’s worse on pretty much every other metric and that it’s an optimization for one specific metric, but it’s workable.

And plugged into a decent screen, it’s pretty ok for most office tasks.

> Why not just use a MacBook Air or something? It's basically the same price.

Not the person you posed the question to, but my reasoning is mostly that my MacBook Air is docked with my desktop peripherals when I'm home, and it's cumbersome to undock/redock it all the time, so I use my iPad if I'm not at my desk. If I need to do something that I can't do on my iPad, then I walk to my desk where I have a proper mouse/keyboard/monitor. I only undock my MacBook every few months when I'm travelling and need a real computer on the go.

Of course it's not necessary, but when apple sees a way to gouge for more money, they do it.

> hopefully that will allow Apple to untie the iPad and allow it to run iOS, macOS and Linux VMs.

Why would they do that ? They want their 30% on everything you install on iOS.

> 30% on everything you install on iOS

That's likely changing soon in EU and Japan.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-d...

> The Japanese government sees this model as solidifying the companies' dominance in the mobile market. The legislation aims to force them to allow third-party app stores and payment systems as long as they are secure and protect user privacy. Japanese companies would be able to run dedicated game stores on iOS devices, as well as use payment systems with lower fees from Japanese fintech companies.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3711375/coming-soon-to...

> You download an app from Apple’s App Store and then use it to access the enterprise app store. There’s still a step where Apple inserts itself — the enterprise app store is itself an app that Apple has vetted and allowed in its own App Store. Most likely Apple will want alternatives to its App Store to work the same way.

likely they want to support using Xcode to develop apps on iPad

That changed years ago.

Most developers now see a 15% hit, only going to 30% once they’ve hit certain thresholds.

While that's somewhat not as horrible for new developers I wonder how far that actually puts Apple's average cut from 30% (in terms of revenue not developer count) or how much it changes the point that it's nowhere near 0%.

I am a person outside of apple ecosystem that has to use iPhone and occasionally iPad for work.

Question : how do you manage your files?

My wife hears a primeval scream from our home office every 3 months when I determine to try to get files off my iPhone (voice memos, photos, downloads, whatever) or God forbid put files on.

Even worse screams when I try to manage files on device such as "delete all photos" (cannot.be.done).

And I degenerate into gurgles when I try to find or manage different files (a downloaded jpeg is "not" a photo and cannot be found via photos app,has been my bitterly learned experience. Because reasons).

I know modern generations are more comfy outside of hierarchical folder / file structure and treat their device like a massive database, which, fine in principle. But after 4 years of iphone usage I still see it as a massive black hole where files go in but don't come out. So I... Cringe with terrified shakes when people talk about iPads for work. How do your organize your files on them? How do you manage and transfer and version control?

Or am I a dinosaur and everybody's files are emephereally in the google or apple cloud and it's just not a problem, things are magically right and where they need to be?

For photos, either Photos app or Lightroom cloud is what I have used. I have a usb-c sd card reader that I use to upload photos onto the iPad. From there they end up on all my devices. The nice thing is this works if I instead upload them onto my MBP or took pictures with my iPhone.

For files, iCloud has worked fine.

Personally, I don't want to think about moving files from one device to another. I want them available on all devices regardless of where they were created/added.

No, people just suffer in silence.

There are famous Youtubers like MKBHD that more or less every year say:

"The new iPad is great, the hardware is awesome, I use the iPad a ton, but I can't use it to replace a laptop because of the lack of file management/window management/...".

I have heard this text in similar forms for at least 3 years.

You can make do, but it is as awkward as you'd expect.

The only winning entity is Apple, that gets people to also buy laptops and to be even more locked into this crippled setup, since as you said, younger generations aren't as aware of the possibilities, anymore.

I don’t think MacOS is a crippled system. Agreed that trying to use an iPad as a primary device is torture. But, compared to Windows, MacOS is comparably accommodating of my needs as a developer.

Is it though? I mean, I do remember the same, but I just booted into Win 11 after buying a GPD Win and it looks nice. Microsoft seems to have resigned itself to the fact that as a developer you should use WSL2.

If you do any kind of docker related development you will inevitably install something similar to WSL2 using docker desktop or whatever. Technically it now supports native containers, but we're not there yet.

WSL2 is also a virtual machine isn't it? It virtualizes x86 linux on x86 windows, kinda seamlessly, but still that's all it is.

Which is exactly what docker desktop on macOS does as well. Unless you're doing iOS or macOS development, contrary to common belief WSL2 is actually integrated better than it's mac counterparts. You can even mount other linux partitions into WSL.

Docker desktop is a piece of crap on macOS. It allocates half your ram for a linux VM and then allocates other linux VMs inside it. If you're doing servers, that's 7+ Gb of ram wasted since your work VMs will at most use hundreds of megabytes.

I sure hope WSL does better :)

I like the MBP hardware. I think once I feel comfortable relying on Asahi it would be nice to run that instead of MacOS.

Docker desktop works fine. You can change the memory settings, you realize?

No i don't realize anything. I had it on just to reproduce a backend and connect to it with my stuff for a while. I just copied whatever the linux (which doesn't have the same problem) backend had and did my work.

Defaults matter. And wasteful defaults denote a certain mindset. Not a good one.

With Docker on MacOS (and Windows), it needs to start a Linux VM so containers can run. This is transparent to the user. With Linux, they run natively, so no VM needed.

VMs require an upfront memory allocation, so this is the reason for the difference. You could also Google "Mac Docker Desktop Memory" and look at the first link.

There is no reason to preallocate 8 Gb though. I've explained how it works myself, but you rushed to justify their decision without reading my full post.

So lower the setting. I don't understand your complaints.

I meant kids aren't even moving to full blown computers and stay on crippled touch platforms like the iPad.

I manage files on my iPad (and iPhone) with Files and iCloud Drive. It’s been around for a while! The problem is that many apps are still stuck in 2015. But for apps that support it, using the Files file picker is no different than using the Mac file picker and Finder. You open files, you save them, they sync. Some apps do default to their own folder in iCloud Drive, but that folder can be accessed by any other app and is also available on the desktop.

Sadly third-party support for Files plugins is not what it should be (Google Drive is so incomplete I don’t know why they even bother). The major cloud services want you using their apps, I guess.

But Secure Shellfish does it perfectly so my Windows media server is available as a “file system” on my iPhone and iPad via SFTP.

Why would you use an iPhone if you don't want to use iCloud? That is the entire point of buying into the Apple ecosystem.

so you have to pay apple an ongoing fee to be able to manage your own files?

does that seem rational?

also such a weird line of thought that buying a single apple product isn't enough to be able to use it properly, and that any criticism of apple is just "us plebs using it wrong and not paying them more money"

You don’t have to pay Apple to manage your files. You can manage them with a traditional file manager if you’d like akin to any other device.

If you want cloud storage, Apple provides free iCloud storage that will keep everything synced across your devices. There is an upper limit to the free tier space, at which you can purchase additional storage or move to a cloud platform of your choice.

Considering how much of a premium you pay for the iPhones, that upper limit is stingy like hell.

And Apple's marketing ain't great either. They push your photos to iCloud by default, which fills the free space instantly, then when you try to turn that off they give you a vague and threatening message that your photos will be lost.

Marketing by threats will make me to at best give money to the competition.

Do you have the text from the message that says all of your photos will be lost? I’ve never seen it.

Yeah right, I'm hallucinating and so is my wife. More likely, you consider this type of sales copy normal and didn't notice it.

I use the Apple one family plan which is 2TB of storage so I’ve likely simply never seen it.

But I do have and pay for Icloud.

And then what? There's a dozen messages here that say "Icloud" and I guess that's the point, people use cloud and done care for details. But I do! I want to offload the files and put them on my NAS and on my backup off site drive and manage and organize them. Icloud is not a step in that direction (maybe it is if you have a Mac laptop but while point here is discussing iphone and iPad as their own devices.).

iCloud.

Dropbox is a close 2nd, but won’t do everything you described (like download folder) - but iCloud will.

pay apple again to be able to manage your own files, lol..

iCloud is free (up to 5GB). That seems fair.

https://www.apple.com/icloud/#:~:text=Is%20there%20a%20free%....

Which mobile platform provides unlimited/better for no cost?

>Which mobile platform provides unlimited/better for no cost?

Could you explain how it is free?

I mean, could it be possible that the actual cost of the 'free' icloud is built into the prices/ cost of the device(s) you originally purchased (so that you can store your stuff in the icloud)?

> Which mobile platform provides unlimited/better for no cost?

For one, Android. I use Syncthing; my phone reports that I've synced 27gb of local state to my PC and laptop without me paying a dime.

Caveat being, you have to use a mobile platform that doesn't prevent third-parties from integrating with the OS. iCloud's quality is almost besides the point when Apple uses their software control to ensure a feature-complete alternative can't exist.

Your phone manufacturer gave you a box with syncthing + storage for free with purchase of your device?

Nextcloud also works on iOS, integrates with the Files app and was always able to sync photos right after I took them.

I spent yesterday recovering some files that had silently reverted to October 2023 versions on - no kidding - December 24th. I only noticed it yesterday morning when I opened a spreadsheet and was absolutely baffled.

This is the second time iCloud has fucked me. As much as I want to use it I no longer trust it.

"Icloud" and... Then what? I pay for Icloud and I still cannot manage files or offload them easily. I have 50k photos by now because I've struggled for years, so any tip that starts with "drag select photos and then..." can bugger off :-))))

I've installed the monster of iTunes on my windows and that shucked remaining life out of me. Then I installed Icloud for Windows or whatever it was called and I oscillated between murdering myself and others. It just doesn't work. At best I was able to slowly drag and select 1000 photos at a time to get crippled small version of the files.

icloud keeps everything synced across my devices seamlessly - M1 Air, iPhone, and iPad.

Why do you need files out? Just buy more iCloud storage. Or how is it supposed to work in iEcoSystem?

I assume you're sarcastic but I already pay for Icloud and it doesn't help me meaningfully manage files or move them out of apple ecosystem :-(

The Files app can connect to various cloud services / local servers by adding locations.

For example, you can add a location for a folder shared via SMB from your Windows based computer.

https://osxdaily.com/2019/11/04/how-connect-smb-share-iphone...

The Files app allows storing files locally, and mounting network shares. You can also seamlessly copy and paste files (via handoff) between macOS and iOS.

I typically just hit Cmd+C on the Mac and long press+Paste on Files on the iPhone. If you are using the iPad with an external mouse or trackpad you can also drag and drop it directly to the Mac.

As for the distinction between random JPEG files and the Photos app, I think that's actually quite good. I don't get my gallery littered with random images, and it also supports non destructive editing, among other features. Moving between the two is also fairly easy, you can use the Share sheet or just drag and drop.

The one thing I would change is that screenshots end up in Photos.app by default, I'd rather have them go to Files.

Thx for your reply!

>> As for the distinction between random JPEG files and the Photos app, I think that's actually quite good.

Please don't take this personally, but that always terrifies me. It's like modern apple owner "sour grapes" fable - "I actually love this random limits tion, it makes my life much easier " and I hear it a lot! If I right click and save photo in some apps or websites it is in photos app, but in random other apps that same file is no longer a photo. How's that good? There are a million ways to "not clutter" that are better. Folder might be one but if that's anathema, then albums or tags. It's a completely random subset of things that end up being photos vs not, seemingly based on location or tags that arr neither visible or accessible to me as a user. I get that this is "good" for some people, I am clearly not in that group though.

Re ease of copying files, does any of that work if you don't have a Mac? Context of conversation here is iPhone / iPad as independent working devices and ability to transfer files without a Mac OS device. I am readily convinced that if I bought whole heartedly into apple ecosystem and only apple,my life would be easier along some axis, but that's not a life I lead - I have the black box of iphone and I cannot for example delete all photos on it in any way that I could find including in the app, in the settings, via apple support or apple store creepily smiling people :-/.

Not taking it personally, :-) I 100% understand why you might also prefer it the other way.

The weird "some apps save it to Photos while others save it to Files" situation is a consequence of Files being a relatively late addition to the iOS ecosystem. A lot of apps are poorly maintained, use some cross platform framework that doesn't support the Files feature well, or the developers are simply unaware of the distinction. It will probably get better over time.

One thing Apple could do in the mean time is to also expose Photos as a folder view inside of Files (they do this on macOS, to some extent, on the file pickers. I've never actually used it)

Re: Transferring it to a PC, the one thing that won't work is the seamless copy and paste via handoff. You can plug in a USB stick into an iPad or iPhone (using an adapter for pre-15 models, or if the USB stick is USB-A) formatted as exFAT and it should just work.

AFAIK, there isn't a single button to delete all photos, probably to avoid people doing it accidentally. You'll need to manually select all photos and hit delete. Or you can also write a small script via the Shortcuts app to delete them for you.

It seems like you want to delete all of the photos on your iPhone.

I have not tested this because I don't want to delete all my photos and I don't have a 2nd set of systems to try this out with, but I think this can be done by creating a "shortcut" to do it. (Shortcuts are like AppleScript for the iOS ecosystem).

To do this, search for the "Shortcuts" app and run it (it usually isn't visible).

- Create a new shortcut - Add the "Find Photos" action - Add the "Delete Photos" action

This should connect the two actions together. You can then run it using the play button.

This will take a very long time to run if you've got a lot of photos and it will ask to confirm using a popup. It might be worth trying to remove items in smaller chunks by using a filter (perhaps based on date or some other criteria).

I hope this helps.

Re: delete all photos, did you know that - if you are viewing a list of photos in an ‘album’ - you can click the Select button at the top right corner of the screen and then drag-select all the files? It’s quite tricky to do - you have to tap to select the first file, then touch and immediately drag to do the second file onwards. Took me years to discover this by accident - it’s the most fiddly/weird/hidden feature in an operating system that has become increasingly full of them.

I thank you for your reply, but are you trying to tell me drag selecting 50k photos is the way to go?

(And if people start screaming "why do you have 50k on your phone??!?", I'll start screaming right back "because I cannot offload or manage or delete them!!!" :-)

> Or am I a dinosaur and everybody's files are emephereally in the google or apple cloud and it's just not a problem, things are magically right and where they need to be?

Yep! Use iCloud and unburden yourself from ever thinking about files again.

I have a shared iCloud folder with my dad with a few .mp4s in it that will consistently cause a hard crash on any iOS device by just…viewing the folder in Files. It crashes so hard that the entire system locks up and you can’t close the app, and holding down the power button doesn’t work to restart. You have to wait for the device to actually overheat and then shut itself off to cool down before you can bring it up again.

I use KDE-Connect. Connects my Linux desktop and any Android or iOS device. It's originally a Linux Application but runs on Windows and MacOS as well.

You can send/receive files, photos, clipboard, notifications etc. On Linux I can also use it to control media and use my phone as mouse or keyboard.

The pairing is painless via QR-Code. You decide what is shared and what isn't. It works directly over your local network. No cloud servers are involved.

$500-$700 rumour sounds like something to get you to click and share their article rather than an honest estimate. Their logic for the two numbers is the panel is estimated to cost $250-$350 (depending on size) and they estimate a 50% profit margin on the iPads so the base model will be 2*$[250,350]=$[500,700] more... which means they must calculate the existing screen to be completely free? They don't mention anything about the base specs increasing in that root article but even if they did that's not clear to be an actual increase in production cost. It's a newer device after all.

I expect a price increase of some sort, it's the safe thing to bet on and anybody else could safely write about that too, but I'm already disappointed how much time I've spent talking about a clickbait future Apple device rumour news article which attempts to create the worst possible number they think they can get away with claiming as realistic.

Could the title of this piece also be "Why are arm VMs so different?" or is this actually specific to Apple's chips? Wouldn't anyone transitioning between two architectures while maintaining compatibility be in the exact same situation?

I'm just curious what's special in this case (if anything).

The post is more about VirtIO than it is about the processor architecture. VirtIO is not ARM-specific.

It’s not Apple Silicon specific either. I don’t understand the title. Maybe it should have been “Apple’s virtualization API and VirtIO driver support on Apple Silucon”

Technically, no. Effectively, sort of. When they transitioned to Apple Silicon they simultaneously transitioned to Virtio.

Indeed, Virtualization.framework already supported virtio in guests before, but that's when they added host drivers. By the way this:

> In the Virtio model, providing such support is the task of the operating system, not the virtualiser.

is wrong. Virtualization.framework is a standard implementation of a virtualiser that is shipped with macOS, and while it includes virtio, it does not have to be part of the OS; the same task can be done by anyone (for example QEMU).

The low-level, OS-dependent part of virtualization support is called Hypervisor.framework and it does not have any knowledge of virtio.

Daily reminders that apple only allows 2 concurrent virtualised instances of macOS to run on their hardware.

Is that a technical or a contractual limitation?

edit: I fucked around and found out:

The number of virtual machines exceeds the limit. The maximum supported number of active virtual machines has been reached.

Use a better hypervisor like ESXi (but I don’t think a different hyoervisor is available for Apple silicon).

Workarounds or not, the MacOS license agreement only allows two concurrent MacOS VMs on a single physical machine.

I’m sure you could patch qemu to use Hypervisor.Framework as a virtualization backend and then you could run more than two, but you’d still be violating their license agreement.

Apple are very weird about MacOS virtual machines.

AI generated nonsense, transition from intel to arm architecture has nothing to do with virtio.

...you actually think a notable Apple-centric blog is AI-generated nonsense?

Am I reading this right?

It does have a lot of confusing or downright wrong content. Saying that it's hallucinations is in some sense a compliment to the author...

The article is literally contentless. It doesn't answer its own question. I don't know if its AI generated or a marketing fluff piece. Virtio is nothing but an interface/protocol and won't magically make your VMs any different -- in fact it was already commonly used in x86 VMs.

Great post. This is a massive change: now we get macOS VMs with full graphics performance and QE/CI.

This was impossible on Intel machines without PCI passthrough of a compatible GPU (on a Hackintosh).

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