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Comment by axoltl | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand the question. You can virtualize Windows on Apple Silicon[0]. Running Windows natively is entirely up to Microsoft, but I believe they've indicated they have no plans for it.

[0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-usin...

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Running windows for arm requires standardized EFI firmware

https://www.arm.com/architecture/system-architectures/system...

Many arm64 devices run windows for arm today, including non Qualcomm devices like ampere devkit, honeycomb lx2 and even raspberry pi. They all have systemready firmware.

Apple's firmware is not standardized, compatible or certified as systemready, which is why it can't boot windows for arm. Apple's choice of firmware is up to Apple right?

Nested virtualization isn't currently supported by Apple but WSL1 is functional.

No hardware support on M1, but it’s available on the rest. No support in the virt/hyper kits yet

ARM builds of Windows already exist, seems to me its up to the Apple bootcamp team to update their drivers. I’d guess no one works in that department anymore considering I have had a pending bootcamp update fail to be signed for several years now for my intel mac.

They did say there would be no bootcamp support for Apple Silicon when it was originally announced.

You might have noticed that you can't exactly purchase an ARM build of Windows, right? That's because Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm for Windows on ARM. Until that's over, there's no way for Apple to legally run Windows on their hardware nor make drivers for the platform. The ball has long been in Microsoft's court.

I dont't care much for Windows, but I've been virtualizing pre-release arm64 Windows 11 on macOS since 2021.

But you haven’t been running it natively which is what we’re talking about

I don’t care much for it either but lazy game devs only know directX it seems. I’m curious about the performance through a virtualization layer though. You think you lose too much performance or do the m series just muscle it through? M3 is over 4Ghz per core now seems plenty beefy.

Microsoft 'authorize' Windows 11 to run on Parallels desktop - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-usin...

That website claims that license keys are platform agnostic.

I feel some distinctions could be made here.

I don't have a horse in any race or even know any of the facts. But it is entirely possible for the keys to be hardware agnostic and for MS to have a deal with Qualcomm restricting getting Windows to run natively on Apple (or other random) hardware.

Edit: such a deal would not stop you or I from developing drivers, but it could stop Microsoft from lifting a finger to support that.

https://github.com/AmpereComputing/Windows-11-On-Ampere

There are rumors that will end later this year - https://stratechery.com/2024/an-interview-with-arm-ceo-rene-... (search for 'exclusive')

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ampere-64-core-arm-worksta...

Linux developers didn’t need Apple to do anything to support Linux. Drivers are nice for trackpad, etc though.

They didn't need anything, but they did get something from Apple. Originally, you could only boot Mach-O images on Apple Silicon, which needed workarounds from the Asahi team, but then Apple added the ability to boot raw images (whatever that means exactly in this context), which Asahi, but notably not Apple itself, is now using.

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