Microsoft makes Windows-on-Arm in VMs on Macs official – with Parallels for starters

Microsoft has started to officially support Windows 11 on Arm running as a virtual machine on Macs powered by Apple's own M1 and M2 CPUs. Windows-on-Arm has been available for download for years, and it's been possible to run it as a VM on Macs: desktop hypervisor vendor Parallels has promoted it since 2021. But Microsoft …

[trevorde]

Real reason Microsoft supports it

Tim Cook needs to run Windows only software which isn't available on macOS

[mark l 2]

"The article also points out that Arm-flavored Windows is inferior in many regards – it might even be called underArm-flavored – as it can't be relied on by developers who need DirectX 12 or OpenGL3.3 or greater, or want to use the Linux and/or Android subsystems for Windows."

Its things like that that put people of adopting Windows on ARM, as these are issues that Microsoft could easily fix since its their own OS we are talking about.

If small SBC manufactures can get Android and multiple Linux distros up and running on their ARM hardware in just a few months, then one of the richest software companies in the world ought to be able to get their own OS having comparable features on ARM as they have on X86. After all its been 5 years since Windows 10 debut on ARM. And things such as Android and Linux subsystems are based on open source software which already natively runs on ARM CPUs.

[trevorde]

There's no business case to fix it for the 5 people who use Windows on ARM

[43300]

The question is whether they want to increase that number above 5 people! If they do, they need to sort out the obvious missing functionality as listed above.

[Dan 55]

M1 doesn't allow nested virtualisation, M2 does but Apple's virtialisation framework needs to catch up. There's not much Parallels or MS can do there to fix that.

M2 nested virtualization

The OpenGL and DirectX problems are a result of Parallels needing to add support for their translation layer to Metal.

[Roland6]

Apple to support macOS in VM on Windows?

I wonder what would happen if Apple were to support macOS in say a Virtualbox or Hyper-V VM...

[druck]

Re: Apple to support macOS in VM on Windows?

They would lose the opportunity to sell the expensive hardware to run it, so wont.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Apple to support macOS in VM on Windows?

It works just fine on VMware, you just have to run a small patch to unlock it.

[MatthewSt]

"Windows 11 runs best on a PC designed for Windows"

Bet it runs Windows better than Windows on the Windows Dev Kit 2023, which I'm assuming was designed for Windows

[Jay 2]

I find some of the contents of this article to be slightly surprising. Mainly as I've been running a licenced (well, nothing complained) Win 11 VM on Parallels on an M1 Max Mac for just under a year now. Mostly runs Win stuff OK (I only really use it to play World Of Warships) and it gets fairly frequent updates.

Still, I suppose, nice that it's now somewhat "official".

[kat_bg]

How is World of Warships running in this scenario?

[Jay 2]

Pretty good considering. Most GFX options set to high at 2560x1440. I'm fairly happy with it as my only other option on the Mac is to run via Nvidia GeForce NOW streaming (which is OK, but can get a bit laggy and pixelated). I've not yet had to rely on the ultimate fallback which is a Steamdeck using a USB C hub to connect to kbd/mouse and TV! Though that too works OK.

Mind you I've tired to play Xcom 2 (Win11/Parallels) and that just continually crashes out after the first tutorial mission.