This is good new to people I know at work, for me since at work I use Linux it is a non-issue.
People on MACs need to have 1 proprietary application that is only partially works on MACs (& Linux). So that will make the MAC people happy. On Linux I have a Windows VM in case I need to use that feature.
Usually writing Macs as MACs is almost a shibboleth among people who have very strong negative feelings towards the platform for some reason. (MAC’s is the ultimate misspelling)
So it’s interesting to see a person who’s apparently neutral write it that way.
Used in that way, I hate it almost as much as people writing Micro$oft and similar. It just feels so darn childish, it makes me dismiss their opinion altogether.
Still an ARM version. It's a real shame it's impossible to run x86-64 Windows 10 via Bootcamp on M1/M2. I'm suspicious that the compatibility and performance of ARM Windows on Parallels is good enough to use full time. All other laptop hardware I've used is frustratingly crappy compared to MacBooks.
x86 software runs fine on Windows for ARM nowadays. I've been using it on Parallels for the last year and it has been working great (I don't do any high performance stuff on Windows though).
Could that also work for to old-ish software, like a decade old or so, or does this require applications to be optimized or compiled for it? And is this something Parallels is required for or could one test that without buying Parallels?
The Windows x86 -> Windows ARM works with any 32 or 64 bit apps unmodified and is a part of Windows itself. It's basically the Windows version of Rosetta 2. I use it to run an ancient Windows app on my work M1 MacBook.
Parallels comes into play if you want your Windows VM to have GPU acceleration. If you don't care about that you can just use UTM for free to run the Windows ARM VM on your M1/M2 MacBook.
That’s exactly what some people do. And it’s even possible to run older games that way. The x86-on-ARM Windows thingy is no Rosetta, but it’s pretty usable.
The virtualization features are at the hardware level, macOS and Parallels just configure that to run. Really it's just "I'm running a Windows VM and it's translating x86 apps to run on the ARM CPU".
Works great, particularly for 32 bit x86 apps it's a lot faster than running Crossover.
Exactly. ARM Windows has a feature like Rosetta which allows you to run x86 binaries on ARM (32 Bit and 64 Bit). This is mandatory because almost no one makes software for ARM Windows.
Nowadays it‘s pretty good. I was surprised how good it is, because I remembered it from the early Windows 10 days when the performance was atrocious.
Just in case you or someone else didn’t know; “Bootcamp” is a tool that allows anyone to set up dual-boot on their Mac without having to touch the bootloader or hunt for drivers. It’s not an emulation or virtualization solution, which is why it wouldn’t work with x86 Windows.
There's no Bootcamp on M1/M2 hardware as of yet. But the Asahi folks have a standard UEFI implementation, so it would be possible to run ARM64 Windows if drivers for the Apple silicon were available.
The biggest compatibility hurdle was the lack of DirectX 12 support in Parallels. Otherwise the performance and compatibility of ARM based Windows was fantastic, I used my MacBook almost exclusively in the Windows Parallels VM for about 6 months. Microsoft has had their own ARM based devices for a long time so they've built up a great x86 translation layer.
Genuinely wonder what took this long. Was it a new decision around legal/strategy, just a low priority, or something technical that wasn't built by Parallels/Microsoft till now?
I am confused because I have been using Windows 11 through Parallels for probably 6 months. Parallels automatically downloaded the ISO for me and everything.
Microsoft now has to offer support for a niche use case and with host OS and virtualization app no under their control. Probably costs serious money and took a big customer interested in mass deploying the VM to commit to that.
It looks like Parallels has the same restrictions that you'd get from running Win11 ARM inside the UTM hypervisor on M1/M2 Macs (like I currently do): No WSL/WSA and no virtualization based security or sandboxes.
It's not perfect, but if you buy Parallels, it does have automated ARM-based setup of Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Kali. Which makes more sense anyway - then you are running 2 VMs on your host, instead of a VM and a VM inside a VM (because WSL2 is just a lightweight VM).
Does Hyper-V not support nested virtualization? Or maybe macOS doesn't support it. Because M2 chips absolutely have FEAT_NV2 so nested virt should work well; only ARM system around with it. One more win for Asahi Linux, I guess.
At the moment the missing component is nested virtualization support in the macOS Virtualization Framework. Once added there would probably need to be some minor changes in Parallels to take use of it as well.
Yes, macOS is a BSD - UNIX Certification and POSIX compliance is nice, but macOS does not behave the same way as Linux, which famously is not a Unix (it's even in the name), and POSIX compliance doesn't mean much today: even Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 were POSIX compliant with SFU.
From what I gather from people with far more experience than me: if you need a "Linux-compliant" environment you're better-off with WSL2 than macOS.
I'd argue you're better off with macOS + something like Parallels or, if you just need ubuntu, multipass. Introducing Windows to get a Linux-compliant environment is reaching around your back to scratch your elbow.
My use case for WSL is slightly different: I work with developers who run Windows and I'd like to be able to figure out workflows that will work on their systems. A coworker today was having issues with running a Docker container that apparently had something to do with how Docker was interacting with WSL, but I couldn't reproduce on my Linux or Mac systems.
Ah true, some SW is built for specific Linux distros (on one side, it's hard to build an "universal binary" but on the other side, I've seen very ugly software installs)
MacPorts makes your Apple a Unix box in userspace and has most of the apps and frameworks and languages.
WSL2 is just running a Linux in a VM. You can do that with VirtualBox and other hypervisors. You can also spin up a Kubernetes runtime that supports Apple's Hypervisor Framework.
My mac using coworkers constantly complain that the *NIX parts of Mac are ancient and out of date and already use a linux VMs on top of Mac for better bash or whatever.
Which parts in particular? I’ve seen literally hundreds of developers use macOS (including myself) for over a decade either at work/ conferences/meetups and never seen them use a Linux VM apart from something like docker, etc.
But then you have to deal with a VM on top of the host macOS. IMO it's way easier to install brew, install an up to date copy of bash (which is more recent than Ubuntu has), and coreutils, and just use macOS. Having to do gls occasionally (for GNU ls) is minorly annoying, but way less work than a whole freaking VM.
They might be bumping into old versions of utilities up to just before GPLv3.
From GPLv3 onwards, Apple has had to leave installation of newer versions of tools to users, legally, our publish their own proprietary IP, Stallman’s objective some would say.
That’s simply FUD. Apple seemed to be able to use GPLv2 without any consequences, and GPLv3 has all the same properties in that regard. The real reason is likely this:
Anyway, the message is pretty obvious: Apple won’t ship anything that’s licensed under GPL v3 on OS X. Now, why is that?
There are two big changes in GPL v3. The first is that it explicitly prohibits patent lawsuits against people for actually using the GPL-licensed software you ship. The second is that it carefully prevents TiVoization, locking down hardware so that people can’t actually run the software they want.
So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh?
I’m also intrigued to see how far they are prepared to go with this. They already annoyed and inconvenienced a lot of people with the Samba and GCC removal. Having wooed so many developers to the Mac in the last decade, are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them?
From what I hear, Clang development has slowed to a crawl and GCC leads in new standards compliance and features, since major past Clang supporters have stopped contributing to concentrate on their own languages.
But I see that user ‘pjmlp’, who probably has a much more informed opinion than mine, is posting in this thread.
Then your were lied to (or legal was incompetent). GPL has no way to force anyone to publish internal proprietary source code. Any copyright infringer always has the option to stop distributing. If they want to keep distributing something, they have the option to re-implement the missing functionality themselves.
Well I was there for years, and it seems Apple legal should know more about this as a concern than most, and they clearly didn't lie to us about it being a concern for _them_. (Still consistent with your point: it could be their own fear/uncertainty/doubt.)
Perhaps legal decided the fiasco wasn't worth a protracted court battle, and PR digressions, and foisted the option of re-implementing missing modernized functionality on homebrew/macports, on purpose?
Well, I would tend to trust the FSF’s legal opinions about the GPL over that of Apple’s lawyers. Addidionally, Apple didn’t seem to have a problem with GPLv2, and GPLv3 is no more copyleft than v2 was. Finally, the “might be forced to release proprietary code” story is, while FUD, extremely well-known FUD, repeated for decades industry-wide by GPL naysayers, and would be an appropriate choice for a believable story to tell the programmer employees.
If Apple merely wanted to save on work and dump it all on third-party ports, why not remove packages outright or, for a period of time, make them available as official add-ons? Why, in that case, keep ancient versions as part of the OS? Why remove something as widely used as Samba, which as I recall garnered some criticism at the time? It seems likely to me that Apple has some other reason than that to remove all GPL-licensed packages.
I used WSL2 on Windows 10 to compile the WSL2 kernel with additional flags supporting wireguard. So I'm pretty sure compiling works, maybe it was an issue with WSL1?
I concede technically yes it can compile some things but there is such a large catalog of software which fails to compile in WSL2 it’s frustrating. A great example is the many Python modules with c extensions.
Docker has much better IO perf with lot of small files on WSL vs Mac. Currently doing Rails development and had to revert to running local straight up on Mac vs Docker because on Docker it was extremely slow. This of course means more testing on prod like cloud envs so it is really a load of crap.
I've experienced this with IO performance for huge files too. A while back I setup a caching service on a spare older Mac Mini first with Docker for macOS and when it couldn't keep up I installed Windows and it was slightly better but still crap. I threw Ubuntu on it and I was saturating the gigabit connection without breaking a sweat.
I'm also a Rails dev and I do all my dev work on an M1 mac and don't even have Docker installed, though I've heard it has improved a lot recently.
Ok but why on Earth would you run WSL in Windows on macOS when you could just run Linux on macOS or (gasp) use the UNIX layer in macOS for your hackery? Does WSL have some special sauce I'm missing out on? I never found it more compelling than more mature solutions like Cygwin, docker, or a regular VM.
Have you used the later versions of WSL (WSL 2 under Windows 11)? You have seamless bidirectional file system access, GUI applications that mesh with the rest of the desktop, can use Windows Terminal and have other tabs with PowerShell open, no network setup or fiddling required. It's impressively convenient.
I've had a licensed copy of Win11 Arm running in Parallels for months. I just installed the dev version as mentioned in the AT article. At first it wouldn't let me buy a license, but at some point a few months ago it allowed me to buy a license and that has been fine ever since. Runs great. Good that the support has become official now.
I agree MacOS feels dated, some examples: The Windows window manager is far better than the MacOS equivalent, the UI is higher quality, more consistent and more discoverable, and PowerShell is better than zsh.
What I miss most in macOS is the raw graphics performance of Windows, even for day-to-day computing. Probably a combo of available graphics cards, drivers, and how the OS treats graphics performance. Finder is def getting a bit creaky, but I've never hit limitations using it.
I guess it depends on what one is looking for, because to me Windows feels the most dated of any desktop environment mainly due to its poor implementation of virtual desktops.
Even the version of Spaces from OS X 10.5 Leopard (circa 2007) is better, and various *nix DEs had better virtual desktops since the mid-late 90s onward. That makes Windows harder to use for me than lack of snapping on macOS does, particularly with how Windows makes me feel like I need to maximize most windows which drives a greater need for good virtual desktops.
That's a good question, and I cannot really give you a coherent answer tbh. I just find Windows to feel more modern. I suppose a few examples are:
Snap/Windows Management in macOS is a pain.
Using Brew as a package manager isn't exactly a wonderful experience.
The taskbar feels pretty ugly and dated - that little dot, and then having both the top and bottom bar in play just feels outdated.
Even having to use Parallels is a bit of a pain - build a hypervisor into the OS.
I'm the furthest thing from a designer, and I understand that Apple went with a different UI paradigm. It's just starting to feel a bit left behind. It's still my daily driver though.
Well if you find this design outdated, how can you be so easy in reverse with windows 10 where advanced settings often result in un-burying NT era hideous and messy interfaces?
Not being able to snap/tile windows to a screen border or corner without third-party software is just baffling, and the official tiling method only supports two windows side by side in some weird fullscreen mode. Back when Windows introduced this feature I made the jump from a 256MB RAM computer to a brand new laptop with 2 whole CPU cores. It's time Apple caught up to every other desktop OS in this regard.
> is windows better?
In terms of UI yes, provided you don't need a functioning search feature. Windows 10 also finally added support for virtual desktops and scrolling in unfocused windows. Though unfortunately Windows 10 was such an unpleasant experience for me overall that I don't see myself using it in the foreseeable future.
Magnet works fine, if Apple replicated the functionality people would be complaining that they killed off a successful third party app. Can't please everybody.
i think disproportionately more people would enjoy the feature being made native. There's no reason the third party app has to go away, fans could keep using it.
Mac also has free alternatives like Rectangle. It lets me snap windows to screen edges in various sizes with keyboard and mouse, and that's all I need.
> to improve your already good experience.
The whole reason I stopped using Windows 10 is because it was not a good experience, to put it very mildly. But I likely was an untypically bad case, judging from Windows still being on the market.
Rectangle is great. The fact that some apps (mostly Electron based it seems) are terrible at remembering where they were last opened does appear to be a MacOS trait.
Look at PowerToys window manager vs any of the apps on Mac. Night and day difference. This is like table stakes for a modern OS in terms of UX, and even the paid offerings on the Mac side are quite a shadow of PowerToys (which is made by Microsoft itself, and free)
Windows Subsystem for Linux for native linux CLI. I've appreciated Mac being Unix-like, but the small differences end up being quite annoying. Much nicer to use an environment that's close to 1:1 with your servers
Personally I use a Mac for the hardware, and that's about it.
Mac is a Unix. Darwin is a BSD. It has its own PID1, launchctl, instead of systemd.
It's not* a Linux-like (Kernel ABI is different) but if you work with Macports, you can make your userspace a clone of Linux. There's very little that I can't get for Macports that is on Linux (not GUI stuff).
You can get plenty of the equivalent "native linux CLI". Macports for native, lima or minikube to run linux containers. Virtualbox et al for running linux VMs.
I would say at this point in time MacOS is a superior OS for laptops but inferior to both Windows and big Linux distros for desktop. Windowing is awful, multi monitor support is inferior, the OS doesn't even have native support for mouse 4 + 5 buttons, and there's no subpixel text antialiasing which makes fonts look awful on 3rd party monitors. Beyond that, the lack of Nvidea support and OpenGL support makes it a poor platform for desktop 3D modelling and games.
This is a personal anecdote, but I also feel like the quality and robustness of Mac OS has declined compared to the direction of Windows or Linux over the last few OS upgrades.
The ARM builds are precisely what Parallels is using here. The only piece left in doubt is Microsoft will bother to make drivers/use a boot compatibility layer and Apple has already said they aren't going to do it via bootcamp this time.
Does anyone have experience running Visual Studio (not VSCode) in Parallels? I'd like to update my older MacBook Pro with Boot Camp but I'm not leaving Windows Visual Studio for a poor native Mac version.
The Parallels desktop experience is shockingly well-accelerated. I played 1440p video from YouTube in a Microsoft Edge window (not in full-screen though) and didn't notice any appearance of dropped frames. Animations in Windows are smoother than they are on my 8th Gen Core i3 desktop.
As for full-blown Visual Studio, there is an ARM version now with most (but not all) workloads available. YMMV if you rely on those unavailable workloads or if you have x86/x64 DLLs in your project, but this has improved substantially I believe with Windows 11 ARM now supporting 64-bit/x64 translation (whereas Windows 10 ARM only supported 32-bit/x86 officially outside of Insider previews).
This. We use Rider daily on our M1s. I used to be a big fan of Visual Studio, but really loving Rider and it works as great on the Mac as it does Windows (assuming you're not working with legacy NET Framework). The only bugs we ever really run into is around Docker on the M1s, but with the current releases everything is working fine.
Do you know where support for WinUI 3 is with Rider? Been working on a little Windows utility in C#/WinUI, and VS2022 is… meh. It works but it doesn't jive with my brain as well as Xcode or something IntelliJ-based does, probably because my background has zero MS platform dev in it.
I use VS 2019 in Parallels with SSRS/SSIS and .Net Framework projects with little issues. I did have a problem with IIS Express breaking after each Windows update (fixed by uninstalled it and downloading the most recent from Msft) but that seems to have fixed. Now that Rider has an ARM build I use that for my 1 remaining .Net Framework project and it works fine.
Sibling comments here don't square with my experience running VS2022 under Parallels on M1 MacBook Pro. I found it unusably slow for regular work and ended up moving back to a Dell laptop. This was a year back so perhaps things have changed, curious to know if anything has changed.
The original source[1] only says it's authorised through parallels, not how to do it. Will parallels soon take you to microsoft link that requires payment I wonder?
Parallels now automatically downloads Windows 11 and sets it up for you (including skipping Microsoft account), just tried today. However, it is not an activated Windows install, and it will take you to the Store asking you to purchase a Windows 11 Pro license for $199, but you can use it unactivated with the typical non-activated Windows restrictions. According to internet commentators, Windows 11 Pro x86/x64 retail keys are now acceptable whereas they previously were not, so if you have any of those lying around (or a Windows 10, or 8.1, or 7 Pro key as they are often grandfathered-in), they'll do the trick.
Which, if you are buying Windows for this purpose, I'd strongly recommend just buying a retail package. If you buy in the Microsoft Store, it will be tied to your Microsoft Account which isn't really desirable, as retail keys are transferrable between computers [1] whereas OEM keys and MSA-purchased keys aren't.
[1] Many people don't know this - don't buy the OEM version of Windows for $20 cheaper. It will be tied to your unique hardware - but retail keys won't. Upgrade your workstation three years from now? If you have a retail key, you can wipe Windows from your old PC and activate on the new one, completely within the license, with no need to purchase again.
My Windows key is tied to my Microsoft account and it's survived several changes of computers. Interesting that this is not the case for those keys purchased thu the store. TIL.
I mean, the MSA-purchased version is a retail key, but it doesn't give you a unique activation key and seems to use a generic one (at least when doing upgrades), so... trying to move this "retail" copy is really, really hard and inconsistent compared to a version you have a key for.
So, I will admit that it is possible. It's just really hit-or-miss and complicated, which can easily be avoided by just buying a retail package from somewhere with a code inside.
> don't buy the OEM version of Windows for $20 cheaper. It will be tied to your unique hardware
Not only that, but with the OEM version you won't actually have a valid license. Yes, Windows will activate and none will be the wiser, but legally speaking, you still won't have a license.
And at that point you might as well run a KMS emulator for $0.
I am at a weird spot right now, where I have teenagers who want to play games that are on Windows, but am not wanting to do that through emulation like Parallels. But I am also not willing to purchase a Windows machine as my primary machine. So it leaves me not moving to Apple Silicon and just keeping my old Mac despite wanting to upgrade.
Some games work great through Parallels, like Left4Dead 2. Others work via CrossOver. But support is not that broad unfortunately. I hope things improve vastly once Asahi Linux can run Proton - Valve has added Linux support to so many games already (for the Steam Deck).
Yeah the hardware is fantastic but ARM->x86, Windows->Mac (or virtualization), and OpenGL/DirectX/Vulkan -> Metal is just too many translation layers to give a quality or reliable experience unless you cherry pick titles. Not to mention you run into a lot of DRMs that don't work because they assume a x86 Windows kernel to interact with.
Of course if you're alternative is to remain on your current Mac then you could just as well upgrade to the new one anyways and leave the old one dedicated towards Windows based gaming.
Parsec + paperspace would run any windows game the last time I checked. These days, I can say the same for my Linux box, so I haven’t checked recently.
What about a SteamDeck for the Teens? Add a dock and its a full desktop experience with support for dual monitors for around the price of a base level Mac Mini but also portable.
My kids have started in robotics competition. SolidWorks has provided incredible licenses for free. Can’t run SolidWorks on Mac. So I had to buy them a desktop with a discrete NVIDIA GPU, upgraded the RAM, got them a low latency 32” monitor. Found my old Steam account still works…
Have you tried Crossover? It's a fork Wine with good support for lots of windows games. Very good performance on M1 for lots of games, even in benchmarks the m1 performs is comparable to the highest end windows machines.
Why would I do that? This is an honest question. I recently bought a Mac Mini coming from MSFT and I don't miss windows at all. I don't have to fight with it anymore when programming and testing things.
There are plenty of apps or features that remain Windows exclusive. In Microsoft's office suite, things like PowerBI only offer Windows desktop apps. And even within apps like Powerpoint there are features that don't exist in the Mac version (like grids). There are certainly equivalent or better alternatives to both of these examples available on Mac, but if your company uses these products Parallels could be a better alternative to having a second PC.
I haven't really loved Mac OS in a while, so I could see you could want the very nice Mac hardware but a different operating system. I never really did Windows-on-Mac much, besides some very occasional Boot Camp usage, but I did run Linux on a couple different Mac laptops for several years.
I don't think it really makes much sense now though... no particularly good reason not to just get a Dell XPS or something in that ballpark for your Linux or Windows needs and avoid the hassle.
The sheer absurdity of running Linux tools on WSL inside Parallels inside a Mac host might be worth something, too. (Or actually, can you even do that, with two levels of virtualization? I seem to remember this is an issue, maybe specifically on the new ARM chips.)
It’s not for you, it’s a way for Microsoft employees and Windows fanboys finally being officially able to buy good hardware and run Windows on it. I can’t imagine how awful it must be for all those Windows bros to see everyone else work on amazing M2 hardware whilst they are trodding behind on the shit show that the entire Surface brand is.
I have moved all my development to my Mac (C#, Sql Server) except I need Visual Studio for .Net Framework, SSIS and SSRS projects. Visual Studio for Windows ARM recently came out but doesn't work with most extensions, so I still use VS 2019.
My dentist has some proprietary software to administer her practice (I don't think it does everything - maybe keeps X ray images, and some other stuff.) It's Windows only and she runs it in a Windows XP virtual machine of some kind. But all the computers in the office are Macs. She upgraded to the M1 iMacs but the old Windows software doesn't work in there. So she kept an old Intel Mac in a corner somewhere to run the software.
If she could run that in Arm Windows in a window on a Mac I'm sure she would.
Technically you can use any Windows 11 licence key (or even Win 10) to activate Windows 11 Arm in Parallels. Have been using it since last december and so far it has been much better experience than with any Windows PC...
Do you find UTM to be “good enough” or lacking certain features? Tbh I find it quite amusing that Windows license costs less (in the EU) than Parallels for year.
I believe the Verge and others are hopeful for a resurrection of the bootcamp application to support natively running ARM Windows on ARM Mac hardware. Much in the same way as they did when they sold Intel Mac hardware
I'm not relevant as a potential customer, but what I'd really like is Direct X 12 support so I could play various games in Parallels. Unfortunately I can't see that happening in a way that yields a worthwhile user experience any time soon.
I'm not a huge gamer but I feel like I might actually need to buy a Windows PC to play several games at some point. The list is growing. Right now I'd love to play HiFi Rush, but there's no possible way on an M1 Mac at the moment.
Every year Apple talks about their commitment to gaming, and every year macOS gaming gets worse. It was never in great shape, but switching to Metal, dropping 32-bit support, and launching Apple Silicon killed it deader than a doornail. Then there was the whole Epic debacle, and the Xbox/game streaming apps debacle, and the (multiple) Nvidia debacles... The benefits of those choices usually outweigh the loss, but they mean there will never be significant games on Macs again.
I expect killing their relationships with every game company in the world will make their VR headset efforts rather painful.
I'm pretty sure that Apple will bring a major new product like AR/VR to market with a bunch of apps lined up. I doubt the lack of gaming titles is causing them to not bring it to market.
VR/AR is not mobile gaming and its not PC gaming. It's a new method of interaction, especially AR. Gaming will be just one aspect of it.
I suspect a whole new genre. Pokemon Go on steroids.
Not sure what your definition or filters are for low popularity but c# and .net in general purpose and application development are very popular according to various developer surveys. Depending on the survey often in the top five to ten.
I wouldn't say it's poor performing, definitely not rust, c or c++ capable, but you can write performant code through various tools, processes and optimisations, or bind to libs written in other languages e.g. rust, c++ to have them handle with that must be incredibly performant. Unity is a good example .net C# and C++ working together to deliver a performant solution.
Let me reiterate that I meant that it was previously low performing. I've developed in .Net since 2009 but only last few years have brought significant improvements in performance.
I’ve been looking at this out of pure curiosity — it’s surprising that it’s a thing, but maybe it shouldn’t be.
I own a switch (or rather I suppose I should say my kids do) so I don’t need to emulate it, but I do wonder what it would be like to play BotW on a 5k screen. I know it wouldn’t run in 5k, but maybe there are mods or ways to crank up the settings? It would be fun to explore some time.
I enjoyed "Papers, please", FEZ and Pokémon SS (via Retroarch) on iOS/iPadOS. But I wouldn't game any action games on iOS either. The point where I have to use a game pad is where I'd just go to an actual PC or console.
This is kind of a weird take. If you define "gaming" as console/PC gaming, then yeah, of course someone only interested in those won't be interested in mobile games. But that says nothing about people who are interested in mobile games; you're free to define that as not "gaming" if you want, but that doesn't really change the fact that there clearly are people out there who play them, even if you decide that what they're doing is different.
No, I mean gaming as in not a nickel and dime fest. To be clear, I don't mind spending a lot of money on games. What I am saying is that this fundamentally changes the design and core loop of these games. Instead of making it fun, they add all of these mechanics like daily chores, microtransactions, loot boxes, etc... Unfortunately this disaster has been spreading to traditional gaming as well.
Apple is all about user experience, until it comes to gaming. Their gaming ecosystem is trash. It's like going to a Vegas casino without the free food and entertainment.
Apple’s got just the solution for that too: Apple Arcade. No surprise at all if their VR headset comes with a year of Apple Arcade, which will of course have some titles at launch designed for the new hardware.
There was actually a time in Mac gaming in the late '90s through early '00s where most blockbuster strategy games would get ported to Mac OS. And this was when there were way fewer Macs in circulation than there are today. For example Rise of Nations, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires II, Company of Heroes, etc. all had Mac native ports. Today, I'd like to play Age of Empires IV and Company of Heroes 3 but I'll probably need to get a PC for that.
Anecdata: I play a silly amount of World of Tanks on PC (DX11), running the x86 Windows release through parallels on the Mac is significantly more performant than it is to run it on MacOS via the official codeweavers wine wrapper.
This is likely due to only one layer of translation being done in MacOS, as opposed to the two of Wine.
I really hope this leads to performance enhancements with windows clients on parallels
Microsoft probably doesn't care about Windows market share on actual native hardware.
They are moving their business customers onto the cloud. Microsoft Windows 365 is what they want people on. Monthly subscriptions and streamed remote desktop.
They want people using their apps, Office 365 is already available on MacOS.
A lot of the commenters in this thread are either very young, or completely forgot about the "embrace, extend, extinguish" era of Microsoft in the 90s and 00s.
People on MACs need to have 1 proprietary application that is only partially works on MACs (& Linux). So that will make the MAC people happy. On Linux I have a Windows VM in case I need to use that feature.
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