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I wouldn't be so sure, there are a fair number of people who want a machine that will run x86 for various reasons. Windows support/ Linux support. Even consider
by ogre_codes 6y ago
I wouldn't be so sure, there are a fair number of people who want a machine that will run x86 for various reasons. Windows support/ Linux support. Even considering how impressive x86 VMs looked in the demo, lots of people will prefer using intel silicon for guaranteed compatibility.
- nailer 6y agoLinux and Windows have both supported ARM for a while now.
- txcwpalpha 6y agoThe end goal isn't just using Windows for Windows sake, the reason people use Windows on mac hardware is to get access to apps that run on Windows. And most of those apps still run like garbage (if at all) on the ARM versions of Windows.
- ianai 6y agoThey showed Maya (x86 binary) running on their Chip. It has some ability to run intel binaries on Apple silicon through at least two options-emulation and something that sounds like “jit interpretations”-lack of a better word.
- txcwpalpha 6y agoI think that is a slightly different use case, though. That demo was an x86 binary running on ARM MacOS via a translation layer. So if there is a MacOS x86 version of the app you want to run, that might be an option. But I know a lot of people still run Windows because they want the Windows version of an app, either because it isn't available at all on Mac or just because the Windows version runs better (Excel was a classic example of this for a long time, might still be). In that case, I don't know if that same translation layer will have the same performance (if it can run at all outside of MacOS) when running an entirely different OS.
- ianai 6y agoFWIW I remember running PowerPC binaries on Intel macs via Rosetta was pretty painless. They mentioned explicit support for linux/windows emulation so they know it’s an important use case.
- monocasa 6y agoThey did not mention windows emulation, only Linux/docker.
- justincormack 6y agoI don't believe Rosetta will work for linux/windows VMs.
- gwd 6y ago> “jit interpretations”-lack of a better word. I think this is called "transpiling" -- a version of compiling that's mainly translating from another architecture. And it didn't sound from their description like it was JIT -- it sounded like it would do the transpile when you first installed it (or maybe first ran it?) and keep the results.
- monocasa 6y agoTranspiling (as much as I hate that word, because the more you know about compilers, the more meaningless it is), is about source to source translations, not binary translation. And they have a first pass AOT, with a JIT backup from the sounds of it to support JITs like browsers, node, and java.
- gambiting 6y agoLike, a joke version of Windows, yes. As a developer, if my machine can't run Visual Studio then it's not interesting to me at all. I can see it being acceptable to people who work predominantly with tools that have an ARM binary though.
- nailer 6y agoWindows on ARM can run vsCode fine now. Traditional VS is on the way, but you can run x64 Windows apps on ARM.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y agoSource? VS is not even 64-bit yet...
- 6AA4FD 6y agoVisual studio code has an arm build now [0]. I don't know what regular VS is written on but assuming it's .NET framework I assume a build will show up as the framework itself improves on ARM. [0]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases/tag/1.46.1 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases/tag/1.46.1 (basically just MS source minus branding)
- bad_user 6y agoVS is not built on top of dotNET. VS Code was expected to run on anything, being nothing more than Javascript & HTML wrapped via Electron.
- Dork1234 6y agoI known in 2010 the Visual Studio UI was rewritten in WPF/CSharp, I don't know which UI system they are using in 2019. It is documented in the wiki entry and a few blog posts MS made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio
- sudosysgen 6y ago
- mbreese 6y agoBut you still need ARM specific binaries. If your software doesn’t support your specific flavor of ARM, then you’re out of luck. (I recently tried to install Zoom on arm64 Debian and it didn’t go so well... Rstudio wasn’t even close to an option)
- akerro 6y ago...and we need new, more hardware for CI/CD that's just dedicated for Apple OSes. Pretty sure we won't be able to use the 5 unused raspberry pi we have.
- geerlingguy 6y agoI found the same problem when I tried running off Pi OS 64-bit for a day—almost every app that _did_ have a Linux binary available was only able to run under x86_64, not on arm64... More here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-replaced-my-macbook-pro-raspberry-pi-4-8gb-day https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-replaced-my-macbook... Zoom, Bluejeans, Dropbox, pretty much all the popular apps I used where I could find a Linux version for my Dell laptop, I couldn't find a way (though got close at least, with Dropbox) to run them on an ARM64 CPU.
- anthk 6y agoDropbox could run relatively well with qemu user mode.
- the-dude 6y agoFor Dropbox, you could quite trivially get by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
- geerlingguy 6y agoRclone is what I ended up using and it worked decently well.
- ThatPlayer 6y ago
- CameronNemo 6y agoZoom does not release binaries for ARM linux.
- foldr 6y agoNo-one runs Linux on Apple laptops these days; it's completely impractical. On OS X, Zoom will obviously recompile their app for the new architecture.
- nona 6y agoI am – right now even – but I agree it's become impractical. This announcement is the final nail in the coffin I suppose. I hope some company will come out with great quality, well-designed, minimal laptops. That run Linux perfectly.
- foldr 6y agoIf it ran Linux perfectly, it could only do so if the manufacturer maintained its own Linux distribution. Laptop hardware and power management is just too complicated these days for anything else to work well.
- fulafel 6y agoAll the Linux users I know prefer to use Zoom in the browser.
- claudeganon 6y agoUnless the new ARM chips can handle VirtualBox well, I’ll pick up the last intel model. I have to work with old ASP apps in IE VMs side-by-side with stuff on my Mac every day.
- jbverschoor 6y agoIf it uses the virtualization kit, it shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately only veertu, xhive, and part of parallels do so
- tinus_hn 6y agoIE is dead and will be gone before Intel Macs are.
- claudeganon 6y agoI know, that’s why I run it in compatibility mode in a VM. Just because it’s dead, doesn’t mean there aren’t organizations that have built mission critical web apps that only work in IE and those of us who have the burden of dealing with them.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
- 0x0 6y agoNobody cares about windows per se. People want to run legacy win32 x86 and x64 binaries.
- bdcravens 6y agoNot necessarily. I'm working on some hard-core Excel spreadsheets, so the simplest solution was to run Office on Windows 10 in Parallels.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> Linux and Windows have both supported ARM for a while now. Many people who want dual boot Windows/ Macs want them for games and gamers want the sort of performance you don't get with emulation.
- goatinaboat 6y agoWindows have both supported ARM for a while now Windows has always been cross-platform, x86, MIPS, Alpha and PPC back in the day. There was even a SPARC build at one point.
- sigjuice 6y agoDid they say the Linux VMs in the demo were x86? They said "virtualization", which to me, implies ARM Linux.
- monocasa 6y agoYeah, the fact that they didn't show off Windows, but instead Debian of all things, was very telling.
- lostlogin 6y agoAnd strange - Windows already runs on ARM doesn’t it?
- monocasa 6y agoI don't think there's a way to have a licensed Windows ARM copy right now on arbitrary hardware. I thought they only provided OEM versions on certified hardware.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> Yeah, the fact that they didn't show off Windows, but instead Debian of all things, was very telling. I suspect developers running VMs with Linux on them is far more common than developers running Windows VMs. Likely by an order of magnitude. Web developers want Linux VMs, Windows developer have Windows laptops.
- monocasa 6y agoYou'd be surprised. It was the only option for those writing native apps to have a platform that could legally run all of your tooling if you shipped Mac/Windows/Linux.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> It was the only option for those writing native apps to have a platform that could legally run all of your tooling if you shipped Mac/Windows/Linux. Sure, but the number of people writing cross platform apps is a small fraction of the number of web developers out there.
- jayd16 6y ago>how impressive x86 VMs looked You mean that they opened and could run a command line app? I'm not actually sure they implied it was x86.
- RandallBrown 6y agoI guess it's not a VM, but they were running Maya with Rosetta2 weren't they?
- JohnBooty 6y agoI could see the "final Intel Macs" having a value to folks; somewhat similar to the 2015 Macbook Pros which many considered the "last good Macbooks" before Apple fumbled things with the 2016-onward Macs and their gimpy keyboards. In this case, I don't think the first ARM Macs will have undesirable hardware ala the first few years of Touchbar Macs, but there will be some straggler software whose ARM ports will be delayed or will never happen. For those who depend upon that software, the final Intel Macs will be invaluable.
- cestith 6y agoI still have my dual G5 PowerMac. Right now it runs Lubuntu.