I mean, I've definitely met a number of folks who just assumed that running x86 Windows on M1 would work just the same as running it on an Intel Mac. As you no

I mean, I've definitely met a number of folks who just assumed that running x86 Windows on M1 would work just the same as running it on an Intel Mac. As you note, emulation products existed prior to the Intel switch, and they would do in a pinch, but they were VERY slow because emulation != virtualization. Doing anything complex in an emulated environment was PAINFUL. Running Windows in a Parallels or VMWare virtual machine on my Intel Mac works VERY well, but no emulation product will deliver that level of performance. You could of course virtualize ARM Windows on an M1, I suppose, but then you're not in an Intel environment, and the ARM Windows software landscape is thin.