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How virtualisation came to Apple Silicon Macs
- chmaynard 3y agoScooped again! Either @ingve never sleeps or he/she runs a bot that posts new content to HN 24/7.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- swyx 3y agobased on their 3-5 post a day post history... theres probably some amount of curation in theree
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- loeg 3y ago> Either @ingve never sleeps or he/she runs a bot that posts new content to HN 24/7. Yes. Holy cow: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ingve https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ingve
- daft_pink 3y ago[flagged]
- axoltl 3y agoI'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-using-windows-11-with-mac-computers-with-apple-m1-and-m2-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-usin...
- kjkjadksj 3y agoARM 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.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoThey did say there would be no bootcamp support for Apple Silicon when it was originally announced.
- smith7018 3y agoYou 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.
- abujazar 3y agoI dont't care much for Windows, but I've been virtualizing pre-release arm64 Windows 11 on macOS since 2021.
- smith7018 3y agoBut you haven’t been running it natively which is what we’re talking about
- kjkjadksj 3y agoI 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.
- Tsiklon 3y ago
- stcredzero 3y agoDoes this entail a change to Docker Desktop on MacOS? (For the better?)
- numbsafari 3y agoThat would be up to Docker
- samcat116 3y agoDocker changed to this system long ago AFAIK
- georgelyon 3y agoDocker already uses many of these frameworks on macOS (look in Docker settings to confirm).
- BrianHenryIE 3y agoI thought it would be convenient to virtualize an old MacBook 12" I have onto my M1 MBA so I installed a MacOS VM with Parallels and plugged in my Time Machine backup to restore it to the VM and was surprised to learn: > It is currently not possible to connect any USB device to a macOS Arm VM yet. https://kb.parallels.com/en/128867 https://kb.parallels.com/en/128867
- jballer 3y agoYou may be able to expose it to the client as a SMB network share. But you might also find it easier to back up over a network than to migrate a local backup into the necessary format.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thoughtsimple 3y agoWon’t work anyway. You can’t virtualize an Intel macOS on an Apple silicon VM. Unless you were just looking to transfer your data files. If so you can share a directory that is the external TM disk. (Not sure if you can do that with Parallels but the article author’s Viable works fine.)
- JeffSnazz 3y agoNot even QEMU can manage it? I imagine it's slow of course, but I'm a little surprised that there's simply no solution. Is this a driver issue or something?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 3y agoQEMU can emulate it.
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- shawkinaw 3y agoMeta, but I’m glad to see Eclectic Light getting some love on HN lately, it’s such a great resource for really in-depth articles on macOS internals (and art!)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- transpute 3y agoApple Silicon M2+ has hardware support for nested virtualization, presently unused. It's rumored that iPad Pro M3 will see price hikes of $500-$700 to cover OLED screens and higher base memory/storage [1]. If Magic Keyboard gains an aluminum shell in MacBook style [2], iPad Pro M3 could move upmarket to MacBook Pro pricing. A 12.9" iPad Air could occupy the lower price tier [3]. If iPad Pro M3 can earn same-or-better margins/revenue as MacBook+iPad, with less physical hardware thanks to virtualization, why not save on atoms and shipping? iPad Pro has long been overpowered for the few iOS-approved use cases. Virtualization could unlock that power, freeing customers from carrying multiple devices to run multiple OSes. [1] https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ipad-pro-2024 [2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/3/23857409/ipad-aluminum-magic-keyboard-apple-ipad-pro [3] https://www.imore.com/ipad/ipad-air/129-inch-ipad-air-on-track-for-march-launch-as-display-panel-shipments-begin
- wlesieutre 3y agoThey’ll need something to justify those prices. I bought a 12.9” in 2018 and wouldn’t do it again even at the old price.
- Terretta 3y agoCounterbalancing anecdote: I've purchased every 12.9" iPad Pro model with my own money, and will keep doing so. There's no better mobile daily driver computer value for dollar available today.
- djfergus 3y agoFascinating, please tell us more? My muscle memory is tied to keyboards and multiple windows so I just couldn’t get productive on an iPad and found the 12.9 a bit heavy and awkward for a couch computer. I see where the money went: M2, amazing screen but it’s not my first choice. Curious about your usage. eg how do you use the (janky imho) windowing and multitasking?
- infecto 3y ago
- fulladder 3y agoI want to do hardware development in an x86_64 Linux VM on a Mac. I work with closed source vendor tools that are only available as precompiled x86 binaries (it's FPGA development, everything is closed source). Am I going to run into problems, either with performance of x86 code in a translator like Parallels, or with USB connections to the target hardware from within a virtual machine on M2/M3?
- coconut08 3y agoParallels offers rosetta inside of linux on apple silicon, but rosetta only supports 64bit x86. If you want 32bit you are going need to use another solution. Fex Emu supports x86 32 bit but the performance probably won't be great and it isn't going to be plug and play. Windows for arm has their own version of rosetta which supports both 32 and 64 bit x86 and it works well enough, but i don't know that it will be performant enough for heavy work. if your closed source tools also require closed source drivers then it probably won't work on either.
- jeroenhd 3y agoLast time I read up on the performance characteristics of Windows' ARM translator, it seemed to be pretty close to what Apple manages to do with Rosetta. Some performance is left on the table (all the hardware trickery Apple built in) but amd64-to-aarch64 should work well enough. The big problem with Windows on ARM seems to be that nobody is making fast enough ARM chips for a price that marches the performance expectations. The new Qualcom chips look very promising, though!
- coder-256 3y agoYou may want to consider trying Docker if you only need a shell and not a full window manager. For 32-bit x86 you will need to disable Rosetta and use emulation, which is a performance hit but probably the best and easiest option.
- justinclift 3y agoHopefully you won't need to run KVM or other virtualised things inside that Linux VM, as that won't work.
- edweis 3y agoThe website has a gorgeous design
- pcf 3y agoCan I upgrade an old MacBook Pro 2015 from Mojave to a newer macOS, and then run a virtualized Mojave in order to keep using iTunes, while also being able to use newer browser versions etc.? If so, how would I do this?
- hexagonwin 3y agoSlightly offtopic but for a browser there's Chromium Legacy which is basically Chromium with compatibility patches for older macOS/OS X. Works on 10.8 or higher.
- tambourine_man 3y agoThat’s great to learn, thanks
- vvvvvvvvvvvvv 3y agoWhy do want to continue using iTunes? (also off-topic) I inquire because I would actually like to do the same – newer versions of the Music app are a usability and visual downgrade. Album view, for example, only shows six fixed-dimension covers, no matter how wide your screen is. Clicking on an album takes you to another screen – annoying! I just want to see the tracklist. I have a 2018 Macbook that's still running Mojave because I vastly prefer the UI overall. I pray for a UI refresh/patch every WWDC but Apple doesn't really seem to be taking it seriously. Sonoma is an improvement, but there are still so many inconsistent or unpolished areas of the post-Catalina interface style. The cyan-blue folders are still awful; filename selection highlights in Finder aren't centered; the taskbars have become comically large. Small details, but embarrassing for a company of such design pedigree.
- lukifer 3y agoNot OP, but I'll give my answer. The unification of different media types in iTunes is a feature, not a bug. (I clung to Retroactive as long as I could; I forget what made me cry uncle.) For actual music, Music.app has been okay, bugs notwithstanding. (I don't use Apple Music, only my local library.) But the other apps simply aren't as full-featured as iTunes; they align more with Apple's interests as an appliance maker and content vendor (original iTunes preceded the iTunes Store by several years). TV.app preserves some power-user features, like Smart Playlists, while stripping out basics like "Show In Finder". But the one that really grinds my gears is the way audiobooks have been shoe-horned into Books.app, with any semblance of user sovereignty removed. Example: few years ago, I was planning a road trip, and wanted to quickly filter down a shortlist of audiobooks: "Unread, Genre: Science Fiction, Length < 12 hrs". Not only does the UI offer no affordances for that: it doesn't even display audiobook length, let alone allow sorting by it! I had to dig to find where the files are stored (in `~/Library/Containers`, with gibberish file names), then write a Bash script to `ffprobe` the files and parse the results. When audiobooks were managed by iTunes, this would have been trivial.
- apatheticonion 3y agoUntil Asahi is daily drivable, I am hoping to use Linux via a VM. Only problem is I haven't found a way to run a VM in exclusive fullscreen mode (or have GPU acceleration). Ideally, I could run MacOS in some kind of headless mode and allocate all resources to the VM. Apple please let me use Linux ffs.
- btown 3y agoAsahi has a number of ways for people to contribute both code and financial support! https://asahilinux.org/contribute/ https://asahilinux.org/contribute/ https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://www.youtube.com/@AsahiLina https://www.youtube.com/@AsahiLina
- apatheticonion 3y agoHaha don't want to sound like a freeloader, I definitely contribute!
- Dalewyn 3y agoOne does not simply buy Apple to violate the One Apple Way(tm).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seabrookmx 3y ago> Until Asahi is daily drivable Not going to lie, it seems close!
- prmoustache 3y ago> Only problem is I haven't found a way to run a VM in exclusive fullscreen mode (or have GPU acceleration). Wait what? How is that even possible in 2024?
- thoughtsimple 3y agoYou can download LiViable from the article author's download page https://eclecticlight.co/virtualisation-on-apple-silicon/ https://eclecticlight.co/virtualisation-on-apple-silicon/ You can run in full-screen mode by doing the normal macOS click on the green stoplight button at the top of the window. The current versions of Apple's virtualization libraries para-virtualize the GPU which runs nearly at full native speed. It sounds like you want a type 1 VM. Unfortunately none exist for macOS that I'm aware of.
- pelalmqvist 3y agoDifferent vibes, but this reminds me of https://www.lofiatc.com/ https://www.lofiatc.com/ where you can listen to airport radio tower with some lofi added to it.
- yonatan8070 3y agoI think you might've commented on the wrong post
- SushiHippie 3y agoProbably this one: Tree.fm: Tune in to Forests Around the World | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38961377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38961377
- DeathArrow 3y agoIt rains often, so be sure to get an umbrella.
- airtonix 3y ago[dead]