For transparency I am a former Apple Employee, but that doesn’t change the fact that an AWS virtualization engineer, got Windows 10 running on a new Apple M1 Macbook Pro, and it was pretty damn snappy! Faster than Microsoft’s Surface Pro, which is also ARM based, like Apple’s M1 chips.
The article published by ZDNet, tells us a little on how it did and shows a tweet from the engineer that got it going. And he was impressed himself. Apple has been focused a great deal on hardware as opposed to software lately, breaking a dependence on Intel for chips. Now that they can make their own silicon chips, and control the quality of them, as well as be able to marry them the OS seamlessly, this gives the end user a real experience in using and performance.
And before you go off on the “Apple Tax”, but name one machine that has come out in the last 5 years that hasn’t broken down after 1 to 2 years of regular to heavy use. Chances are, that list is really small. Meanwhile, Macs have been very rock solid performance wise and extremely reliable over all. With machines lasting 6-10 years in a lot of cases, and only having to be upgraded because of the OS and needing to have certain software up to date for work or projects. You can also yell “Planned Obsolesces” and what have you. But the value you get back, in experience, and longevity, is a bargain!
I’m pretty excited by this because of the possibilities it opens up. Sure you could run Windows on Intel Macs before, but now, with the change in architecture, you’ll be able to do so, and with better performance. That’s a big deal! Plus, the benefits if you’re a Mac user like me, with mobile apps and and devices having the ability to run on both platforms, if the developer does the work needed. There will also no doubt be a GUI difference based on screen size. But we’ll see more of that as it progresses and companies push out the new versions of their applications for M1.
…’nuff said.
The Big 94 - K2RHI - Troy, New York 