So it's not really running on the hardware? Am I missing something silly? How does this fundamentally differ from me RD or VNC'ing into my Windows machine? Other than the long list of limitations they list - which I don't have when RD'ing to my Windows box?
I think they are saying that you can either stream a remote desktop, or run it in a virtualization tool and the license permits this. I don't think this means that Microsoft supports running Windows 11 natively on Mac M1 or M2. Which IMHO would be really nice (I prefer Windows as my OS but right now the Macs have a better hardware).
I can't imagine the battery life is very good in real world compared to the mac. I haven't tested nor have I looked at any benchmarks, so it's entirely possible I'm totally wrong. But I haven't heard people claiming performance similar to the mac.
I'd rather use VMware Workstation/Fusion over Parallels (or UTM). Parallels gets grosser and ickier to me over the years while VMware seems to just remain one solid product.
That depends on whose approval you mean. Apple already blocked the release of Microsoft's xCloud streaming app on iOS.
Hah! Fat chance. It’s frustratingly close to working. But Linux Ubuntu arm has trouble using the M2’s GPU through Fusion, and Windows 11 ARM is … well, let’s just say that arm64 Windows isn’t a priority. Fmod won’t release an fmod lib for it, so the engine straight up has no sound. And I don’t know if I was able to get the graphics to work either.
It’s OpenGL man. This shouldn’t be that hard. But graphics is perpetually trapped in 1999 era developer experience.
For real though, I want to support Linux as a first class citizen. That means someone with Ubuntu should be able to boot and play the game just fine. Theoretically the engine should be good to go right now (anyone feel like running it?) but I don’t have any way in my life to verify that, short of literally buying three different workstations and testing them on each.
These restrictions are completely arbitrary on the part of Microsoft. Source (My M1 Mac): https://freeimage.host/i/H4PgC5F
This announcement doesn't change anything, in practice, but it does suggest that more hardware support may be coming.
To do so would probably require Apple to release some drivers (or hardware specs to Microsoft). It's not a matter of just "porting to ARM64" (which is already done), it's about porting to Apple's Apple Silicon platform.
Windows lacks the drivers to run directly on M1/M2 Macs.
Aside from that I love the machine. Metal construction, great screen, user-swappable RAM and SSD. 2 SSD's. But I always need to use an external mouse with it.
Oh and the battery life is also terrible. I've tried everything to completely disable the dedicated GPU while on battery, but things like Windows Search will use the nvidia graphics and not the Intel. So I get about 3 hours of battery with light usage.
As for WinForms, there are probably newer alternatives like MAUI coming up since .NET core.
MAUI doesn't support Linux through official Microsoft channels, but there are people working on Linux support (I don't know what the state of that is at the moment).
.NET Core has been available on Linux for even longer then .NET 5. To make a long story short, Microsoft released .NET Core in 2016. Microsoft announced that .NET Core would be the future of .NET in 2019 and that .NET Framework (the old, proprietary, Windows-only .NET) would get security fixes and such, but wouldn't get any real updates. With .NET 5, Microsoft dropped the "Core" branding on .NET Core.
It's really easy to run things like .NET web services and such on Linux. You can even compile to a single binary.
Microsoft started retiring WinForms back in 2014. They open sourced it in 2018, but no one has really made adding support for non-Windows platforms a priority, especially since Microsoft put it into maintenance mode nearly a decade ago.
There are cross-platform GUI kits like AvaloniaUI and Uno Platform that some people like in addition to MAUI. Avalonia takes a Skia based approach like Flutter. Uno is a bit of a combination of Skia and some native widgets.
Well, if compiled for the correct target framework, then yes. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/frameworks
Note that .NET nowadays is cross-plattform, that means still you cannot just execute any dll/exe that uses plattform dependent code. This is the same as any other C/C++/Java program, once you program calls into OS library/kernel APIs, it is no longer cross-platform and those APIs have to exist on your target. So no, if you use any Win32 feature using P/Invoke, the tool will not just automagically run on Linux.
In this article we see "Arm custom-made the M1 and M2 chips for Apple." That's false, Apple designed their own chip using the ARM reference designs.
And yesterday(1) on a Venture Beat article about the M2 in Apple's Keynote: "The chip will go into the Mac Studio product, which previously used Intel silicon."
Neither of these quotes are factual. Apple designed the M-series chips, and the Mac Studio has never existed with an intel inside.
(1)https://venturebeat.com/games/apple-unveils-m2-ultra-process...
UTM is also very good, and it has the ability to emulate other architectures. It’s not quite as performant or polished as Parallels though.
When M$ makes the realization that Apple made decades ago, and abandons it's proprietary kernel for a POSIX compliant (linux, BSD, etc) kernel then there will finally be hope for the world...
