You can watch Martin Nobel’s YouTube video to see the process in action. In short, using a beta version of Windows on ARM downloaded from Microsoft, people have used the open-source QEMU emulator to get Windows running on Apple silicon. Now, based on the work by Graf, there’s a new build of the open source ACVM launcher (by Khaos Tian and 3 others) that works with QEMU to run ARM Windows on ARM Macs. He used the QEMU open source machine emulator and an Insider Preview of Windows. But things are clearing up, as 9to5Mac’s Michael Potuck reports:Īlexander Graf was the first to successfully run an ARM Windows virtualization on an M1 Mac. It was unclear if other technical roadblocks might remain that would make this less likely to happen. In theory, a standalone version of Windows 10 for ARM might actually work well inside a virtual machine on an M1 Mac-running at more or less native speeds, just like the Intel version of Windows on Intel Macs. So what happens with the M1? The major virtualization could run the Intel version of Windows in emulation, but anyone who remembers the bad days of Virtual PC on PowerPC will know that running an entire emulated system can be painfully slow.īut Microsoft also makes a version of Windows that runs on ARM processors, currently available only when preinstalled on a “Windows 10 on ARM” PC such as Microsoft’s own Surface Pro X. Even in a virtual machine, apps ran at near-native speeds. One of the great advantages of using Intel processors on the Mac is that Windows is also built for Intel processors. When Apple announced the M1 processor, it highlighted the possibility of virtualizing Linux but remained coy about Windows.

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