You Know It’s 2020 When You Can Run Your x86 Apps on Windows for ARM on Mac on ARM

Last week, Apple’s VP of software engineering Craig Federighi mentioned that the ARM version of Windows 10 could run natively on Apple Silicon M1 Macs. Federighi said that it was ‘really up to Microsoft.’

So a developer found a workaround that enabled an M1-Powered Mac to virtualize Windows on ARM. And there’s good news. According to the developer, it runs ‘pretty snappy.’

Licensing Strings Attached

Due to details in the licensing agreement, Microsoft doesn’t allow Apple to use its ARM version of Windows 10 because it’s not preinstalled.

I’m sure Apple and Microsoft will work out the details and we will see Bootcamp come to M1-Powered Macs.

A Shift in The Computer Industry

Honestly, this is really only the beginning of a huge shift of the entire computer industry. Apple has a track record of leading the industry through the perfectly-timed release of innovation.

Eventually, Microsoft will open licensing for Windows on ARM to companies to preinstall on an army o of new ARM-based PCs set to compete with this new generation of ARM-based Macintosh.

The developer that got Windows running on the Apple M1 also mentioned that ‘Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications really well. It’s not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close.’