That is why I feel that ARM chips on Windows will take a long time to become attractive even with Qualcomm doubling down on making a good SOC to compete with Intel on Windows. But when you start using Windows which is very fragmented, I feel you will lose a lot of performance due to inefficiency/ poor optimisation. The fast SOC aside, the other factor that makes the M1 based systems fast is because of the tight software integration with the hardware. Only time I struggle is when I use it for work running a virtualised Windows system on it and I can't get some of the usual Windows/ Microsoft Office shortcut keys to work on the Mac keyboard. And after giving the MacBook Air M1 a try, I rarely miss my tablet or Windows computer. I've not used a Mac for 15 years now since the last MacBook Pro I purchased. There is no point getting a Mac to run Windows primarily.
I would love to see a full review down the road that caters to hardcore PC users.I feel if you go for a Mac, and I feel you should give it a try, running Windows should be secondary. This enables our users to enjoy the best Windows-on-Mac experience available."ĬerianK said:I have not used a Mac for 30 years, but this announcement, combined with the M1's power/performance, seems to remove a major obstacle that had driven me away from Macs. However, virtual machines are an exception and thus Parallels engineers implemented native virtualization support for the Mac with M1 chip.
"Apple's M1 chip is a significant breakthrough for Mac users," said Nick Dobrovolskiy, Parallels Senior Vice President of Engineering and Support. "The transition has been smooth for most Mac applications, thanks to Rosetta technology. Apple M1's integrated GPU appears to be 60% faster than AMD's Radeon Pro 555X discrete graphics processor in DirectX 11 applications when running Windows using the Parallels Desktop 16.5.
There are some interesting findings about performance of Apple M1 and Parallels Desktop 16.5 for Mac: I don't use Chrome (except for one client who insists on it) but it's noticeable faster than Safari.Right now, Parallels Desktop for Mac 16.5 is good enough to launch it commercially, according to the company. I second the suggestion to use Microsoft Remote Desktop instead of the browser version. I plan on using this VM extensively during the next couple of months to see if it's a real alternative and I can drop Parallels all together. I guess programs that put a heavier burden on the system will slow the VM down, but that's no issue for me (luckily). I plan on getting one of the new MacBook Pro 14' with Apple Silicon when they are released and for me it's reassuring that I don't depend on Parallels (and Windows 10 ARM) to get it working on M1. I have to use Windows for some work software but they are rather light so don't burden the system too much.
It's a bit slower than Parallels on my Mac, and of course it's not as integrated as Parallels is (and since iCloud for Windows isn't that great, I use OneDrive for easy file transfer between VM and Mac, but for me it's workable. I installed a Windows 10 VM on my DS920+ with 20GB RAM using VMM.