Somehow I missed this at the end of the year - fascinating and cynical at times, like this quote:
"Before Apple put its money down (for the spin-off of the ARM architecture), it wanted to choose a CEO for ARM. Apple hired the same headhunting firm that had found John Sculley, but this time, it had far better results. The man they hired was Robin Saxby."
Part three of ARS excellent history of ARM is now up on the site.
This has been a great series, and restored a little faith in Ars again. Excellent reporting and technically sound (from what little I know).
I had to try. Unfortunately Persona 5 Royal won’t run on Steam->Windows 11 ARM->Parallels->(Rosetta 2?)->MacOS->Apple Silicon (ARM). That Denuvo DRM kicks in shortly after the intro starts and kills the process. Too bad; a Parallels yearly subscription would be far cheaper than Xbox Unlimited streaming.
That aside, the Parallels experience with installing Windows 11 ARM was utterly seamless and easy. Just click a few times and you don’t need to do much but watch it download and configure itself. Until, of course, you get to the Windows install itself which is the same as on any x86 machine.
WOA ran flawlessly and quickly on my M2 Pro Mac mini and I doubt anyone doing Office stuff or similar business oriented things would be disappointed.
Me, I deleted it all since it doesn’t serve my desires. (Crossover Mac is far better nowadays at running Skyrim SE, et al.)
Yes our experience with Parallels while overall an excellent product is not perfect and one of the potential “fails” is that while it does a really good job of “faking out windows” as to the hardware it’s actually running on. almost all of the DRM tools dig really deep in the actual hardware they running on.
And FWIW Apple itself is the undisputed king of preventing IOS (and now MacOS on the m series chips) from running on anything other than Apple’s own hardware. Secure enclave (which has tons of security benefits IMHO) also incredibly effectively locks out any 3rd party hardware.
PS: none of the “hardware authentication” dongles that a lot of niche 3rd party apps use works under Paralells either
BTW: I continue to find it surprising that Qualcomm and/or MS hasn’t pulled the plug on WOA running on anything other than SnapDragon chips. Something they could easily do with the hardware verification infrastructure already built in to Windows.
Right now they seem to be almost quietly encouraging it, like being seemingly OK with Paralells telling its users how to get hold of the “developer version” of WOA.
Given that Qualcomm is the other half, I still expect them to without warning “pull the plug” at some point, which is why we don’t formally recommend it as a solution to customers.
You don’t have to get the developer version nowadays. That is, no developer account shenanigans needed as they were when I tried it a year or so ago (or was it a beta account? Not that it matters). Parallels directly downloads and installs the ISO for you with the click of your mouse. Microsoft and QUALCOMM have to be aware of it and they aren’t doing anything and I suspect they privately had a conversation telling the Parallels folks that they wouldn’t do anything. Otherwise I don’t think Parallels would be so upfront in advertising the running of Windows 11 on their software, especially to business customers, nor would their software itself go out and grab a copy and install it for you. That’s liability territory if they didn’t get an okay.
That’s a very good point Ted, and wouldn’t be surprised if there is a special addendum to the licensing agreement between MS and QC to “pay” QC for these transactions. Thinking of it from their perspective, it is no loss to QC like a rival ARM system in the Windows environment. Now, if they would JUST develop Parallels for iPad Pro!
See how it always comes back to what I want…
Yes I see that right now with my copy of Parallels.
So, I’m not trying to argue per se, but just puzzling over some inconsistencies.
As of Jan 31st 2023 (the last time MS shows the agreement being amended/revised) the requirements of being run on a Qualcomm SnapDragon processor and only being available as part of a licensed system (in other words a Surface Pro 9/x, Galaxy Book 12, etc. ) remain in the agreement and the there is no provision for purchase of a business or consumer license of WOA Windows 11
As of an hour ago, MS support replied to me that Parallels is not supported by MS according to MS own technical support. With the caveat to that being that I’m going through our normal support channel (large business) so it is possible that the consumer licensing has changed very recently and/or Parallels has struck an agreement with MS that provides a license for their customers as part of the purchase price.
This would be the ideal outcome IMHO and I’d love to share that with our customers. But as of this morning I can find nothing on Parallels web site that positively confirms that.
Since it’s Saturday I won’t get an answer until sometime next week, but I did email our contact with Parallels for information and clarification, and I’ll post back when they respond, but if they did I’m surprised they haven’t notified us about it.
So TLDR I have a lot more questions than answers as of this moment. And I would love clarity on this as I have multiple customers (totaling hundreds of potential licenses) that would move immediately if they had some certainty.
Unfortunately, my largest customer (and me as well) remembers the absolute clusterf*** that occurred with the old SoftPC where MS threatened several large customers including mine with litigation. Admittedly that was quite a few years ago and was in the “bad old MS” days, but as @dstrauss can attest to, 99% of companies will go to any lengths they can to knowingly not expose themselves to possible litigation.
So I’ve said my two cents on this and when I know more, I’ll be happy to share.
I’ll be very curious to find out what you learn. It is all on the customer of Parallels to do the activation and pay for Windows 11 ARM. But they’re facilitating it to the max.
Yes and that’s why I’m puzzled and concerned. The SoftPC debacle was an annoyance for corporate customers but they scared the living sh** out of a bunch of small businesses
and PS: we’d love to have a couple of our custom devices on WOA as well.
Too true.
It’s no defense at all in these circumstances, so yes, Parallels could be hammered by both Qc and MS - BUT - no word of Parallels getting a cease and desist letter, which is step one in such cases, and in fact Parallels is acting with impunity…
If Qualcomm had the capability to do this (and wished for it), I think they would have moved at this point.
Right now, I think they are in a holding pattern waiting for the release their new Nuvia-based WOA chips: if they flop, they will likely just renegotiate a licensing agreement with MS and Parallels; if they prove popular, then I think QC will tighten the screws and attempt a monopoly on WOA hardware (as was the original plan, before they f*d up 
).
What I don’t get from all this is that surely Microsoft have left themselves an out here?
They made an exclusivity agreement with Qualcomm because they thought that they were the most likely to offer competitive silicon. But it’s still Microsoft’s OS and Microsoft are the bigger entity. Qualcomm’s hand is… supporting another OS.
My wild speculation is that on paper it’s an exclusivity deal, but both Microsoft and Qualcomm are aware the it could come to an end quickly. But in practice, so long as whoever is offering a WOA device isn’t seen as a threat that it isn’t worth testing the resolve of the agreement.
I’ve heard this theory from several including customers. eg. WOA to date has significantly underperformed both in sales and performance (though we heard the other day that the Pro 9 5G is doing well and has actually sold more already than the Pro X did in it’s entire first year).
As to the forthcoming Nuvia infusion I’m both hopeful and skeptical. Hopeful in that it certainly will bring improved performance and perhaps more importantly fresh thinking to Qualcomm’s processor line.
OTOH, as I’ve said in other threads. I keep reminding myself that with the Apple M series, work allegedly started right after the iPhone 6 ( in other words, almost 10 years before it was actually released) and in my mind just as importantly, is that though Qualcomm now has some of the key engineers responsible, all of Apple’s ARM designs IP are protected to the hilt with patents etc. So obviously to me anyway, they face the task in a big way of reinventing the wheel which is incredibly difficult regardless of your pedigree.
Last but not least, and people even here tend to discount it, but the level of cross integration between chip and OS that Apple has delivered is going to be difficult to near impossible to achieve due to both the inherent open nature of Windows and IMHO the so far “meh” approach to WOA generally by most of Microsoft (eg. there are still MS apps and parts of Office that still not native).
Trust me, I don’t discount it. Where I lose all patience with MS is that “meh” attitude. Even using ALL documented code, no cheating with unknown features, WOA and ALL MS software should run best on their own hardware.
Hehe, when someone says he’s “skeptical, but hopeful,” that really means he’s just skeptical. A hopeful person lays aside the skepticism, to indulge the hope.
In this case, we only need to hope that QC learned from its mistakes. QC doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel—just not overhype, and reach a level of optimization, so that WOA feels solid, snappy and performs at M1 levels of battery efficiency. Drop the price below x86 to make it attractive for businesses to switch, and consumers to try out the new thing.
Basically just a redo of the SPX launch, but done right. Not too much to hope for, right? 
Inadvertently, or accidentally?
Part of me can’t help but feel that may have more to do with rebranding under the Pro 9 banner and people not being fully aware of what they are buying.
Even if you can make do with the emulation layer, the lack of driver support is still a serious issue. At least on the commercial side, you wouldn’t believe how many people were won over by the Pro 9 5G itself, but then royally burned by the driver issues. Its great on its own, not so great when you try to connect it to your companies existing printers and scanners.
I’m curious where what you are seeing as it is at somewhat odds with what we are seeing with our customers and inside our own company, where it has become fairly rare generally, mostly with per 2019 devices especially lower end consumer digital cameras, but has been more or less a non-issue with printers purchased within the last 2-3 years (as an aside the typical printer replacement cycle in our customer base is 3 years)
It absolutely was a fairly significant issue in 2019 when the Pro X was releases but lessened considerably in 2021 onward.
