Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

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The question was a hypothetical. What if the macOS VM was perfect? If it was perfect, would it then not matter if you couldn't just boot into macOS?

I'm pretty sure you would never use a Windows PC just to boot into a macOS VM, even if it was flawless. And there are people who would never boot a Mac, just to boot into a Windows VM, even if it was flawless. And no, it's not flawless. Being able to run a relatively old strategy game is not a great demonstration of the ability generally play any random Windows game. I have a Parallels and VMWware Fusion license (well... Had, anyway), and I'm a long time (20 years) Linux user, I promise that I am not talking out my ass when it comes to knowing all about the compromises of interoperability software.

To be clear, I am not trying to tell you that the interoperability software is useless, or that it doesn't work just fine for you. I'm trying to say that in a world where the marketshare of Windows is around 70%, a lot of people depend on software and workflows that only work on Windows. A lot of people buy PCs specifically to play video games, possibly even as a job (creating videos/streaming/competing in esports teams/developing video games and related software) and they don't want additional input latency, lower performance, and worse compatibility.

Even the imperfections of virtual machines aside, some people just don't like macOS. I don't like macOS or Windows at all. I think they are both irritating to use in a way that I find hard to stomach. That doesn't mean that I don't acknowledge the existence of many people who very much rely on their macOS and Windows systems, the software ecosystems of their respective systems, and the workflows that they execute on those systems.

So basically, aside from the imperfections of a virtual machine, the ability to choose to run Windows as your native operating system is really important for the obvious case where it's the operating system you would prefer to run.

I agree. I would like to be able to use any hardware to it's full potential with any OS, even if the OS is running as a VM inside another OS. That's more difficult to pull off due to needing to then run both OSs at once. So then at least let me install the OS I want directly on the hardware and legally use any other OS in a VM with as much performance as possible.

There is nothing stopping you, technically or legally, from replacing the OS on a Mac. Apple went out of their way to make it possible (compared to devices with Qualcomm chips, for example) and the platform is reasonably compatible with PC.

The point of this whole thing is that practically speaking, it matters to the person deciding to buy a computer as to whether they can feasibly install their OS of choice on it. It stands to reason then, that a downside of buying a Mac computer is that you can not practically run Windows natively on a modern Mac. In practice, it does not matter who's fault this is.

Aside: Really, it's a combination of factors. First, Apple uses a bespoke boot chain, interrupt controller, etc. instead of UEFI and following ARM SystemReady standards like virtually all of the other desktop and server-class ARM machines, and didn't bother with any interoperability. The boot process is absolutely designed just to be able to boot XNU, with tiny escape hatches making it slightly easier to jam another payload into it. On the other hand, just out of pure coincidence, Windows apparently statically links the HAL since Windows 10 version 2004, making it impossible for a straight port to be done anymore. In any case, the Apple Silicon computers are designed to boot macOS, and "went out of their way to make it possible" is an absurd overstatement of what they did. What they did was "do the absolute minimum to make it possible without doing anything to make it strictly impossible." Going out of their way implies they actually made an effort to make it possible, but officially as far as I know Apple has only ever actually acknowledged virtual machines.

I think it would be fair to argue that the reverse is true, too: If you choose to buy a PC, you will be stuck with Windows, or an alternative PC operating system. (Of course, usually a Linux distribution, but sometimes a *BSD, or maybe Illumos. Or hell, perhaps Haiku.) That said, objectively speaking Windows has more marketshare and a larger ecosystem, for better or worse, so the number of people who strictly need and strictly want Windows is going to naturally be higher than the comparative numbers for macOS. This doesn't imply one is better than the other, but it still matters if you're talking about what laptop to buy.

> the platform is reasonably compatible with PC.

Not sure what you mean here. The Apple Silicon platform has basically nothing in common with the x64 PC. I guess it has a PCI express bus, but even that is not attached the same way as any typical x64 PC.

The Apple Silicon platform is actually substantially similar to the iOS platform.

> compared to devices with Qualcomm chips, for example

Also not sure what this is meant to mean, but with the Snapdragon X Elite platform, Qualcomm engineers have been working on upstream Linux support for a while now. In contrast I don't think Apple has contributed or even publicly acknowledged Asahi Linux or any of the Linux porting efforts to Apple Silicon.

I still don't understand why would you buy a Mac if you want to run Windows.

Exactly. You wouldn't.

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