Developer gets Arm variant Windows 10 running on Apple M1-soc

A German developer has managed to run the Arm version of Windows 10 on the new Apple M1-soc. There is no Bootcamp available for that arm hardware, so the developer used the QEMU virtualizer with a number of custom patches.

According to the developer , Alexander Graf, Windows runs ‘quite smoothly’ on his M1-soc-equipped device. Whether that is a Mac Mini, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is not clear. With its patches, the Arm preview of Windows 10 can be run, but according to Graf everything is ‘not as fast as Rosetta 2’, the dynamic binary translator that macOS itself uses to execute x86 code on an arm CPU. He has put instructions online for anyone who wants to get started. He does warn against instability.

This won’t be the only way to bring Windows to this new generation of Apple devices. According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering , the M1 hardware can run the Arm version of Windows 10 just fine, but Microsoft still has to license it after the arrival of Bootcamp. He stated that earlier this month to Ars Technica . Microsoft has not yet made any statements about this.

In addition to these first steps towards Windows 10 on the Apple M1, it is also possible to run Windows software in macOS using CrossOver version 20 , and the developers behind virtualization software Parallels are also ‘actively’ working on support for the M1 hardware.