Oliver Haslam on November 21, 2020, 8:20 pm

Running Windows On M1 Macs Is ‘Really Up To Microsoft’, Says Craig Federighi

Apple’s switch to the M1 chips that are part of the latest MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini mean that getting Windows to run on them is a bit of an issue.

But according to Apple’s software engineering head Craig Federighi, it’s up to Microsoft as to whether it happens or not.

According to Federighi during an interview with Ars Technica, the ball is in Microsoft’s court because Apple already has the technologies needed for Microsoft to run Windows on ARM. It just needs to do it.

As for Windows running natively on the machine, “that’s really up to Microsoft,” he said. “We have the core technologies for them to do that, to run their ARM version of Windows, which in turn of course supports x86 user mode applications. But that’s a decision Microsoft has to make, to bring to license that technology for users to run on these Macs. But the Macs are certainly very capable of it.”

Apple can already run x86 apps on its new Macs via Rosetta 2 and an app called CrossOver already lets Windows x86 apps run on M1 Macs.

There are solutions available to work around the lack of Windows, but it’s good to know that there doesn’t appear to be a technical limitation to Windows being run natively on a modern M1-powered Mac.