Microsoft’s Developer Conference, Build 2022, is happening this week, and the announcement was something like Apple. In fact, if you hadn’t paid close attention, you might have thought that Microsoft released its own Mac.
It’s called Project Voltaires, and it has a new Windows for Arm developers on a PC that looks a lot like the M1 Mac Mini. It is a square, metal mini desktop PC dressed in Space Gray that looks and feels the same size and shape as Apple’s smallest Mac (although it is made of recycled ocean plastic instead of aluminum). The specs of devkit – which software developers use to take advantage of new features – have not been released, but it does not run an Intel chip. Instead, it runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon system on an arm-based chip.
If it sounds familiar, it’s because: Apple’s own M1 processors are also based on the Arm. Microsoft’s Panos Panay said in a blog post, “Native Arm64 Visual Studio, .NET support, and Project Volterra coming up later this year, we’re releasing new tools to help you take the first step on this journey.”
If it sounds familiar, it’s because: When Apple announced the switch to its own Silicon two years ago, the company released a Developer Transition Kit (DTK), a Mac Mini with an A12Z system on a chip, the same processor. Which was in the 2020 iPad Pro. The developers had to deposit $ 500 in DTK, and then after the M1 Macs hit the market, Apple was forced to repay the DTK to the developers and give them $ 200 credit for buying an M1 Mac.
Microsoft has provided Windows for Arm with version 10 and it is primarily for Microsoft Surface devices. With the release of Windows 11 for Arm a few months ago, Devkit reveals that Microsoft is still behind its Arm products. But it wants to make things better in the rest of 2022.
When Apple releases its M1 Macs, it also ends boot camp support, the ability to boot a Mac into Windows or MacOS. While it is possible to run Windows for Arm on the M1 Mac, it is not officially supported by Microsoft, and there is no indication from the company that it will change its mind.
Details on how to get Microsoft’s devkit যা which will probably only be available to developers and not the general public এবং and a preview of devkit’s tools will come “in the next few weeks.”