Welcome to Episode 387 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode, Scott and Ben dive into a discussion around Ben's newly purchased Surface Pro 11th Edition - a Copilot Plus PC running on an ARM processor. Ben gives his takes on the state of the hardware and how Windows 11 runs on a native ARM processor. Scott also gives his experience running Windows 11 daily for work on Parallels Desktop on Apple Silicon. Scott's hot take - virtualizing Windows 11 on a Mac is better than running it on native hardware. Listen in as Ben and Scott talk through Windows on ARM, whether a virtual machine might be best for you to try out Windows on ARM, pitfalls of application compatibility, and when you might just want to consider a remote desktop session instead to get your Windows work done from a Mac.
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Show Notes
Meet the Surface Pro 11th Edition
Microsoft announces Copilot Plus PCs with built-in AI hardware
The Ultimate Solution: Windows 11 in a virtual machine + Parallels Desktop + Mac Computers with Apple silicon
Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines are now generally available
Unified inbox in Outlook for Mac
MMR Call Redirection for Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 now available
How emulation works on Arm
Exploring Windows on ARM: The Future of Computing
About the sponsors
Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to episode
387
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast recorded
live on October 21,
2024.
This is a show about Microsoft 365 and
Azure from the perspective of IT pros and
end users, where we discuss a topic or
recent news and how it relates to you.
Today, we depart a bit from the cloud
(00:24):
and talk about devices you may access the
cloud with. Ben recently purchased the Surface Pro
11th edition, a Copilot Plus PC running an
ARM Processor.
Today, he gives his take on it as
well as discussing things like experiences on macOS
and running Windows 11 in a VM. Listen
in as Scott and Ben shared their take.
(00:47):
Oh, Scott.
It's a Monday. So should we start with
we had talked about this. Should we start
with a
knee jerk reaction I made the other day
that I am going back on, but it
was an interesting
experience nonetheless?
Sure. Let's do it. Let's see if we
can get Randy Ben going. Surface
Copilot
(01:07):
or Surface Pro Plus Copilot PC.
I have gotten angry at Teams lately,
speaking of Rancy Ben, because
Teams on my Mac has had some
super
weird
audio issues. And even like today As it
does.
Yeah. I have joined in the browser because
(01:29):
if I am
I will say I have to just leave
my team's audio settings on my desktop client
set the way they are. Because if I
go in and try to change cameras or
change audio devices or anything of the sort,
Teams freezes and crashes and just all around
blows up on me. Super odd because it
happens on both my laptop and my desktop,
(01:49):
both Mac OS.
I have some theories. I have a case
open with Microsoft,
but I have no solutions.
I also have been really irritated
with Office
on macOS lately, and I am not alone
with this. I have talked to others where
essentially
like, I have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, all of
those installed on my desktop. I open them
(02:10):
up, and I don't know how it picks
or chooses which tenant I'm logged into, but
I am never logged into
the tenant I want to be. I'll be,
like, logged into a client tenant.
I'll be logged into a different client tenant.
I
like, I get logged into all these different
tenants, and
Office on Windows
has the ability to go in and switch
(02:31):
accounts. So it's super straightforward and simple. You
go to, like, your info tab or your
accounts tab and say, I want to go
use my Intelligent account. MacOS has no such
thing. The only way I have heard of
to
resolve this is to go, like, log out
of all my Office 365 tenants
in macOS and delete stuff and delete any
(02:53):
safe credentials and, like, it's an ordeal,
and then go sign back into them, but
sign into them in a very specific order
and hope that it sticks.
If it doesn't stick, the only way to
fix it is to go do it all
over again. It's the most deterministic thing in
computer science. Cross your fingers and hope it
sticks.
Yes. But this should not be an issue.
I should especially, my macOS is set up
(03:16):
with the macOS, the SSO for macOS for
Office 365, which is SSOed
with my intelligent tenant.
Why do my Office applications think I should
be using a client tenant instead of my
own? There's Ranti Ben. All this said, I
was like, you know what? I'm mad at
macOS.
I
it's driving me absolutely nuts. You're mad at
(03:36):
Microsoft
Software on macOS.
Yes. I met at Microsoft Software on macOS.
And let's be fair, 90% of my day
is spent in Microsoft software, and
all of my clients and work is primarily
revolves around Microsoft software. I said, hey. There's
this new Surface Pro running Copilot and ARM
Processors,
and I know I can run
(03:58):
Windows on macOS and Parallels.
But
after 13 years, would I be better served
just running Windows natively
on a Surface Pro? And I've always thought
about this. Like, this has always been at
the back of my head. I like the
writing experience
on Surface Pros. I like having the whole
OneNote pen and not if I wanna write,
(04:18):
having to pull up my iPad
or
if I'm in the meeting and I wanna
handwrite, bringing it, like, mirroring my iPad over,
getting my iPad input. There's ways I could
do it. Like, you know what? Maybe I
could do a Surface Pro, so I bought
one. I bought one of the Surface Pro.
I think they're 11s. They're the whole Copilot
plus Surface Pro ones. And I was like,
(04:39):
you know what? If I like it, I
want to
really
I want it to have
the horsepower that I would need. So I
bought the 64
gigs of RAM, the top of the line
ARM Processor, the snap dry is it Snapdragon
11? Yeah. Whatever the highest processor I could
get of the Snapdragon ARM Processors,
(05:01):
It's not cheap. Like, it still ended up
just shy of $3,
and I used that for a week exclusively.
I was like, I'm like, I unplugged all
my external monitors. I plugged everything into the
Copilot or the Surface Pro. I use the
Surface Pro instead of my MacBook Pro.
I have enough horsepower here. I'm just going
(05:23):
to use this for a week in my
day to day workflow and
see if I can do this, if this
is something I want
to switch to, or if it's going to
drive me crazy. And I will 100% admit
it was a little bit of emotional decision
because I was so irritated with the Microsoft
(05:44):
apps on macOS. It's not a bad idea.
So I I've been telling you for a
long time that
your experience,
I and I I still believe this,
would be better on Windows given kinda the
cohort of customers you work with and your
day to day work. So I get that
Yep. There's cross platform apps.
So in your world,
writing like a PowerShell script for a customer
(06:06):
for migration.
Can you do that on your Mac? Absolutely.
But from an Office client perspective for things
like Teams
and Outlook,
like the Monarch client, right, which isn't even
available on Mac yet, but is pushed pretty
heavily on Windows. Yeah. Even things like the
OneDrive client, like, just
(06:26):
availability of APIs for file system sync and
things like that are different on the Windows
side, so your experience can be a little
bit better. So what I do is I
like to have my cake and eat it
too, where
my day is spent in Windows. Right? I'd
I'd work in Azure, and I'm primarily there
all the time.
(06:47):
That being said,
I do everything in a virtual machine. So
we're on Macs.
There is an official
provider
for or there's there there's Parallels as a
company, so they make a product called Parallels
dot desktop. It's like, VMware
Fusion or things like that. It's a local
(07:08):
virtualization
engine,
but it is the official engine for being
able to run Windows 11 for ARM
on Apple Silicon.
So you can get the best of both
worlds where you run your Mac and then
you run your Windows stuff in Windows.
Of course, all predicated and gated on the
(07:29):
available
resources
on your machine.
So what's my CPU? What's my RAM? Things
like that. So, like, I do most of
my day to day on
what is, like, a laptop. I just don't
can't see the end of the road for
I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro, and not
even the fanciest processor,
and I've got 32 gigs of RAM. And
(07:49):
I go through most of my day, like,
allocating 20 gigs of RAM to a virtual
machine, and I do everything in that sucker,
all my Power BI reports. That's where my
work email is. That's where Teams is for
work, all those things. And it does camera
pass through, USB pass through, all those kinds
of things I need. And then I'm good,
and then I don't need that separate device
(08:10):
necessarily.
But what's really funny to me is I've
gone out and demoed some of the Copilot
Plus PCs. So there's the Surface ones.
There's also
some from
I I think Dell's got some. HP's got
some.
Samsung has some.
But the experience in power parallels as a
(08:30):
virtual machine, at least, like, my anecdotal experience,
is it almost runs better in a VM
than it does on a desktop, and there's
no or laptop, like, a dedicated,
hey, thing that's out there. So
that that tends to be what I just
keep coming back to. It's just I'll keep
running Windows as a virtual thing.
(08:51):
I'm not gonna worry about it too much.
And then where I can,
I'm starting to go more and more into
the, like, AVD
DevBox world side of things, where, hey, if
I need a beefier machine than this that's
going to run a pure x86 workload, well,
let me just go spin that up in
a virtual machine someplace
in the cloud where I've got a bunch
of providers and, a bunch of different CPU
(09:14):
types and things like that, and I can
go ahead and test that. And I can
even do that in the cloud today with
things like Windows on ARM, so you can
spin up.
You've got Ampere processors,
and you also have the new ish, the
Cobalt series, which is Microsoft's
ARM designed
system on a chip, and all that stuff
(09:35):
is up and available
in Azure today. So you can spin up
an Ampere. I I forget what the VM
series are for those. But then you've got,
like, the Cobalt 100,
which just went GA in, like, the last
week or 2 and are out there and
readily available. So if you do have to
run even a virtualized
ARM 64 workload on Windows, totally possible to
(09:57):
do in things like Azure today.
And I imagine you could do the same
in other cloud providers as well. I don't
know though. I'd have to go.
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(11:01):
Remember, intelligent focuses on the Microsoft cloud so
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So, ultimately,
end of the story
ish, and we can talk about my experiences.
I haven't returned
it yet, but I did start the return
process for the
the return barcodes, all of those, because I
(11:23):
think that's where I'm going to end up
going. Again, I've used parallels on my Max
a little bit, and I would say
I was
I don't want to truth be told, for
me, I plugged it in. I set it
on my desk. I was driving a 43
inch 4 k monitor off of it, a
(11:44):
27 inch monitor running 10 80 p, a
teleprompter
that I think is running 10 80 p
or slightly under, all my webcams,
the road caster. I think we did
I can't remember. I don't we didn't record
a podcast on it, but I did meetings
on it. I will say from a pure
performance perspective,
(12:04):
I was super impressed with
the speed
of the Surface Pro, especially for just having
an ARM tablet that was driving all of
my monitors, all of my devices.
It worked really well, and I had
I actually don't think I had any complaints
about the Surface
(12:25):
Pro itself. If I was in the Windows
ecosystem,
there's a chance I would have kept it.
What it came down to for me, one,
I can't stand the Monarch client. You're gonna
have to learn to love it. Hey. It
is what it is. Which I'm gonna have
to learn here eventually
because one of the things I found with
that as my daily driver, I the here's
(12:47):
the big feature missing for me, combined in
boxes. I have 8 different Office 365 accounts
in my Outlook,
and I don't want to have to jump
to 8 different inboxes to check them. If
I wanted to do that, I'd frankly just
use the browser instead of the desktop client
because at that point in time, it's no
different for me. MacOS, I have my combined
inbox. I can look inbox and see all
(13:07):
of my inboxes, all my email combined, and
manage it all. That for me,
way easier
on
macOS.
And
there was some things
what else was I just thinking of? Oh,
some of it is stupid. I say stupid
stuff, but it made a big deal. I
love my clipboard manager on macOS. And as
(13:28):
I switch between devices, being able to see
my clipboard history, I couldn't find one that
even came close on Windows. Could I get
around that? Absolutely.
I found a clipboard manager. It worked okay.
I was able to find workarounds for everything.
Where I landed on it was, like I
said, it was $3,000
for the device with all the taxes and
(13:48):
everything. And did it improve
my efficiency
with work
to make the
$3,000 worth it? Did I feel that much
more productive in gaining that much benefit out
of it? Not really. Like you'd said, I
can go do parallels.
I've played with it, but I've never done
what you did, Scott. I think this is
my next test. It probably should have been
(14:10):
my first test before I went and bought
the device, but like I said, it was
an emotional decision. I think it was valid
by hardware. Right? And
lean in and see what's there.
So hardware aside, there's lots of companies that
make nice hardware, but like you said, software
is individual decisions and things like that. I
think some of it is you're potentially being
(14:31):
a little too cult like about it. Like,
you you're not gonna be able to get
away from the client. Like, the day that
they drop that on the Mac is a
very sad day for you, and you're not
gonna be prepared for it be because you've
been
living your life a certain way. I think
solutions like parallels give you a bridge to
get there. Right? So, like, in your world
(14:51):
where the majority of things that you run
on Windows,
but you still want maybe, like, Outlook on
the Mac, well, just run the rest of
your workloads in Windows and Parallels does this
nifty thing. They call it,
cohesion. Coherence. Coherence. Yeah. I was gonna say
Yeah. Coherence.
But coherence lets you go from like a
(15:12):
windowed
desktop environment, so running my entire VM in
a single window kind of thing, to breaking
out the Windows into effectively
more native Windows in the macOS experience. So
in that world, you could have, like, Outlook
in a window here
running Outlook from your Mac, And then right
next to it, you could have Teams, but
(15:34):
that's Teams
from
your Parallels virtual desktop that's running just side
by side. And you can even make it.
So, like, when you click a a link
to, say, join a Teams meeting
in Outlook on your Mac, that it actually
opens Teams and responds to Teams in parallels.
So you can do, like, redirection
(15:55):
and all those kinds of things as needed
as well because you can expose the applications
that are installed from your this is one
of the other nifty things Parallels does, is
it lets you expose the applications that are
installed in your virtual environment
all the way back to your host OS.
So, like, when I go in and say
I do, like, spotlight search, right, you do,
(16:16):
like, command space on a Mac and you
go to launch an application,
all of my Parallels
installed applications, say, like Power BI
or Teams on Windows, things like that, those
all show up in my native macOS launcher,
like spacebar. In my case, I use Raycast.
Doesn't matter whatever your launcher is. It'll just
be there ready to go, and you can
just double click and and be up and
(16:38):
running super fast.
Super easy to access data across both of
those as well. So I know sometimes there's,
like, things that I have in Dropbox where
I'm, like, oh, I need that out of
Dropbox, and I need it over in Windows
here. There's some stuff that, like, only plays
nice in Windows,
and it's just tangentially work related.
If I want to file like a medical
claim through like my healthcare provider, like that
(17:00):
stuff is just way easier in a browser
on Windows, and it renders the PDFs right
and everything, and like they're built in blah,
blah, blah, crappy little web control. So I
just do all that through
Parallels
and run things that way. But it's super
easy. Just drag and drop, go back and
forth,
all all that kind of stuff. And then
the reason I've primarily done Parallels
is
because I want the local resource usage for
(17:23):
things. Like, you mentioned having your RODEcaster. Right?
So we both have these microphones in front
of us, and I just will hop on
even, like, formal Teams meetings with these microphones
or with going through the RODEcaster,
and and you need the USB audio interface.
So, like, we're coming from XLR mics, things
like that,
or fancy webcams, like, typically, those are gonna
go best running into a local resource rather
(17:45):
than through something like a remote desktop connection.
And I think that's traditionally been the case
up until
quite, quite recently.
So I've tended to go that way. The
other thing that I'm playing around with more
and more is one of the folks on
my team has been playing around with dev
boxes
quite a bit and, like, some of the
new stuff in
(18:05):
MMR, the multi multimedia redirection
for remote desktop now has gotten super slick
as well, where you almost can't tell the
difference as long as the host on the
other side has enough resources to keep up
with all the local direction and things like
that. So I can almost see a day
where,
theoretically, as long as I'm sitting here at
(18:26):
my desk and I'm always connected to the
Internet, I can almost just turn my Mac
into a thin client and just remote desktop
to everything as well for my Windows workloads.
I'm playing with that, and I'm curious. I
know we've talked about this a little bit.
Sorry. I'm jumping around. The biggest thing I
run into is, like you said, you're it's
the Rodecaster,
and I have a speakerphone that I use
(18:46):
here sometimes.
When I look at my audio devices on
macOS,
I have
20
different audio inputs, 20 different audio outputs.
That's not
necessarily,
I would say, normal usage.
Most people don't have that many different audio
devices
(19:07):
plugged into their computer where they're jumping between
them regularly, and that's been one thing I've
struggled with a little bit. It's easier with
parallels. For me, it's still hard with
the
DevBox or with the Windows 365
Cloud PCs
is when it comes to a lot of
that device redirection, it's just the default device.
(19:28):
Whatever you have as your default in macOS.
My default in macOS is actually very rarely
the same device
that I use
for my Teams calls. And
even with Parallels, it's not like I can
have a audio device linked to both of
them. You really have to have an audio
(19:49):
device linked to 1 or the other. So
it's just a little bit and this is
just me being picky, but it's a little
bit of work of okay. If I'm gonna
join the Teams meeting in parallels,
which audio devices do I need over there?
Or if I'm going to and if I'm
gonna use the speakerphone versus
the
microphone through the RodeCaster,
how which audio devices do I map over
(20:11):
there? So that's a little bit where some
of my
do I switch to running Windows natively versus
Parallels came in as just like I talked
about some disadvantage with the Copilot PC like
the Monarch client. There are certain things with
parallels
like having to switch audio devices or having
(20:31):
to map a USB key my YubiKey. If
I need that in Windows or if I
need it on macOS based on what I'm
doing,
there is a little bit of
overhead, I guess, you would say there when
it comes to certain hardware devices plugged in
and getting them located
on the parallels VM or on macOS.
But, again, that is
(20:53):
that's where it goes back to the cost
benefit for me. It wasn't worth the cost
of the Copilot PC
to do that. I will say, and this
is a thought I've had, is once I'm
done with my MacBook Pro, like you, it's
an m one. I don't know how long
I've had it. Couple years, 3 years down.
Coming up on 3, 4 years.
Right. And I I don't see the end
in sight for this thing other than the
(21:14):
battery dying. That's an option. Yep. And that's
my thought is I don't see the end
in sight, but would I potentially
do that where my laptop top and my
travel device would maybe be Windows and my
device in the office here where I tend
to do a lot of the
podcast recording, video editing,
all of that
(21:35):
stay as macOS? That's something else that I've
toyed with in the back of my head
is would I go that route? Again, going
back to I like both devices.
I like my macOS ecosystem.
I like certain apps. I like the way
certain things run, but I didn't have any
complaints about the Surface Pro with Copilot
either. It's
(21:56):
both of them have minor annoyances.
$3,000
did not solve my minor annoyances with macOS.
It just created new minor annoyances.
Not worth it at this point in time,
but very well maybe in the future, I
think. I can see. I think it's worth
revisiting this stuff
as you're going through it. Like,
the other thing that you might have a
(22:17):
better experience with
is
there are still limitations
to Windows
on ARM today. Like, there especially for, like,
client OS, there's definitely some incompatibilities
there, and you have to
discover them
as they
(22:37):
as they come up. Right? There there's a
set of kind of just, hey. I'm ready
to go and optimized
applications
in Windows on ARM, which is,
great, all good, like, native support, and you
can get those
through your regular stores of choice, be it,
like, Winget, the Windows Store,
a binary installer have at it. The other
(22:59):
thing that's out there is emulated applications.
So there's this emulation
layer that's been worked on over the years
in Windows on ARM called Prism.
Think like Rosetta 2 on the Mac, but
for a long time, like, wasn't thought of
as good, but it's actually gotten really good
lately.
So so Prism's
doing pretty well. So that'll do x86 emulation
(23:20):
for x86
apps that don't have
ARM compatibility
explicitly,
but then there's this class of apps that's
just wholly
incompatible.
So that can be things like drivers. So
I'll give you an example. Like, one driver
that I miss in my workflow
on Windows
is
(23:41):
NDI and NDI audio and being able to
pass NDI audio out of the virtual machine
and have it come back to other things.
Like, I would love to have, like, my
Windows virtual machine maybe run as, like, PC
number 2 for streaming scenarios or things like
that, and you can't do that because there's
no NDI on there. So
that's a kinda niche driver, but in general,
(24:03):
like, driver support,
super hit or miss. Right? There's things that
you're just not going to be able to
install there.
The other thing that you'll run into is
you you're not gonna be able to game
on those things, a virtual machine, or for
the most part, like the Copilot Plus PCs
as well because tons of it's emulated.
You're definitely not gonna be able to do,
like, triple a gaming for the most part
(24:24):
just because of, like, anti cheat systems that
require, like, kernel drivers and things like that.
That's all all out the window. It doesn't
exist. And then there's some other weird stuff
that just doesn't work,
depending on what kind of applications you're using.
If you're, like, a content creator, like, there's
parts of the Adobe suite that don't work
due to, like, anti
not anti cheap, but, like, anti crack mechanics
(24:47):
and and things like that are built in.
So it can be, like, a little bit
of a rough experience. It's still early days
for Windows on ARM, which is funny because
it's been out there for a while now,
but it is like a space that's still
maturing, still moving through. So
it's worth checking it out, but, you don't
have to be beholden to any given set
(25:09):
of hardware, be it
Microsoft's hardware or Samsung or HP or whoever
it happens to be. If you wanna be
in that ARM ecosystem, like virtualization is an
option with Parallels, or like I said, you
can run
Windows 11 virtual machines in Azure as well
on ARM processors if you do wanna get
hands on it I mean, hands on with
it and play along. But if in your
(25:31):
case, if you're looking for the richest compatibility,
it's, like, a big trade off because then
you're talking about going back to x86
and buy buying, like, an Intel
CPU, and then it's, well, it's 2024.
Am I really gonna keep this thing tethered
to my desk all the time? And if
you're gonna keep it to tethered to your
desk all the time, then you probably don't
(25:52):
want, like, a Surface
Pro kind of thing anyway. That seems wasteful
just to have the the tablet kinda sitting
there clamshell then docked up the whole time.
You might just want, like, a little mini
PC or something like that, which there's tons
of options out there for stuff like that
today. Like, you can get a pretty sweet
little mini PC with
32 gigs of RAM and a and a
terabyte of hard drive space, and it can
(26:14):
be running like a Ryzen 7. There's some
Ryzen 9 stuff out there. There's definitely Intel
Arc integrated GPU things. So depending on your
workload and, like, where you sit and, like,
what work looks like for you day to
day, I think it's a fun time because
you have lots of options too. Right? Like,
I I don't I didn't have it on
my bingo card. Then in 2024, I would
say, hey, I would have the best experience
(26:35):
for Windows on my Mac right now. When
it comes to this certain variation of Windows
that's running ARM 64,
that's wild to me, and that'll probably be
different next year, and then it'll probably be
even different, like, the year after that. Like
I said, I also didn't have it on
my card, the my bingo card that I'd
be thinking about actively going back to effectively,
like, thin client kind of world. But I'm
(26:57):
this close to being able to get there.
Right? And that's interesting and exciting to me
as well. Yeah. That would be interesting, and
I've thought about that. I actually have when
I've been on the verge of purchasing just
to play with a mini PC that actually
has a Xeon processor in it. $260
or something. It's like a Xeon with 500
(27:17):
gigs of or 500
gigs of hard drive space and, I don't
know, 16
gigs of memory, something like that. So I've
thought about that. I'm glad you mentioned drivers
because that was I had forgotten about that.
That was the other thing that I ran
into with the Surface for Copilot. There weren't
many. I was surprised how many worked,
(27:37):
but my scanner
did not work. I have one of the
Fujitsu
SnapScan.
It's an older one, so I don't know
if their brand new ones work, but the
older one, no driver support, didn't like Windows
11 unarmed at all, and the other one
was
network drivers for
a wired network connection. I had a really
(27:57):
hard time
with that. CalDigit says right on their websites,
their docs worked. I have both the TS
3 and the TS
4 plus, I think, are the 2. Both
of them worked for everything except the network
card.
The Surface Dock
does work with the network card. That was
1, and I did have some luck with
just a USB C network adapter.
(28:19):
But let me tell you, the amount of
hubs and dongles, like, we thought Mac or
MacBook Pros with the whole dongle thing Welcome
to dongle town. Surface is right up there
with it with only 2 USB c ports.
Man, I had dongles and docks hanging off
every which way just to test everything out
and see if I could get it all
plugged in. It worked. Again, everything worked, but
(28:41):
I did have some of those driver issues
as well.
It is like you said, it's really interesting
and
while it didn't end with me keeping Windows,
I felt like it was still good to
go through
given that I mean, realistically, I've been on
macOS as a daily driver for probably the
better part of 13,
(29:02):
14 years now. Windows has gotten better, I
will say. Either that or maybe macOS is
maybe not.
MacOS has also had some issues, I would
say, but I don't feel as strongly as
I probably would say I did 13 years
ago about the superiority
of macOS.
I think it's, in my opinion, it's gotten
a lot to there are 2 different ecosystems.
(29:24):
There's pros and cons to both. And
depending on which ecosystem you're in, maybe you
get used to certain things or there's just
certain annoyances.
I have a lot of apps that are
specifically geared to Mac OS, and that does
make a difference when it comes down to
the du 2 different OSes in my experience.
But it's it was really interesting, and it
(29:46):
does have me thinking a little bit more
about
some of the Windows stuff and how to
almost, I think, how to spend more time
in Windows
because of some of the benefits and, like
you said, because
my client base is in Windows so much.
And there's a gap. I'm rambling, but this
is one more thing. There is a gap
that has widened. There was a conference we
(30:08):
were at, Scott. I can't remember. It must
have been one of the first Ignites
back in maybe Chicago, which I'll be back
in Chicago again in a month. Just FYI,
if you're gonna be at Ignite, let me
know. But back at Ignite,
probably the first one in Chicago, Microsoft was
like, we want you to use Office on
every device. We don't care if it's macOS,
(30:28):
if it's Windows, whatever. Office on every device.
And I still remember this because I got
excited about it, which is probably why it
stuck in my so head so much as
they talked about trying to unify
the code base where you would get feature
parity
between Office on Windows, Office on Mac. Was
it a bit of a pipe dream?
Possibly.
(30:49):
PWAs for everybody. But after they said that,
I felt like there they definitely put some
renewed
focus on the macOS Office apps. There was
a narrowing
of the features between the 2, and I
stayed hopeful.
However, I will say that over the last
2 or 3 years, I feel like that
(31:09):
has actually started to diverge some. Like, we
were probably way out here. I don't know.
Just to give you a visual, we were
2 feet apart on feature gaps. I would
say we got down to maybe 6 inches.
We were down to maybe a 6 inch
feature gap, but I feel like we've winded
out not as bad as it used to
be, but it's not a narrow feature gap
anymore. I feel like it's winded out to
(31:31):
a foot just to give you half of
what it used to be, but double what
it
was maybe 3 or 4 years ago. I
think those things are never gonna match 100%.
Right? Design language is always gonna be different,
but
it it is surprising to me that there's
still core functionality
differences.
If
Microsoft never intends to bring a unified inbox
(31:53):
to the Monarch client, like, you would think
they'd be better served just ripping that out
today. Right? Rip the Band Aid and
get it done in macOS,
Outlook on macOS
and things like that, but,
yeah, it's hard. I don't know where all
that stuff eventually
bottoms out. I I continue to think
(32:13):
for you, my gut still says, like, your
best experience and your best ecosystem for day
to day is probably Windows. As as much
as you don't like it and don't wanna
be there, like, it's where the bread and
butter is. Right? So Yep. You gotta be
there. I'd very much prefer to be in
macOS all day as well, but I can't
be because of my job. So this is
the compromise that I've come to
(32:35):
is, hey, here's how I'm gonna do
Windows in my life, right, and how I'm
gonna go and and make those things
make those things work. But Yes. It's tough
to lead, like, the dual hardware life too.
I think that's another thing that I really
like about the virtualization solution is I'm not
going to, like, a KVM and hitting a
button, or I'm not, like, physically swapping cables
(32:57):
or anything like that. I'm with you. Some
of the functionality doesn't make sense. One of
the ones that still
bugs me is OneNote. OneNote, we still don't
if the OneNote team is listening, I keep
asking for this. We do not have add
ins yet in OneNote on the Mac. I
don't know how long add ins have been
there, but it has definitely been years. We
(33:17):
have add ins in Word, PowerPoint,
Excel.
No add ins in OneNote for Mac. Like,
this is a very core feature, and
we also have no
Copilot
in OneNote. Again, will it ever come? I
have this
hunch that maybe it's actually tied to add
ins, but there's some of that it's
(33:40):
I feel like it's very core
to the application itself. Like, OneNote on Windows
has is it stickies?
Or it's like sticky notes, there's no sign
of those in macOS. So some of that
core functionality where if you're on one,
it's just, like, completely
missing. There's no compatibility between them. And like
you said, there's going to be some things
(34:01):
that exist like that, but there's other things
that feel too
core to the application
itself in usage
that it still surprises me that some of
that stuff hasn't
come together or been more aligned.
To have insights to the roadmap
would be an interesting thing. I don't know.
(34:24):
We'll see where it bottoms out. I think
the cool thing is where we are today
is
hardware can be a crosscut and fairly ubiquitous
if you want it to. Right? Like I
said, like, you can go from
running macOS and Windows side by side, or
if you want, like, an ARM Windows device,
those are broadly available and and exist today,
(34:45):
even at, like, better pricing than Mac. Like,
I would still argue that, like, my MacBook
is some of the best hardware that I
possibly have ever had,
and the support experience and all that's great.
But, you know, I would totally go out
and get a Surface laptop
or a Surface Studio or a Surface Pro
or things like that if those were, like,
(35:07):
fitting into my ecosystem and, effectively, like, my
way of work, right, which you have to
have a little bit be a little bit
keyed into.
What's your way of work, and where do
you wanna land? And then, like I said
earlier, like, this stuff moves so rapidly. Like,
I didn't have it in on my bingo
card in 2024 that this would be the
way I'd be doing it. But I bet
in 2025,
like, we came back and discussed this in
(35:29):
a year, I'd probably be doing something completely
different because the landscape has just shifted again
in a slightly different way. We'll have to
see that. Add that to our calendar, Scott.
Set a reminder for 365
days from now. Discuss
how which operating systems we work on and
how we work on them or devices and
how we work. I would ask the dog,
but she's just gonna stretch behind me. So
(35:49):
Alright. Well, with that, Scott, I think we
both have meetings to go to. We do.
We do. It's an off day for recording,
so back to work we go. Well, thanks.
That was interesting, and you said it. We're
gonna circle back to it in a year
and see what we're doing. I don't want
any to it, but someone will surely remind
me along the way. So 100%. And if
you're gonna be in Ignite,
(36:10):
let me know. Hopefully, I can drag Scott
along for the ride TBD. TBD.
We'll see. We'll
see what the
the media landscape looks like at Ignite this
year. Alright. Well, thanks, Scott. Go enjoy the
rest of your
Monday,
and we will talk to you again
a little later. Alright. Cool. Thanks, Ben. Have
a good one. Thanks, Scott.
(36:33):
If you enjoyed the podcast, go leave us
a 5 star rating in iTunes. It helps
to get the word out so more IT
pros can learn about Office 365
and Azure.
If you have any questions you want us
to address on the show, or feedback about
the show, feel free to reach out via
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Thanks again for listening, and have a great
(36:54):
day.
Welcome to episode
387
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast recorded
live on October 21,
2024.
This is a show about Microsoft 365 and
Azure from the perspective of IT pros and
end users, where we discuss a topic or
recent news and how it relates to you.
Today, we depart a bit from the cloud
(00:24):
and talk about devices you may access the
cloud with. Ben recently purchased the Surface Pro
11th edition, a Copilot Plus PC running an
ARM Processor.
Today, he gives his take on it as
well as discussing things like experiences on macOS
and running Windows 11 in a VM. Listen
in as Scott and Ben shared their take.
(00:47):
Oh, Scott.
It's a Monday. So should we start with
we had talked about this. Should we start
with a
knee jerk reaction I made the other day
that I am going back on, but it
was an interesting
experience nonetheless?
Sure. Let's do it. Let's see if we
can get Randy Ben going. Surface
Copilot
(01:07):
or Surface Pro Plus Copilot PC.
I have gotten angry at Teams lately,
speaking of Rancy Ben, because
Teams on my Mac has had some
super
weird
audio issues. And even like today As it
does.
Yeah. I have joined in the browser because
(01:29):
if I am
I will say I have to just leave
my team's audio settings on my desktop client
set the way they are. Because if I
go in and try to change cameras or
change audio devices or anything of the sort,
Teams freezes and crashes and just all around
blows up on me. Super odd because it
happens on both my laptop and my desktop,
(01:49):
both Mac OS.
I have some theories. I have a case
open with Microsoft,
but I have no solutions.
I also have been really irritated
with Office
on macOS lately, and I am not alone
with this. I have talked to others where
essentially
like, I have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, all of
those installed on my desktop. I open them
(02:10):
up, and I don't know how it picks
or chooses which tenant I'm logged into, but
I am never logged into
the tenant I want to be. I'll be,
like, logged into a client tenant.
I'll be logged into a different client tenant.
I
like, I get logged into all these different
tenants, and
Office on Windows
has the ability to go in and switch
(02:31):
accounts. So it's super straightforward and simple. You
go to, like, your info tab or your
accounts tab and say, I want to go
use my Intelligent account. MacOS has no such
thing. The only way I have heard of
to
resolve this is to go, like, log out
of all my Office 365 tenants
in macOS and delete stuff and delete any
(02:53):
safe credentials and, like, it's an ordeal,
and then go sign back into them, but
sign into them in a very specific order
and hope that it sticks.
If it doesn't stick, the only way to
fix it is to go do it all
over again. It's the most deterministic thing in
computer science. Cross your fingers and hope it
sticks.
Yes. But this should not be an issue.
I should especially, my macOS is set up
(03:16):
with the macOS, the SSO for macOS for
Office 365, which is SSOed
with my intelligent tenant.
Why do my Office applications think I should
be using a client tenant instead of my
own? There's Ranti Ben. All this said, I
was like, you know what? I'm mad at
macOS.
I
it's driving me absolutely nuts. You're mad at
(03:36):
Microsoft
Software on macOS.
Yes. I met at Microsoft Software on macOS.
And let's be fair, 90% of my day
is spent in Microsoft software, and
all of my clients and work is primarily
revolves around Microsoft software. I said, hey. There's
this new Surface Pro running Copilot and ARM
Processors,
and I know I can run
(03:58):
Windows on macOS and Parallels.
But
after 13 years, would I be better served
just running Windows natively
on a Surface Pro? And I've always thought
about this. Like, this has always been at
the back of my head. I like the
writing experience
on Surface Pros. I like having the whole
OneNote pen and not if I wanna write,
(04:18):
having to pull up my iPad
or
if I'm in the meeting and I wanna
handwrite, bringing it, like, mirroring my iPad over,
getting my iPad input. There's ways I could
do it. Like, you know what? Maybe I
could do a Surface Pro, so I bought
one. I bought one of the Surface Pro.
I think they're 11s. They're the whole Copilot
plus Surface Pro ones. And I was like,
(04:39):
you know what? If I like it, I
want to
really
I want it to have
the horsepower that I would need. So I
bought the 64
gigs of RAM, the top of the line
ARM Processor, the snap dry is it Snapdragon
11? Yeah. Whatever the highest processor I could
get of the Snapdragon ARM Processors,
(05:01):
It's not cheap. Like, it still ended up
just shy of $3,
and I used that for a week exclusively.
I was like, I'm like, I unplugged all
my external monitors. I plugged everything into the
Copilot or the Surface Pro. I use the
Surface Pro instead of my MacBook Pro.
I have enough horsepower here. I'm just going
(05:23):
to use this for a week in my
day to day workflow and
see if I can do this, if this
is something I want
to switch to, or if it's going to
drive me crazy. And I will 100% admit
it was a little bit of emotional decision
because I was so irritated with the Microsoft
(05:44):
apps on macOS. It's not a bad idea.
So I I've been telling you for a
long time that
your experience,
I and I I still believe this,
would be better on Windows given kinda the
cohort of customers you work with and your
day to day work. So I get that
Yep. There's cross platform apps.
So in your world,
writing like a PowerShell script for a customer
(06:06):
for migration.
Can you do that on your Mac? Absolutely.
But from an Office client perspective for things
like Teams
and Outlook,
like the Monarch client, right, which isn't even
available on Mac yet, but is pushed pretty
heavily on Windows. Yeah. Even things like the
OneDrive client, like, just
(06:26):
availability of APIs for file system sync and
things like that are different on the Windows
side, so your experience can be a little
bit better. So what I do is I
like to have my cake and eat it
too, where
my day is spent in Windows. Right? I'd
I'd work in Azure, and I'm primarily there
all the time.
(06:47):
That being said,
I do everything in a virtual machine. So
we're on Macs.
There is an official
provider
for or there's there there's Parallels as a
company, so they make a product called Parallels
dot desktop. It's like, VMware
Fusion or things like that. It's a local
(07:08):
virtualization
engine,
but it is the official engine for being
able to run Windows 11 for ARM
on Apple Silicon.
So you can get the best of both
worlds where you run your Mac and then
you run your Windows stuff in Windows.
Of course, all predicated and gated on the
(07:29):
available
resources
on your machine.
So what's my CPU? What's my RAM? Things
like that. So, like, I do most of
my day to day on
what is, like, a laptop. I just don't
can't see the end of the road for
I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro, and not
even the fanciest processor,
and I've got 32 gigs of RAM. And
(07:49):
I go through most of my day, like,
allocating 20 gigs of RAM to a virtual
machine, and I do everything in that sucker,
all my Power BI reports. That's where my
work email is. That's where Teams is for
work, all those things. And it does camera
pass through, USB pass through, all those kinds
of things I need. And then I'm good,
and then I don't need that separate device
(08:10):
necessarily.
But what's really funny to me is I've
gone out and demoed some of the Copilot
Plus PCs. So there's the Surface ones.
There's also
some from
I I think Dell's got some. HP's got
some.
Samsung has some.
But the experience in power parallels as a
(08:30):
virtual machine, at least, like, my anecdotal experience,
is it almost runs better in a VM
than it does on a desktop, and there's
no or laptop, like, a dedicated,
hey, thing that's out there. So
that that tends to be what I just
keep coming back to. It's just I'll keep
running Windows as a virtual thing.
(08:51):
I'm not gonna worry about it too much.
And then where I can,
I'm starting to go more and more into
the, like, AVD
DevBox world side of things, where, hey, if
I need a beefier machine than this that's
going to run a pure x86 workload, well,
let me just go spin that up in
a virtual machine someplace
in the cloud where I've got a bunch
of providers and, a bunch of different CPU
(09:14):
types and things like that, and I can
go ahead and test that. And I can
even do that in the cloud today with
things like Windows on ARM, so you can
spin up.
You've got Ampere processors,
and you also have the new ish, the
Cobalt series, which is Microsoft's
ARM designed
system on a chip, and all that stuff
(09:35):
is up and available
in Azure today. So you can spin up
an Ampere. I I forget what the VM
series are for those. But then you've got,
like, the Cobalt 100,
which just went GA in, like, the last
week or 2 and are out there and
readily available. So if you do have to
run even a virtualized
ARM 64 workload on Windows, totally possible to
(09:57):
do in things like Azure today.
And I imagine you could do the same
in other cloud providers as well. I don't
know though. I'd have to go.
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(10:18):
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(10:39):
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(11:01):
Remember, intelligent focuses on the Microsoft cloud so
you can focus on your business.
So, ultimately,
end of the story
ish, and we can talk about my experiences.
I haven't returned
it yet, but I did start the return
process for the
the return barcodes, all of those, because I
(11:23):
think that's where I'm going to end up
going. Again, I've used parallels on my Max
a little bit, and I would say
I was
I don't want to truth be told, for
me, I plugged it in. I set it
on my desk. I was driving a 43
inch 4 k monitor off of it, a
(11:44):
27 inch monitor running 10 80 p, a
teleprompter
that I think is running 10 80 p
or slightly under, all my webcams,
the road caster. I think we did
I can't remember. I don't we didn't record
a podcast on it, but I did meetings
on it. I will say from a pure
performance perspective,
(12:04):
I was super impressed with
the speed
of the Surface Pro, especially for just having
an ARM tablet that was driving all of
my monitors, all of my devices.
It worked really well, and I had
I actually don't think I had any complaints
about the Surface
(12:25):
Pro itself. If I was in the Windows
ecosystem,
there's a chance I would have kept it.
What it came down to for me, one,
I can't stand the Monarch client. You're gonna
have to learn to love it. Hey. It
is what it is. Which I'm gonna have
to learn here eventually
because one of the things I found with
that as my daily driver, I the here's
(12:47):
the big feature missing for me, combined in
boxes. I have 8 different Office 365 accounts
in my Outlook,
and I don't want to have to jump
to 8 different inboxes to check them. If
I wanted to do that, I'd frankly just
use the browser instead of the desktop client
because at that point in time, it's no
different for me. MacOS, I have my combined
inbox. I can look inbox and see all
(13:07):
of my inboxes, all my email combined, and
manage it all. That for me,
way easier
on
macOS.
And
there was some things
what else was I just thinking of? Oh,
some of it is stupid. I say stupid
stuff, but it made a big deal. I
love my clipboard manager on macOS. And as
(13:28):
I switch between devices, being able to see
my clipboard history, I couldn't find one that
even came close on Windows. Could I get
around that? Absolutely.
I found a clipboard manager. It worked okay.
I was able to find workarounds for everything.
Where I landed on it was, like I
said, it was $3,000
for the device with all the taxes and
(13:48):
everything. And did it improve
my efficiency
with work
to make the
$3,000 worth it? Did I feel that much
more productive in gaining that much benefit out
of it? Not really. Like you'd said, I
can go do parallels.
I've played with it, but I've never done
what you did, Scott. I think this is
my next test. It probably should have been
(14:10):
my first test before I went and bought
the device, but like I said, it was
an emotional decision. I think it was valid
by hardware. Right? And
lean in and see what's there.
So hardware aside, there's lots of companies that
make nice hardware, but like you said, software
is individual decisions and things like that. I
think some of it is you're potentially being
(14:31):
a little too cult like about it. Like,
you you're not gonna be able to get
away from the client. Like, the day that
they drop that on the Mac is a
very sad day for you, and you're not
gonna be prepared for it be because you've
been
living your life a certain way. I think
solutions like parallels give you a bridge to
get there. Right? So, like, in your world
(14:51):
where the majority of things that you run
on Windows,
but you still want maybe, like, Outlook on
the Mac, well, just run the rest of
your workloads in Windows and Parallels does this
nifty thing. They call it,
cohesion. Coherence. Coherence. Yeah. I was gonna say
Yeah. Coherence.
But coherence lets you go from like a
(15:12):
windowed
desktop environment, so running my entire VM in
a single window kind of thing, to breaking
out the Windows into effectively
more native Windows in the macOS experience. So
in that world, you could have, like, Outlook
in a window here
running Outlook from your Mac, And then right
next to it, you could have Teams, but
(15:34):
that's Teams
from
your Parallels virtual desktop that's running just side
by side. And you can even make it.
So, like, when you click a a link
to, say, join a Teams meeting
in Outlook on your Mac, that it actually
opens Teams and responds to Teams in parallels.
So you can do, like, redirection
(15:55):
and all those kinds of things as needed
as well because you can expose the applications
that are installed from your this is one
of the other nifty things Parallels does, is
it lets you expose the applications that are
installed in your virtual environment
all the way back to your host OS.
So, like, when I go in and say
I do, like, spotlight search, right, you do,
(16:16):
like, command space on a Mac and you
go to launch an application,
all of my Parallels
installed applications, say, like Power BI
or Teams on Windows, things like that, those
all show up in my native macOS launcher,
like spacebar. In my case, I use Raycast.
Doesn't matter whatever your launcher is. It'll just
be there ready to go, and you can
just double click and and be up and
(16:38):
running super fast.
Super easy to access data across both of
those as well. So I know sometimes there's,
like, things that I have in Dropbox where
I'm, like, oh, I need that out of
Dropbox, and I need it over in Windows
here. There's some stuff that, like, only plays
nice in Windows,
and it's just tangentially work related.
If I want to file like a medical
claim through like my healthcare provider, like that
(17:00):
stuff is just way easier in a browser
on Windows, and it renders the PDFs right
and everything, and like they're built in blah,
blah, blah, crappy little web control. So I
just do all that through
Parallels
and run things that way. But it's super
easy. Just drag and drop, go back and
forth,
all all that kind of stuff. And then
the reason I've primarily done Parallels
is
because I want the local resource usage for
(17:23):
things. Like, you mentioned having your RODEcaster. Right?
So we both have these microphones in front
of us, and I just will hop on
even, like, formal Teams meetings with these microphones
or with going through the RODEcaster,
and and you need the USB audio interface.
So, like, we're coming from XLR mics, things
like that,
or fancy webcams, like, typically, those are gonna
go best running into a local resource rather
(17:45):
than through something like a remote desktop connection.
And I think that's traditionally been the case
up until
quite, quite recently.
So I've tended to go that way. The
other thing that I'm playing around with more
and more is one of the folks on
my team has been playing around with dev
boxes
quite a bit and, like, some of the
new stuff in
(18:05):
MMR, the multi multimedia redirection
for remote desktop now has gotten super slick
as well, where you almost can't tell the
difference as long as the host on the
other side has enough resources to keep up
with all the local direction and things like
that. So I can almost see a day
where,
theoretically, as long as I'm sitting here at
(18:26):
my desk and I'm always connected to the
Internet, I can almost just turn my Mac
into a thin client and just remote desktop
to everything as well for my Windows workloads.
I'm playing with that, and I'm curious. I
know we've talked about this a little bit.
Sorry. I'm jumping around. The biggest thing I
run into is, like you said, you're it's
the Rodecaster,
and I have a speakerphone that I use
(18:46):
here sometimes.
When I look at my audio devices on
macOS,
I have
20
different audio inputs, 20 different audio outputs.
That's not
necessarily,
I would say, normal usage.
Most people don't have that many different audio
devices
(19:07):
plugged into their computer where they're jumping between
them regularly, and that's been one thing I've
struggled with a little bit. It's easier with
parallels. For me, it's still hard with
the
DevBox or with the Windows 365
Cloud PCs
is when it comes to a lot of
that device redirection, it's just the default device.
(19:28):
Whatever you have as your default in macOS.
My default in macOS is actually very rarely
the same device
that I use
for my Teams calls. And
even with Parallels, it's not like I can
have a audio device linked to both of
them. You really have to have an audio
(19:49):
device linked to 1 or the other. So
it's just a little bit and this is
just me being picky, but it's a little
bit of work of okay. If I'm gonna
join the Teams meeting in parallels,
which audio devices do I need over there?
Or if I'm going to and if I'm
gonna use the speakerphone versus
the
microphone through the RodeCaster,
how which audio devices do I map over
(20:11):
there? So that's a little bit where some
of my
do I switch to running Windows natively versus
Parallels came in as just like I talked
about some disadvantage with the Copilot PC like
the Monarch client. There are certain things with
parallels
like having to switch audio devices or having
(20:31):
to map a USB key my YubiKey. If
I need that in Windows or if I
need it on macOS based on what I'm
doing,
there is a little bit of
overhead, I guess, you would say there when
it comes to certain hardware devices plugged in
and getting them located
on the parallels VM or on macOS.
But, again, that is
(20:53):
that's where it goes back to the cost
benefit for me. It wasn't worth the cost
of the Copilot PC
to do that. I will say, and this
is a thought I've had, is once I'm
done with my MacBook Pro, like you, it's
an m one. I don't know how long
I've had it. Couple years, 3 years down.
Coming up on 3, 4 years.
Right. And I I don't see the end
in sight for this thing other than the
(21:14):
battery dying. That's an option. Yep. And that's
my thought is I don't see the end
in sight, but would I potentially
do that where my laptop top and my
travel device would maybe be Windows and my
device in the office here where I tend
to do a lot of the
podcast recording, video editing,
all of that
(21:35):
stay as macOS? That's something else that I've
toyed with in the back of my head
is would I go that route? Again, going
back to I like both devices.
I like my macOS ecosystem.
I like certain apps. I like the way
certain things run, but I didn't have any
complaints about the Surface Pro with Copilot
either. It's
(21:56):
both of them have minor annoyances.
$3,000
did not solve my minor annoyances with macOS.
It just created new minor annoyances.
Not worth it at this point in time,
but very well maybe in the future, I
think. I can see. I think it's worth
revisiting this stuff
as you're going through it. Like,
the other thing that you might have a
(22:17):
better experience with
is
there are still limitations
to Windows
on ARM today. Like, there especially for, like,
client OS, there's definitely some incompatibilities
there, and you have to
discover them
as they
(22:37):
as they come up. Right? There there's a
set of kind of just, hey. I'm ready
to go and optimized
applications
in Windows on ARM, which is,
great, all good, like, native support, and you
can get those
through your regular stores of choice, be it,
like, Winget, the Windows Store,
a binary installer have at it. The other
(22:59):
thing that's out there is emulated applications.
So there's this emulation
layer that's been worked on over the years
in Windows on ARM called Prism.
Think like Rosetta 2 on the Mac, but
for a long time, like, wasn't thought of
as good, but it's actually gotten really good
lately.
So so Prism's
doing pretty well. So that'll do x86 emulation
(23:20):
for x86
apps that don't have
ARM compatibility
explicitly,
but then there's this class of apps that's
just wholly
incompatible.
So that can be things like drivers. So
I'll give you an example. Like, one driver
that I miss in my workflow
on Windows
is
(23:41):
NDI and NDI audio and being able to
pass NDI audio out of the virtual machine
and have it come back to other things.
Like, I would love to have, like, my
Windows virtual machine maybe run as, like, PC
number 2 for streaming scenarios or things like
that, and you can't do that because there's
no NDI on there. So
that's a kinda niche driver, but in general,
(24:03):
like, driver support,
super hit or miss. Right? There's things that
you're just not going to be able to
install there.
The other thing that you'll run into is
you you're not gonna be able to game
on those things, a virtual machine, or for
the most part, like the Copilot Plus PCs
as well because tons of it's emulated.
You're definitely not gonna be able to do,
like, triple a gaming for the most part
(24:24):
just because of, like, anti cheat systems that
require, like, kernel drivers and things like that.
That's all all out the window. It doesn't
exist. And then there's some other weird stuff
that just doesn't work,
depending on what kind of applications you're using.
If you're, like, a content creator, like, there's
parts of the Adobe suite that don't work
due to, like, anti
not anti cheap, but, like, anti crack mechanics
(24:47):
and and things like that are built in.
So it can be, like, a little bit
of a rough experience. It's still early days
for Windows on ARM, which is funny because
it's been out there for a while now,
but it is like a space that's still
maturing, still moving through. So
it's worth checking it out, but, you don't
have to be beholden to any given set
(25:09):
of hardware, be it
Microsoft's hardware or Samsung or HP or whoever
it happens to be. If you wanna be
in that ARM ecosystem, like virtualization is an
option with Parallels, or like I said, you
can run
Windows 11 virtual machines in Azure as well
on ARM processors if you do wanna get
hands on it I mean, hands on with
it and play along. But if in your
(25:31):
case, if you're looking for the richest compatibility,
it's, like, a big trade off because then
you're talking about going back to x86
and buy buying, like, an Intel
CPU, and then it's, well, it's 2024.
Am I really gonna keep this thing tethered
to my desk all the time? And if
you're gonna keep it to tethered to your
desk all the time, then you probably don't
(25:52):
want, like, a Surface
Pro kind of thing anyway. That seems wasteful
just to have the the tablet kinda sitting
there clamshell then docked up the whole time.
You might just want, like, a little mini
PC or something like that, which there's tons
of options out there for stuff like that
today. Like, you can get a pretty sweet
little mini PC with
32 gigs of RAM and a and a
terabyte of hard drive space, and it can
(26:14):
be running like a Ryzen 7. There's some
Ryzen 9 stuff out there. There's definitely Intel
Arc integrated GPU things. So depending on your
workload and, like, where you sit and, like,
what work looks like for you day to
day, I think it's a fun time because
you have lots of options too. Right? Like,
I I don't I didn't have it on
my bingo card. Then in 2024, I would
say, hey, I would have the best experience
(26:35):
for Windows on my Mac right now. When
it comes to this certain variation of Windows
that's running ARM 64,
that's wild to me, and that'll probably be
different next year, and then it'll probably be
even different, like, the year after that. Like
I said, I also didn't have it on
my card, the my bingo card that I'd
be thinking about actively going back to effectively,
like, thin client kind of world. But I'm
(26:57):
this close to being able to get there.
Right? And that's interesting and exciting to me
as well. Yeah. That would be interesting, and
I've thought about that. I actually have when
I've been on the verge of purchasing just
to play with a mini PC that actually
has a Xeon processor in it. $260
or something. It's like a Xeon with 500
(27:17):
gigs of or 500
gigs of hard drive space and, I don't
know, 16
gigs of memory, something like that. So I've
thought about that. I'm glad you mentioned drivers
because that was I had forgotten about that.
That was the other thing that I ran
into with the Surface for Copilot. There weren't
many. I was surprised how many worked,
(27:37):
but my scanner
did not work. I have one of the
Fujitsu
SnapScan.
It's an older one, so I don't know
if their brand new ones work, but the
older one, no driver support, didn't like Windows
11 unarmed at all, and the other one
was
network drivers for
a wired network connection. I had a really
(27:57):
hard time
with that. CalDigit says right on their websites,
their docs worked. I have both the TS
3 and the TS
4 plus, I think, are the 2. Both
of them worked for everything except the network
card.
The Surface Dock
does work with the network card. That was
1, and I did have some luck with
just a USB C network adapter.
(28:19):
But let me tell you, the amount of
hubs and dongles, like, we thought Mac or
MacBook Pros with the whole dongle thing Welcome
to dongle town. Surface is right up there
with it with only 2 USB c ports.
Man, I had dongles and docks hanging off
every which way just to test everything out
and see if I could get it all
plugged in. It worked. Again, everything worked, but
(28:41):
I did have some of those driver issues
as well.
It is like you said, it's really interesting
and
while it didn't end with me keeping Windows,
I felt like it was still good to
go through
given that I mean, realistically, I've been on
macOS as a daily driver for probably the
better part of 13,
(29:02):
14 years now. Windows has gotten better, I
will say. Either that or maybe macOS is
maybe not.
MacOS has also had some issues, I would
say, but I don't feel as strongly as
I probably would say I did 13 years
ago about the superiority
of macOS.
I think it's, in my opinion, it's gotten
a lot to there are 2 different ecosystems.
(29:24):
There's pros and cons to both. And
depending on which ecosystem you're in, maybe you
get used to certain things or there's just
certain annoyances.
I have a lot of apps that are
specifically geared to Mac OS, and that does
make a difference when it comes down to
the du 2 different OSes in my experience.
But it's it was really interesting, and it
(29:46):
does have me thinking a little bit more
about
some of the Windows stuff and how to
almost, I think, how to spend more time
in Windows
because of some of the benefits and, like
you said, because
my client base is in Windows so much.
And there's a gap. I'm rambling, but this
is one more thing. There is a gap
that has widened. There was a conference we
(30:08):
were at, Scott. I can't remember. It must
have been one of the first Ignites
back in maybe Chicago, which I'll be back
in Chicago again in a month. Just FYI,
if you're gonna be at Ignite, let me
know. But back at Ignite,
probably the first one in Chicago, Microsoft was
like, we want you to use Office on
every device. We don't care if it's macOS,
(30:28):
if it's Windows, whatever. Office on every device.
And I still remember this because I got
excited about it, which is probably why it
stuck in my so head so much as
they talked about trying to unify
the code base where you would get feature
parity
between Office on Windows, Office on Mac. Was
it a bit of a pipe dream?
Possibly.
(30:49):
PWAs for everybody. But after they said that,
I felt like there they definitely put some
renewed
focus on the macOS Office apps. There was
a narrowing
of the features between the 2, and I
stayed hopeful.
However, I will say that over the last
2 or 3 years, I feel like that
(31:09):
has actually started to diverge some. Like, we
were probably way out here. I don't know.
Just to give you a visual, we were
2 feet apart on feature gaps. I would
say we got down to maybe 6 inches.
We were down to maybe a 6 inch
feature gap, but I feel like we've winded
out not as bad as it used to
be, but it's not a narrow feature gap
anymore. I feel like it's winded out to
(31:31):
a foot just to give you half of
what it used to be, but double what
it
was maybe 3 or 4 years ago. I
think those things are never gonna match 100%.
Right? Design language is always gonna be different,
but
it it is surprising to me that there's
still core functionality
differences.
If
Microsoft never intends to bring a unified inbox
(31:53):
to the Monarch client, like, you would think
they'd be better served just ripping that out
today. Right? Rip the Band Aid and
get it done in macOS,
Outlook on macOS
and things like that, but,
yeah, it's hard. I don't know where all
that stuff eventually
bottoms out. I I continue to think
(32:13):
for you, my gut still says, like, your
best experience and your best ecosystem for day
to day is probably Windows. As as much
as you don't like it and don't wanna
be there, like, it's where the bread and
butter is. Right? So Yep. You gotta be
there. I'd very much prefer to be in
macOS all day as well, but I can't
be because of my job. So this is
the compromise that I've come to
(32:35):
is, hey, here's how I'm gonna do
Windows in my life, right, and how I'm
gonna go and and make those things
make those things work. But Yes. It's tough
to lead, like, the dual hardware life too.
I think that's another thing that I really
like about the virtualization solution is I'm not
going to, like, a KVM and hitting a
button, or I'm not, like, physically swapping cables
(32:57):
or anything like that. I'm with you. Some
of the functionality doesn't make sense. One of
the ones that still
bugs me is OneNote. OneNote, we still don't
if the OneNote team is listening, I keep
asking for this. We do not have add
ins yet in OneNote on the Mac. I
don't know how long add ins have been
there, but it has definitely been years. We
(33:17):
have add ins in Word, PowerPoint,
Excel.
No add ins in OneNote for Mac. Like,
this is a very core feature, and
we also have no
Copilot
in OneNote. Again, will it ever come? I
have this
hunch that maybe it's actually tied to add
ins, but there's some of that it's
(33:40):
I feel like it's very core
to the application itself. Like, OneNote on Windows
has is it stickies?
Or it's like sticky notes, there's no sign
of those in macOS. So some of that
core functionality where if you're on one,
it's just, like, completely
missing. There's no compatibility between them. And like
you said, there's going to be some things
(34:01):
that exist like that, but there's other things
that feel too
core to the application
itself in usage
that it still surprises me that some of
that stuff hasn't
come together or been more aligned.
To have insights to the roadmap
would be an interesting thing. I don't know.
(34:24):
We'll see where it bottoms out. I think
the cool thing is where we are today
is
hardware can be a crosscut and fairly ubiquitous
if you want it to. Right? Like I
said, like, you can go from
running macOS and Windows side by side, or
if you want, like, an ARM Windows device,
those are broadly available and and exist today,
(34:45):
even at, like, better pricing than Mac. Like,
I would still argue that, like, my MacBook
is some of the best hardware that I
possibly have ever had,
and the support experience and all that's great.
But, you know, I would totally go out
and get a Surface laptop
or a Surface Studio or a Surface Pro
or things like that if those were, like,
(35:07):
fitting into my ecosystem and, effectively, like, my
way of work, right, which you have to
have a little bit be a little bit
keyed into.
What's your way of work, and where do
you wanna land? And then, like I said
earlier, like, this stuff moves so rapidly. Like,
I didn't have it in on my bingo
card in 2024 that this would be the
way I'd be doing it. But I bet
in 2025,
like, we came back and discussed this in
(35:29):
a year, I'd probably be doing something completely
different because the landscape has just shifted again
in a slightly different way. We'll have to
see that. Add that to our calendar, Scott.
Set a reminder for 365
days from now. Discuss
how which operating systems we work on and
how we work on them or devices and
how we work. I would ask the dog,
but she's just gonna stretch behind me. So
(35:49):
Alright. Well, with that, Scott, I think we
both have meetings to go to. We do.
We do. It's an off day for recording,
so back to work we go. Well, thanks.
That was interesting, and you said it. We're
gonna circle back to it in a year
and see what we're doing. I don't want
any to it, but someone will surely remind
me along the way. So 100%. And if
you're gonna be in Ignite,
(36:10):
let me know. Hopefully, I can drag Scott
along for the ride TBD. TBD.
We'll see. We'll
see what the
the media landscape looks like at Ignite this
year. Alright. Well, thanks, Scott. Go enjoy the
rest of your
Monday,
and we will talk to you again
a little later. Alright. Cool. Thanks, Ben. Have
a good one. Thanks, Scott.
(36:33):
If you enjoyed the podcast, go leave us
a 5 star rating in iTunes. It helps
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pros can learn about Office 365
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If you have any questions you want us
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Thanks again for listening, and have a great
(36:54):
day.
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