DON’T MAKE THIS MISTAKE with Windows 11 ARM on your Mac!

This video is about whether you should activate Windows 11 ARM if you are running it as a virtual machine through software such as Parallels. I show some of the legal arguments about whether activating Windows 11 ARM complies with Microsoft's EULA and what kind of product keys will be accepted by Windows 11 ARM. I also show the workarounds involved in removing annoyances such as the Activate Windows watermark and also how to change the background and personalize Windows 11 ARM. I also discuss grey market keys and the pros and cons of using them to permanently remove the nag screens fromWindows 11 ARM.

Further tutorials:

► Timestamps:
00:00 Do I need to buy/activate Windows 11 ARM for M1 Mac?
00:59 Watermark and personalization disabled
01:26 How to activate Windows 11 ARM
02:02 Microsoft EULA
02:42 Parallels and VMware - EULA
03:19 Remove Activate Windows watermark
03:51 Personalize desktop background
04:19 Cheaper gray market Windows keys

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[whateverrandomnumber]

The EULA talks about SUPPORT, not about RIGHT OF USE.

You are totally legal activating Windows ARM on an Apple chip. You just can't call Microsoft for support in case you're having troubles.

[kanishksagar]

I don't even have a Mac but this is just too entertaining

[vernearase]

It probably drives Microsoft crazy that the fastest machine running ARM Windows is a MacBook Pro - not a surface device.

Microsoft wants to _make their own chips_ but don't have the silicon chops - so they second their silicon design to their silicon proxy: Qualcomm.

Qualcomm _does_ have SoC design expertise but in general they, like Samsung, use standard ARM designed CPU cores. In order to match Apple Silicon speeds, they need new processor designs but Qualcomm doesn't have the _processor design chops_ to compete with Apple. To alleviate this, Qualcomm bought Nuvia in hopes that Nuvia founders stole enough IP when they left Apple to create cutting edge new processors - but Nuvia knows if they _use_ Apple IP they'll be sued into a hole so deep you'll need an archeologist to find Nuvia remains.

Still in all, if Nuvia _does_ develop their own ARM CPUs, there's no guarantee that they'll be compatible with Apple Silicon - and if that's the case, Microsoft will happily insure that all their ARM Win code is compatible with Nuvia processors, leaving Apple Silicon customers out in the cold. This is the biggest reason not to seriously invest in ARM Win - there is no guaranteed future going forward.

Really there are only two ARM processor design houses: ARM and Apple. Apple was one of ARM's founding investors, way back when ARM grew from a tiny British Acorn. Apple and ARM have enjoyed a long relationship, and it's rumored that ARM designed AArch64 (ARMv8) at Apple's request, a completely new ISA from ARMv7 which contained condition code instruction components which left ARMv7 unoptimizable and unable to sustain long and deep out-of-order instruction pipelines.

[li_tsz_fung]

So... Don't pay for a license, it's not supported anyway, just bypass the activation

[mycuoyi]

Microsoft: "you can't use a Win11 on a mac machine"
99% of users:"sure....I'll wait for a letter from your lawyers"

[theo]

I never bought windows I been pirating for years lol

[Tech-geeky]

3:05 You can make the argument "VMWare do make Windows compliant because they REQUIRE TPM support"

UTM does not

So, VMWare "in part" do sort of agree to the compliance, , , maybe not the EULA, but they they didn't want to comply they wouldn't have TPM module either. Effectly, doing the same as UTM does.

[marcinmitura]

Dude, literally keys are a few bucks, especially Windows 7 ones that work with Windows 11. Caring about EULA or spending 200 bucks for (another in my case) licenses as a private person not a company is up to you.

[wily_rites]

I'm using the windows insider release beta, which does not have a watermark, you can't personalize it though, which is a bit of a shame. Thank you very much for the heads up, on windows not being authorized on mac hardware, you have stopped me from making the mistake of paying for yet another windows license.

[Techwithedwin]

I understand your video was 8 months (Feb 5, 2022) ago, but I just got Parallels 18 and I got it to work with my product key from the education edition of windows 11 from my school.

[slashmaru]

You can install arm-Win 11, fully activated via Parallel on M1

[alexisa]

That's a great video, I also used a Windows 7 key from my old Windows laptop and it activated as well :)

[kienhwengtai]

You can run Windows 10 without a license as well, some bits may not work but it mostly works anyway.

[cbo]

Nice presentation. I bought a copy of Parallels for my 14” M1 Pro, installed Win11 and activated it with a code from a 15 year old laptop. The old laptop was purchased on a great deal, unfortunately I had to upgrade it from Win8 Home to Pro, so I got use out of that old license, after all.

[aassembly]

Actually you could get away with using KMS activation via CMD with Administrator Perms.

[knx]

This is the exact reason I kept my i7/6core MBP on bootcamp and got the 14”MBP 10Core, and keep the lawyers out.

[alejmc]

One issue I had: I have been using windows 8.1 that got a free update to windows 10, which I started using on Parallels after I got rid of most things windows PC
After restarting and testing VMs a couple of times the key got “used up”. It detects new VMs as completely new machines, the old ones can’t really be deactivated and it burns through the couple of times that the key can be used to activate a license.
Probably a mistake worthy to mention.

[LunaticEdit]

I used a windows 8 pro key. Those things are basically free (I have an MSDN so even better). Worked perfectly.

[ChristmasEve]

Why does everyone refer to an unregistered copy of Windows as not "legal"? I got my ISO image FROM Microsoft. They let you download it and, as you mentioned, they even built in annoyances and the inability to fully customize for those who don't buy it. So Microsoft provides for a way for us to run Windows like that (if we don't mind it). That doesn't seem illegal to me. An illegal activity would be pirating a full version of something.

[stevojohn]

I used a £9.99 grey market key in the end. Seems to work fine.