Ahmet Deveci

Apple has confirmed that its forthcoming Mac hardware running Arm-compatible Apple silicon will do away with Boot Camp, the iGiant’s tool for booting Macs using Microsoft Windows.

In a video interview with Apple pundit John Gruber, Apple senior veep of software engineering Craig Federighi explained, “We couldn’t direct-boot those machines to an x86 version of Windows, which is what today’s Boot Camp does. But we’re not direct-booting an alternate operating system. Purely virtualization is the root. These hypervisors can be very efficient, so the need to direct-boot shouldn’t really be the concern.”

Boot Camp debuted in 2007 with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), the year after the Mac moved from PowerPC chips to Intel x86 processors. It allows Mac users to launch Windows from a hard drive partition and natively run various Windows applications unavailable on the Mac.

On forthcoming Apple silicon-based Macs, those committed to Windows don’t have obvious options. Apple’s Rosetta 2 x86 translation layer doesn’t work with “Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms,” the company’s documentation explains.

During the recent WWDC virtual keynote presentation, Andreas Wendker, VP of tools and frameworks engineering, demonstrated a forthcoming version of Parallels Desktop for Mac on a Mac powered by Apple silicon running an Arm-based Debian Linux VM. But a virtualized version of Windows was conspicuously absent.

In the comment section of the Parallels blog, the omission of a Windows demo prompted multiple customers to ask whether Windows will be supported on Apple silicon when the hardware is expected to debut around the end of the year.

Apple to keep Intel at Arm’s length: macOS shifts from x86 to homegrown common CPU arch, will run iOS apps

Parallels communications manager Beatrice Vogel replied to each inquiry by pointing forum participants back to the blog post that said nothing about Windows support.

In other words, the company repeatedly ducked the question.

The Register asked Parallels about this and John Uppendahl, VP of communications, in an email referred back to that same blog post, adding, “Parallels does not have additional details to share or announce at this time.”

It may be that Parallels doesn’t yet know whether x86 Windows emulation will be possible or that Apple’s omertà policy is enforcing silence until Apple itself can say something on the subject when the Apple silicon-based Macs actually ship.

We’ve asked Apple to comment, fully expecting to hear nothing. So far, we’ve not been disappointed.

VMware Fusion product manager Michael Roy meanwhile took to Twitter to ask people what they want and many of the respondents in the thread made it clear that the ability to run x86 Windows is essential for their business. Absent that capability, several suggested, they would not consider an Apple silicon-based Mac.

Federighi said the mention of virtualization during the WWDC keynote was a nod to interest in the topic among developers.

“We have created a new version of our Virtualization framework that makes it even easier to do virtualization on all Macs, including these new Macs,” he said, hinting that he’d had plenty of feedback on the subject already.

There’s no data yet on how virtualized software will perform on the unreleased Apple-designed chips, but currently Boot Camp tends to be the better solution for performance-intensive Windows applications like games, and may outperform native macOS builds of games due to DirectX support. For business-oriented apps, it depends on the workload and how its processed.

Microsoft currently offers a version of Windows 10 that runs on Arm silicon. The Windows maker has said that it only licenses Windows 10 on Arm to its vendor partners and has declined to elaborate further.

Expect to hear more about this toward the end of the year. ®

This Tom Kerridge slow roast lamb with boulangère potatoes was shown to me by a friend mine, Danny. Who of course was inspired by Tom Kerridge.

I’ve made this so many times now and each time we (family) eat it, we are left with a big smile on our faces. I’ve been asked about how I made it by a few people, so here is the step by step guide. Please note that the finished product picture below was actually taken on a previous time I made the dish, just in case you were wondering that it looks slightly different at the end!

Ingredients:
Shoulder of Lamb
Potatoes
Onions
Garlic
Fresh Thyme
Chicken Stock
Water
Salt
Pepper

Serves:
4-5 Adults, although I’d recommend steaming up some vegetables to go on the side too.

Instructions:

1) Slice the potatoes and cover the bottom layer of the roasting dish.

2) Sprinkle half moon cut onions on top of those, sprinkle with salt, pepper and fresh thyme leaves.

3) Repeat (1) & (2) according to your serving, essentially forming layers of the above.

4) Boil 600ml of water and add two chicken stock cubes. Add that to the dish.

5) Place the lamb shoulder joint on top (having already pierced it with garlic cloves like in the picture)

6) Place on the bottom shelf of a pre-heated, fan assisted electric oven at 130 degrees for 5 hours (your oven may vary)

7) Eat like gods.

We all know how easy it is to skip a workout, or two, or three… And no matter what people say, everyone has missed at least one workout at some point in their lives. In fact, science does suggest that taking short, regular breaks from your exercise regime can help you to make bigger and better gains in the future (so missing a workout isn’t all bad news). But one thing all of us fear when we miss a workout is that we’re actually making ourselves get unfit by not going to the gym or hitting the track.

And it turns out that few of us actually know how long it takes for us to become unfit. The answer to this question depends on what type of exerciser you are – if you work out 5 or 6 days a week, you’ll be able to bounce back better than someone who works out more occasionally.

Generally, if you’ve worked out consistently for most of a year, you tend to have developed solid muscle memory (this is exactly like it sounds, where your muscles are conditioned to remember and respond well to exercise). Typically, both serious and committed casual athletes exhibit good muscle memory, and this stands them in good stead when it comes to losing fitness.

But the overall rate of fitness loss is different depending on what type of fitness you are talking about – is it loss of strength? Or loss of cardiovascular endurance?

Strength
For most regular or committed athletes, strength loss tends to happen after a two and a half week break from practice – but again, it depends on why you’re taking the time off. Molly Galbraith, co-founder of Girls Gone Strong, suggests that, “if you are sick, your body is overstressed, so you’ll start to lose strength after two to three weeks,” but that, “if you’re not sick, and especially if you’re able to get in some movement and light exercise, you can probably take three, four, even five weeks off without significant strength loss.”

Molly’s recommendations are backed up by science – the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise published a review of several studies on the subject of strength loss in rowers, runners and power athletes and found that muscular strength didn’t change after a month of inactivity!

But… It’s not all great news. The review suggested that sport-specific muscles (like slow-twitch fibres for endurance runners) did show a (sometimes a significant) loss of strength after as little as two weeks away from practice. Yikes!

Cardio

Unfortunately, it looks like it’s bad news when it comes to cardio, as science suggests that we lose cardiovascular endurance faster than we lose strength. One study showed a 20% reduction in cardiovascular fitness in endurance cyclists after a four week break from practice.

But while it looks like your cardiovascular fitness decreases faster than your strength, it is actually faster to return – so it’s not all bad news!

Newbies
If you’re a relative newbie to exercise there’s some great news! You tend to lose strength and cardiovascular fitness less quickly than people who are conditioned and committed athletes!

The theory that newbies have a slight advantage when it comes to building strength and endurance does stand true, and it turns out that they have an advantage when it comes to keeping it as well.

Overall
With all of this in mind, it’s pretty safe to say that if you miss the odd workout here and there, it isn’t too much of a big deal, and you shouldn’t sweat it! But if you’re consistently taking long breaks from practice, you might want to think about getting back on the treadmill or starting to pump some more iron.

Credit: https://www.keepit100.com/health/do-you-know-how-long-it-takes-to-become-unfit/

As a society, we’ve accepted that using your phone in certain situations is bad. At dinner, it is rude and makes for empty conversations. While driving, it’s a danger to yourself and those around you. At the movies, it’s a surefire way to get your neighbors to hate you. And there are even situations — a sunset, a nice restaurant meal — where lots of us say, you know, let’s just try to enjoy this smartphone-free.

Objectively, falling asleep with your phone in your bed is also bad — or at least, not good. Both scientific studies and general common sense warn of the pitfalls of falling asleep with phones: They keep us up too late and wake us up in the middle of the night and the “blue light” from screens hurts our sleep cycles, resulting in sleep that is both too short and often interrupted.

But many, if not most, of us are doing it anyway.

Staff at BuzzFeed were asked in a survey, if they ever fall asleep with their phones in their beds. Of the 82 people who responded, 70% said they at least sometimes sleep with their phones in their beds, and 41% said they do it almost every night.

Single people were somewhat more likely to sometimes sleep with their phones in their bed — 78% of singles and 61% of people in relationships said they at least sometimes sleep with their phones in their bed. Roughly 95% said they sleep with their phones either in their beds, or on a nightstand or floor right next to it, and only four people said they leave their phones away from the bed, either in another room or on another side of the room.

The respondents, admittedly, are a hyperconnected group. So, while by no means conclusive, it’s a look at how hard it can be to disconnect, even while unconscious.

So why do we do it? And how does it make us feel? I also asked the respondents to share some thoughts, which revealed that a lot of us feel anxious about the effects — both long and short term — of sleeping with our phones, but many of us simply just accept it as a reality of the way we live now.
While responses varied, I identified what I believed to be five distinct behaviors and attitudes:

1. The Principled

This is the very small minority of people who actually shut their phone down before bed. People did this for two reasons: either because they struggle with waking up and find that using their phone as an alarm that requires getting out of bed to turn off is a good way to force yourself to wake up, or because they recognized that shutting down is a healthy habit that helped their sleep (and life). If you see someone looking happy and well-rested, they may well be of this contingent.

2. The Super-Connected and Slightly Concerned

The largest group were those who sleep with or near their phones, out of necessity and/or comfort, and worry a little about what it might do to one’s sleep cycle. They said, for example:

“Yes it freaks me out, but I work for the internet and the internet never sleeps.”

“I think it might affect how quickly I can fall asleep. Often times I try to put it down and unwind, but I feel restless and finally give in and pick it up and start distracting myself on it.

“I worry that sleeping with my phone affects my sleeping patterns, but I also can’t stop.”
“It certainly doesn’t feel good. It feels like an addiction: compulsive and unhealthy.”

3. The Worried About the Long Term

A bunch of people said they had concerns about what effect sleeping near a phone will have — over a lifetime. One person wrote: “I feel OK unless we find out we’re all going to have cancer in 20 years :(”

Said another: “My phone is my clock so I like to have it near me. The only thing that freaks me out is if there’s some kind of freaky radiation we don’t know about and in 20 years I’m going to be screwed.”

4. The Sleep Trackers

Quite a few people said they kept their phones nearby because they used a sleep-tracking app, most commonly Sleep Cycle, which actually requires you to keep your phone in your bed. According to its website: “Since you move differently in bed during the different phases, the Sleep Cycle alarm clock is able to use the accelerometer in your iPhone to monitor your movement and determine which sleep phase you are in.” In the morning, it wakes you up at the ideal time, within a designated window. The Sleep Trackers (major motion picture coming soon?) spoke highly of the practice, and though some said they wished they didn’t have to sleep so close to their phones, most said it was worth it overall. One person called it “magic.”

5. The ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A number of people said they sleep with their phones, and don’t worry about it or notice any negative effects.

“I feel like I SHOULD unplug like an hour before bed but I never do. It’s one of those ~healthy habits~ I just can’t adopt. I don’t floss either!”

In sum, as one person put it: “It may be bad for me but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”