Ask Paul: September 18 ⭐

Happy Friday! We're on the cusp of Autumn here, so let's kick off the last weekend of summer a bit early with some great reader questions.
"Microsoft and OpenAI Workers Worry About 'Largest Theft of Labor' in History"

So, just slightly different than their public defense of these actions
🤖 Be my Frankenstein
wb asks:

The new Snapdragon X2 systems are exciting and your reports indicate that running Windows 11 on them is a very good experience. Have there been any further developments in the best way to run Windows 11 on Apple Silicon M-based ARM hardware? I’ve had mixed experience running Windows 11 under Parallels Desktop Pro, due to the need to get proper settings for high-res display support with 5 K monitors.

I've only tried two ways to run Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs in recent years:

Parallels Desktop, which has worked well in my experience and has a Coherence mode that I really like, but is basically just a subscription service now so you have to repay for it each year. (The one exception is that you can buy the Standard edition outright, but it's not guaranteed to fully support newer guest OS versions.)
UTM, which is free and more of a standard "OS in a window"-type virtual machine solution, but seems to work well enough.

But there are many other choices, including VirtualBox, which I use a lot on PCs and is free and quite good, though I don't recall trying it on the Mac. I used VMWare Fusion in the past as well, but it's been a while. The company is owned by Broadcom now and there's some weirdness there, but Fusion is also free, so it's worth checking out, at least.

It's difficult to know where to turn here because needs and expectations vary. The reason I like Coherence mode on Parallels is that it hides the virtual Windows desktop and just lets you run Mac and Windows apps side-by-side. But if the goal is to just run Windows, then it's worth testing other virtualization solutions. Any of them will let you run the Windows VM full-screen, it's just a matter of finding the one that best handles the specific hardware, it seems. I would start with Fusion.

I wish Apple would release Bootcamp for their hardware, it would serve a real need.

I do too, but I can't image they would ever do that now. Boot Camp was a way to counter blockers that potential Mac buyers had back when the platform was still struggling, but the situation today is quite different. Apple seems happy to let third parties deal with this now.
"Gears of War: E-Day Has Gone Gold"

Ah, the terms of yesteryear, how I love them so
🛜 Ethernet is the new USB
brettscoast asks:

Are 1Gbp Ethernet ports good enough for fixed cable connections to desktop PC’s in an AI-centric world?

I guess it depends on what you're doing. Any 1 Gbps or faster Ethernet connection will be better than Wi-Fi, if just for the steadiness of the connection. But then Wi-Fi is obviously fine for most people and most use cases, too. Or cellular if you're out in...