The i’s are the Windows of the soul
Six Colors subscriber Brandon Minich asked:
I haven’t been able to keep track of…what is the current status of the emulation of Windows on the Mac after the changeover to Apple silicon? Is this even worth doing like it used to be in the Intel days? And how does the ARM-based Windows work with Mac emulation, if at all?
It’s been a somewhat twisty road at times, but there is one strong option and one also-ran for using Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac at not far below the performance you would get on today’s comparable ARM-based chips used to run Windows. As of January 2025, you can even run Intel 64-bit x86 versions of Windows, though you will find it painfully slow.
Giving Boot Camp the boot
The M-series Macs came out of the gate blazing fast. While many pundits had predicted for years that Apple would release Macs running silicon the company had designed, the ARM-based Apple chips’ performance exceeded everyone’s expectations. But this caused immediate trouble for people who relied on Windows emulation (using VMware or Parallels) or who used Apple’s multi-system Boot Camp option: ARM processors couldn’t run x86 Windows code.
The fortunate timing was that the computer industry was already making a shift from Intel’s long-running x86 architecture to ARM-based chips before Apple released the first M1 Macs. As a result, Microsoft had a version of Windows for ARM well into testing, although the company hadn’t yet authorized its virtualized use.1 And Windows for ARM would seemingly require new versions of popular software, too.
The sheer computational power of Apple silicon beckoned us to give up our Intel Macs, yet any dependency on Windows software meant the shiny red ball was being held just out of reach, beyond our grasping efforts.
But there were glimmers of what was to come. Apple had wisely shipped the M1 Macs with Rosetta 2, which enabled the emulation of Intel Mac code on ARM.2 And Microsoft was no slouch, either, including 32-bit x86 emulation in Windows 10; it added x64 (64-bit) emulation in Windows 11, using a system it calls Prism.
With Boot Camp dead, since you can’t start up into an Intel environment, Parallels and VMware Fusion became the only alternative, with Parallels releasing a version supporting Windows 11 for ARM in August 2021 and VMware over a year later. Microsoft initially didn’t offer official support for using its operating system in emulation on Apple silicon, but blessed Parallels Desktop in 2023. VMware took this as a blessing, too, though I’ve never understood why.
Just pause for a minute to realize something absurd: an M-series processor, even the original M1, was powerful enough to run a virtualized version of Windows for ARM, which could handle executing x86 Windows software in emulation while you also ran Intel-based Mac software in the main macOS environment.
You make a dead Mac cry
The landscape today puts Windows emulation on Apple silicon on stable ground with a boost in January 2025 that gives you even more options, depending on your needs.
Parallels seems to have won the consumer desktop game in a quirky way. Both Parallels and VMware have continued developing their virtualization software for Apple silicon. However, Parallels’s feature set now significantly outpaces VMware Fusion, and VMware has given up on selling licenses for Fusion, which is free for personal and commercial use as of November 2024—that may speak to its future. Parallels integration with macOS has always been better, from installation to drag-and-drop support to commingling Mac and Windows apps in a unique Coherence mode.
Parallels has two versions that most people would consider: Parallel Desktop Standard Edition and Pro Edition. Standard has limitations on the amount of RAM and processing power you can throw at a virtual machine and is meant to run a single VM at a time. Pro strips the limits off, adds graphical processing support, and allows multiple VMs to run simultaneously. You might find Standard sufficient if you’re not engaged in development, documentation, or testing, but its memory, CPU, and GPU restrictions could chafe.
Because of its relationship with Microsoft, you can purchase Parallels Desktop and install Windows 11 with a couple of clicks. Windows 11 can be used without paying for a license and activating it, though this prevents personalization and may prevent downloading non-critical updates. The OS will also nag you (including in a persistent background image) about activation. For occasional use, this might be ok, although you can purchase highly discounted legal Windows 11 licenses.
In January 2025, Parallels announced the release of one missing piece: Desktop can fully emulate a 64-bit x86 processor, although not all Parallels features are available). It’s also apparently incredibly slow, taking several minutes just to boot. However, with a sufficiently powerful M-series Mac and patience, you can now run 32-bit or 64-bit x86 apps in a 64-bit operating system as a virtual machine if you had a previously unmet need or one that was incompatible with Windows x86-based ARM emulation.
Parallels Desktop Standard Edition is $100 per year (currently discounted to $65) or can be purchased with no recurring fee for $220. The Pro Edition is available only as a subscription: $120 but with a current discount of $80. Those reduced rates are for the first year. However, I have found in the past, when I needed an active subscription, I was typically able to find a reduced license fee through a bundle with another product I already purchased; I’m not sure if this is still the case.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Thanks to Jackson for emailing that VMware had updated its terms to include free commercial use for its emulators!
- Virtualization typically involves creating a walled-off area inside a computer operating system that believes itself to be a fully functional computer, running code that’s native to an operating system. An operating system runs inside that. A hypervisor is software that aids in creating these virtual machines. Apple has built-in hypervisor support. Most of the time, full operating systems have to be native to work as a virtual machine on another computer or server. Emulation is used to bridge that gap; see next note. ↩
- Emulation lets you run software built for one processor to work on another, on the fly or by performing a one-time conversion on the non-native code. By my count, Apple has pulled off this emulation transition four times since the original Mac operating system—or five, if you count using iOS/iPadOS apps on M-series Macs. See my 2021 TidBITS article, “Emulation, Virtualization, and Rosetta 2: A Blend of Old, New, and Yet To Come.” ↩
[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (Aperiodical LLC) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing).]
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