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Parallels 16.5 Can Virtualize ARM Windows Natively on M1 Macs With Up to 30% Faster Performance

I bet you can’t run M1 apps in Parallels for x86. There soon will be need for that.
 
This is good news, especially if Windows ARM has a way to emulate x86 applications. For work I need my MBP to be able to run VMs that host customer specific apps or VPN software to separate it from the rest of the system. Hope this is all ready when my 2015MBP is ready to be replaced :D
 
dlewis23 said:
It's not impossible to do. Just as it is right now I believe the reason is, it will just be super complex to get something like Windows x86 running and would be extremely slow when using it.

Just look at how slow apps like Photoshop are when emulating the Windows X86 version on Windows on Arm. Throw 64bit into it and the problem gets even worse.
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Yeah, you're right. Those of you who have used VirtualPC long ago in the era of Motorola 68000 processors and PowerPC will know it well. How bad it is to emulate a heterogeneous processor of similar performance...
 
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ikir said:
I'm running any 32bit app on Win 10 ARM
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If you are, then it's emulated. You could get a miniPC and be running it natively for less than the cost of Parallels + Windows. (And that's even if you could buy Windows for ARM, which you can't.)
 
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ikir said:
I've tried Parallel Desktop beta with Win 10 ARM and I was very very impressed. Now its VMWare turn.
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I have been advocating for VMware in the past but they have really dropped the ball. Few years ago, they laid off or transitioned most of the key engineers in the US. Since then, it effective became a maintenance product with only small number of major new features. VMware Fusion 12 is still quite unstable under Big Sur, especially around advanced networking configuration. And they are late to support M1.
 
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Great. Now, bring virtualization or at least emulation for Windows x86 applications (32-bit & 64-bit) as well. And also for previous Mac versions like Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard.
 
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whiteonline said:
I don't get the appeal.
If you need to run virtualized Windows, it's most likely you have a x86 application dependability. Windows 10 ARM will only execute x86 apps from the Windows store.
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138537166_10160383053484256_4398540549519514096_n.jpg


Here's my M1 MacBook Air, using Parallels to virtualize the ARM version of Windows 10, which is emulating an x86 version of an app that’s further emulating a PlayStation 2.
 
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Cheesehead Dave said:
View attachment 1757735

Here's my M1 MacBook Air, using Parallels to virtualize the ARM version of Windows 10, which is emulating an x86 version of an app that’s further emulating a PlayStation 2.
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How’s gaming performance? Does it work reasonably or is there too much performance loss in virtualisation and windows for ARM x86 emulation?

That would be pretty much my only use case for windows on a Mac as I’ve recently rediscovered a classic (Anno 1404) and borrowed a friends old windows laptop for that.
 
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ArtOfWarfare said:
Parallels is a lot of work. Boot Camp would be easier, but they already dropped support for that. I think there's also little reason for Apple to do it anymore... there's very little software that's exclusive to Windows. Most programs are done in Python, Java, or JavaScript and can just run on any computer. Most of the software that was out there that wasn't available for the Mac was on iOS, so it makes more sense that Apple is focusing on making it easier to bring iOS apps to macOS. I suppose there's the whole universe of games out there... but I don't think Apple cares that much about them. They're mostly either platform exclusives so the Mac and Windows will never get them, or they're cross platform and already coming to Mac and Windows whether Apple tries or not.
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All good points. I think I'm in the minority, but I am really sad about BC losing native support. For me, it's because I only want to own one computer at a time. I'm a gamer, and I use BC/Windows 10 to game. That's it. Everything else is on the Mac side. It's a great setup, as I don't have to lug around two computers. I know, a gaming rig would be better, but I want one computer. I don't need the latest desktop-class graphics card; I just want to run any modern game. I can currently do so just fine with my 16" MBP w/ an i9 and 32 gb of ram. Here's hoping virtual machines like Parallels can eventually be close to the system efficiency of BC, or perhaps Microsoft will start selling the ARM version of Windows. Doubt it, but one can hope.
 
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MacinMan said:
They may have deleted it simply because it's not ready for the general public yet, and they don't want people trying it and suffering data loss that could lead to liabilities.
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I suspect that’s also part of the reason since there were lot of persons commenting about issues. But I clearly stated in a disclaimer this is not officially supported and you should backup before attempting to use it. I just find it bothersome I wasn’t even contacted about it. It’s lucky thing I had a copy of the article open in another tab. I just copied it into Pages then uploaded to my WordPress blog.
 
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Phil A. said:
It's not technically impossible but no-one has done it (Parallels uses the built in MacOS hypervisor which is a virtualisation platform, not an emulation platform).
I think the virtualisation route is more sensible because Microsoft actively support running X86 (and X64 soon) windows programs on Arm Windows, which allows you to run X86 windows apps on an Arm native installation of Windows.
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imdropbear said:
It's not impossible. It's absolutely possible. But it is probably a huge effort and we don't know how much performance would be lost in the process. Right now, it doesn't seem like any major player is working on this, probably because they think it won't be worth it.

It would be probably be very expensive and I don't know how much interest there really is, or rather how much willingness to actually pay big dollars for it on the customer side. There's surely plenty of people who *want* this but I doubt very many of them are actually ready to pay more than a few bucks.
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dlewis23 said:
It's not impossible to do. Just as it is right now I believe the reason is, it will just be super complex to get something like Windows x86 running and would be extremely slow when using it.

Just look at how slow apps like Photoshop are when emulating the Windows X86 version on Windows on Arm. Throw 64bit into it and the problem gets even worse.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the clarification! I was under the impression that it was impossible. I definitely won't hold my breath, ARM Windows sounds much more promising.
 
If running the ARM Windows via parallels does that also mean you have to have ARM versions of all your apps? Looking for a solution to run Solidworks on M1 Macs...
 
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