Parallels for Apple Silicon Macs Now Supports Windows 11 Pro

[redheeler]

Maybe I'm uninformed about the English language, but aren't you again saying it's expensive for professional use? I use it for business (professionally) and I consider it a bargain given how much money I make using Parallels. If Parallels cost twice as much, I'd still consider it a bargain. I don't spend my time looking for free software. I spend my time earning money so I don't have to look for cheaper inferior software.

Yeah but I'm sure you get my point. I'm not trying to say that it's expensive for professional use, definitely not trying to imply that IT departments wouldn't happily pay up if it gets official support from Microsoft and running Windows is necessary as a work function, but that it's expensive (compared to Virtualbox, $99 per year is expensive compared to $0 per year) and that it's for professional use.

 

[jlc1978]

Not gonna pay them $100 a year when I can use UTM to do the same **** for free and better

UTM? It's a great big bag of hurt - crashes, refuses to boot, etc. It's firn if you want to play around; but even tehn VM Ware is also free in such cases and at least it's stable.

Sure, there is essentially a subscription for Parallels, but I'm happy to pay for it. I earn a living because of Parallels and don't have to buy a PC. Not having to buy a PC covers the cost of Parallels for many years.

Same here. I use it to ensure 100% compatibility and test in Win environ.

Thirdly, why not? Boot Camp is a feature on Intel Macs so why can't the Apple Silicon Macs have it too?

Boot Camp was used to encourage switching to the Mac when it went Intel based since "you could still run your PC software;" with the idea that once people used MacOS they'd stay with it.

How have I never heard of UTM before?! Thanks for this!

Consider yourself lucky that you haven't.

You wouldn’t just have to pony up a hundred bucks for a Parallels license on a yearly basis as Apple would take care of keeping BC updated just like it did for Intel Macs.

Boot Camp can't replace a VM. It lacks many of the features that make a VM useful for many people.

Bootcamp, to a certain extent, was merely a relic from the early days of Intel Macs.

 

[Corefile]

But VMWare Tools for Apple Silicon is so crippled with missing features as to absolutely worthless to me whether or not it's free. No multi-monitor support, no copy/paste support with the Mac, no shared folders with the Mac. There are all done very well with Paralles. I really wish that people would stop claiming that VMWare is equivalent to Parallels in functionality, It simply isn't. Go to the Fusion discussion section on VMWare's web site and see how many people are mad and irritated with VMWare because of this and are threatening to move over to Parallels. What is so great about something for free when it is so useless for many? Free is sometimes anything but free. And Fusion is only free for personal use. If for professional use, you should be paying for it.

I run VMWare Fusion on Intel MacOS and it supports copy/paste and common file access. Not sure why it would be disabled for Apple Silicon. Perhaps you haven't configured your VM properly? Maybe ask somebody who can help you set that up. I use free products because I don't want to pay a yearly tax for Parallels. Even without copy/paste, etc., VMWare Fusion is plenty useful for what I need to do.

 

[Corefile]

There's a beta version on their website with ARM support! Must be pretty recent, I never saw that before. Maybe then it'd be possible to install ARM Windows 11, even if not supported? Someone should look into this.

I don't want to install Oracle products on my computer so somebody else can try!

 

[jameslmoser]

Good luck trying to run W11 ARM with Fusion. The latest Fusion, that supposedly supports ARM, is so incomplete as to be useless. The Tools are so crippled. No multi-monitor support anymore. No shared folders. No copy/paste between Mac and PC. I'm totally unable to run the software I need with Fusion.

I have been running it on Fusion for some time now... absolutely no problem at all, though I don't use most of those features.

Honestly until now I assumed the shared clipboard feature worked, but I guess it doesn't...

 

[BobSc]

I run VMWare Fusion on Intel MacOS and it supports copy/paste and common file access. Not sure why it would be disabled for Apple Silicon. Perhaps you haven't configured your VM properly? Maybe ask somebody who can help you set that up. I use free products because I don't want to pay a yearly tax for Parallels. Even without copy/paste, etc., VMWare Fusion is plenty useful for what I need to do.

You run Fusion on an Intel and have ABSOLUTELY no idea of it's capabilities/deficiencies on a Silicon mac, yet you assume I have no idea of what I'm doing. Have you even read through any of my posts? Have you spent 5 minutes on the VMWare forum learning about Fusion on Silicon? I used Fusion on my old Intel Macs for a number of years, so I'm well aware of Fusion's capabilities on an Intel Mac. I'm so happy for you that you don't care about those Fusion features that work on an Intel mac, but not on a Silicon Mac. If your going to accuse me of being stupid and uninformed and needing help to set this up when I probably have years more experience than you, please at least try to get just a tad bit more informed. Thanks so much.

 

[BobSc]

I have been running it on Fusion for some time now... absolutely no problem at all, though I don't use most of those features.

Honestly until now I assumed the shared clipboard feature worked, but I guess it doesn't...

Of course you don't have "problems". You're not using features that many others use and need. If you needed multi-monitor support, shared folder support, and copy/paste between the Mac and PC, you'd have those problems. The extent of incorrect and misleading information on this forum is staggering. It's as if so many really don't care about the facts and reality. I don't understand.

 

[KPOM]

Wow. I‘d have even thought Microsoft would run against Parallels for allowing this on their own. 😅 But maybe the number of active Parallels/Win11/ARM systems was enough evidence for MS to see the interest of users to use Win11 on the new cpus (and building on that with their own ARM hardware as well).

Parallels but not VMWare Fusion? I thought that was interesting. Why just one vendor?

Probably because Parallels did most of the work to make Windows 11 ARM run smoothly on Apple Silicon. Microsoft has reputational considerations. They wouldn’t want a big enterprise user to deploy this on several thousand Macs and have a bad experience. So they disclose what doesn’t work, and officially authorize what is currently the best virtualization software to run Windows on an M1/M2 Mac. If VMWare, which started much later, gets Fusion to work well, I’m guessing Microsoft will ”authorize” them as well.

My guess is that Parallels (or “Alludo” as they are now called) received word from Microsoft sometime over the last 2.5 years that they would officially authorize virtualization of Windows ARM once their exclusivity with Qualcomm ran out. They could have shut this down any time by building in a hardware check or issuing C&D letters. They didn’t, and Parallels even started offering downloads from Microsoft’s site before it was official. There was a reason Microsoft turned a blind eye. This way, they let someone else do most of the work and still get whatever incremental revenue comes from Mac users running Windows.

Note that it is officially only Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise that are supported, though Parallels still links users to the Home version upon request. Microsoft has the enterprise market in mind with this announcement since they will pay the full Enterprise license fee for every user while individual enthusiasts like those who post on MacRumors are more likely to scour the internet in search of $10 gray market OEM licenses.

 

[Blancpain]

I specifically just picked up a intel MBP so I could run "normal" windows in a VM and have access to everything I'm used to working with.

That’s what I just did, bought me a 64/5600M…

 

[KPOM]

D

Ding ding. But even running 32bit stuff via something like Crossover has a bad performance penalty due to some bug in Rosetta.

This doesn't appear to have the same issue under Windows ARM.

Note that Microsoft is deprecating support for 32-bit ARM apps. Apple dropped 32-bit support with Catalina in 2019. ARM itself is dropping 32-bit support from all future designs. And Apple has no reason to worry about 32-bit x86 apps, but Microsoft does, since there is still a huge library of Windows apps, including current releases, that are 32-bit x86.

 

[CosmoCopus]

I agree. So why are so many complaining about Apple not implementing Bootcamp on Silicon machines? Is this just more of the Apple hate that now pervades the forum?

Why would it be considered Apple hate if someone complains about a very useful feature Apple dropped that a lot of people used?

 

[KPOM]

We're in our 3rd year of Apple Silicon and no Bootcamp in sight.

Probably because no one has much of a financial incentive to develop it. Unlike Intel Macs, which used off-the-shelf components, Apple Silicon Macs use a proprietary SoC. There is one distro of Linux that can boot natively, but it’s taken a lot of effort, and it appears to be mostly a proof of concept rather than a serious investment.

Apple has no incentive to develop it. They aren’t actively courting “switchers” like they were in 2006, and get more cross sales from iPhone and iPad (which didn‘t exist back then). They’d rather their software engineers focus on their own operating systems than someone else’s.

Microsoft has no inventive to develop it. I think only 2-3% of Intel Macs had Bootcamp active. That’s not a big enough market to justify the outlay, particularly if they would need to update it every time a new Mac SoC comes out. Parallels and VMWare each had about 10-12 million users during the Intel era. With today’s move, Microsoft regains “official” access to the Mac market at virtually no cost to itself.

Parallels and VMWare want to sell you virtual machines.

 

[BobSc]

Why would it be considered Apple hate if someone complains about a very useful feature Apple dropped that a lot of people used?

Because they assume it's doable and Apple has some nefarious reason for not doing it. As far as I know, there has been definitive comments as to Bootcamp being able to run on Silicon. But Apple is being bashed anyway. That is the MO on MR.

 

[bobcomer]

Why? There are some older games you can’t play on modern hardware any other way.

Because that's not what virtualization does well -- ever, even using Microsoft's tricks with Hyper-V.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Nobody should expect to do any gaming in a virtual machine...

So why does the Intel version of VMWare Fusion supports DirectX, 3D Accelerated Graphics?

 

[JustAnExpat]

We're in our 3rd year of Apple Silicon and no Bootcamp in sight.

Bootcamp needs support by Microsoft for the drivers. Microsoft isn't giving Apple that support.

 

[JustAnExpat]

I have not researched this but how restrictive is the ARM version of windows? Do all the third party app I use need to be ARM too? If so it's useless to me.

I specifically just picked up a intel MBP so I could run "normal" windows in a VM and have access to everything I'm used to working with.

What "Apps" do you have currently? A good rule of thumb is the more complex the app, the less likely it'll run in Windows 11 Arm.

Remember, you're using a *virtualization layer* to run an emulator.

 

[JustAnExpat]

I guess what I'm asking is whether Microsoft has Rosetta-like emulation built into its ARM Windows that'll let x86 apps run on it? I don't need performance - entering taxes doesn't take a lot of CPU - but it has to work flawlessly. If it does, maybe I can finally retire my x86 Mac and move my Parallels license over to my Mx mac.

Yes it does. Opening an X64 or X86 application is transparent to the user. However, if I remember correctly, I know one of those Accounting software programs does not play nicely with Windows ARM, and you may be taking a performance hit as well.

 

[germinator]

It can run most but not all x86 (32-bit and 64-bit) applications. Some run better than others, as Microsoft’s translation layer is not as efficient as Rosetta 2.

What does "most but not all" mean? Can you run Matlab, JMP, Ansys, Comsol?

 

[chrfr]

Bootcamp needs support by Microsoft for the drivers. Microsoft isn't giving Apple that support.

I also doubt that Apple’s asking Microsoft for those drivers.

 

[bradl]

I also doubt that Apple’s asking Microsoft for those drivers.

Exactly. Which is why Bootcamp will not be coming back for Silicon. Why should one company provide that to who is their competition, especially when they are offering a product better than their own?

BL.

 

[xraydoc]

All to change it to the released version is buy a Windows 11 key, enter it, and turn off the preview program in Windows update and settings.

I've got the dev. release. Looks like I'll need to do a clean install to get out of dev mode. The options are greyed out in the Windows settings panel.

 

[KPOM]

I've got the dev. release. Looks like I'll need to do a clean install to get out of dev mode. The options are greyed out in the Windows settings panel.

I just turned off sending diagnostics to Microsoft and it gave me the option to leave the Insider program.

 

[KPOM]

Exactly. Which is why Bootcamp will not be coming back for Silicon. Why should one company provide that to who is their competition, especially when they are offering a product better than their own?

BL.

Microsoft and Apple are mostly “frenemies” now. Both have common competitors in Google, Facebook etc. And AI could change the game entirely.

Neither has a reason to promote the other but neither has a reason to stop Windows from running on Apple Silicon. It’s a win win for both. Parallels did most of the work getting Windows to run smoothly on M1/M2 Macs so it cost neither Apple nor Microsoft much effort. Letting M1/M2 Macs run Windows ARM preserves most of the benefits of the Intel era for Apple, and also lets Microsoft sell enterprises a few more Windows licenses.

 

[KPOM]

What does "most but not all" mean? Can you run Matlab, JMP, Ansys, Comsol?

I don’t have experience with those specific apps. Microsoft says it won’t run apps that require nested virtualization, so Linux and Android apps that work on PCs running Windows 11 won’t run on the Mac (though you can install a separate Linux VM with Parallels). DirectX 12 won’t run on Apple Silicon.

As for standard 32- and 64-bit x86 apps, most will work. But Microsoft’s “Rosetta” has its own limitations. That’s the same if you buy a Surface with a Qualcomm processor. Most apps will work just fine. But maybe not as smoothly as on an x86 processor.