Switching Back to MacOS

[alanharrylil]

Hi all,

I'm looking at moving back to MacOS, away from Windows and Linux. It's been 10 years now and am not up on the latest happenings on the software side. There are a few fundamentals I'd like to tick off before jumping back:

What is the state of RDP? I work remotely and need to Remote into Win11. Currently I do this either via the native Windows RDP or Linux if using one screen. Is there support for multiple monitors with RDP? I can't use external apps like no machine etc, have to use RDP.

I'm guessing boot camp is now a thing of the past, is Parallels the only VM app?

On the hardware side, what devices are running ethernet ports?


Thanks in advance.

 

[Farrgazer]

I'm guessing boot camp is now a thing of the past, is Parallels the only VM app?

There are UTM, VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox as alternatives. I cannot comment as to how they are in comparison to Parallels, as I am still waiting for my own delivery of my new Mac.

On the hardware side, what devices are running ethernet ports?

Mac mini, and the four-port variant of the iMac (it comes with a power block that has an Ethernet port).

 

[jzuena]

Microsoft has an official RDP app on the Mac App Store. It was recently renamed “Windows App”. I use it at work to RDP into Windows 10 and 11, as well as Windows Server 2016 & 2019 without problems. You can choose between running in a window and running full screen. If you run full screen it will use multiple monitors.

For VMs there are multiple options. Parallels and VMware Fusion (which is now free) are the most feature complete. Oracle Virtual Box (also free) is probably next, then there is the open source UTM which is both a straight hypervisor as well as an emulator based on QEMU (don’t expect miracles emulating x86_64 Windows on Apple Silicon, but emulating PowerPC MacOS 9 runs well).

 

[Basic75]

There are VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox as alternatives.

Add UTM to the list.

 

[wonderings]

I find Parallels to be the best software for VM simply for the coherence mode. This basically allows you to boot into Windows, but have no desktop, you access everything with a start menu in the dock and your apps look like native MacOS apps. When I was using some specific windows apps daily this was so much nicer then having a windowed VM.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

OP: emulators can be OK but they run ARM Windows which is not full Windows. If your lingering Windows needs are apps that run in ARM Windows, great. But if you have even one app that does not, none of them can help you.

Since I have a need for full Windows, when I went Silicon, I also added a Mac Mini-like PC. As actual PC hardware, it provides full Windows with great confidence. These can be relatively inexpensive thanks to abundant competition and they are easily expandable should your needs for RAM or internal storage evolve over life of device.

For monitor, rather than going with ASD which is all fans default recommendation as the one and only consumer monitor from Apple, I went with a third party monitor with more than one video input so that I could easily share it with both Silicon Mac and PC. Get one with a good hub built in and things like speakers and drives can connect to the monitor and thus be shared with both platforms. If the hub has KVM features, one keyboard and mouse can be used with both too. Go ultra-wide and you can split screen so you have Mac left and Windows right for the times where it may be beneficial to be using both at the same time.

Mac and macOS are great and all but there are still plenty of apps that run only on Windows. And PC is generally focused on power (which translates to computational speed) vs. PPW (which is about computational efficiency of power usage). In my case, I find myself giving "heavier lifting" tasks to the PC to do to get done faster, even if the same app DOES exist on Mac.

 

[wonderings]

OP: emulators can be OK but they run ARM Windows which is not full Windows. If your lingering Windows needs are apps that run in ARM Windows, great. But if you have even one app that does not, none of them can help you.

Since I have a need for full Windows, when I went Silicon, I also added a Mac Mini-like PC. As actual PC hardware, it provides full Windows with great confidence. These can be relatively inexpensive thanks to abundant competition and they are easily expandable should your needs for RAM or internal storage evolve over life of device.

For monitor, rather than going with ASD which is all fans default recommendation as the one and only consumer monitor from Apple, I went with a third party monitor with more than one video input so that I could easily share it with both Silicon Mac and PC. Get one with a good hub built in and things like speakers and drives can connect to the monitor and thus be shared with both platforms. If the hub has KVM features, one keyboard and mouse can be used with both too. Go ultra-wide and you can split screen so you have Mac left and Windows right for the times where it may be beneficial to be using both at the same time.

Mac and macOS are great and all but there are still plenty of apps that run only on Windows. And PC is generally focused on power (which translates to computational speed) vs. PPW (which is about computational efficiency of power usage). In my case, I find myself giving "heavier lifting" tasks to the PC to do to get done faster, even if the same app DOES exist on Mac.

Windows just like Mac has emulation for those apps that are not native. I was running Windows 11 ARM with an old piece of software, about 20+ years old. It was a a very expensive piece of software and it ran flawlessly. I think in everything I tried to throw at it I had one small obscure that did not work. That being said it is a good point and should test first if there are specific things you need to work in a virtual environment.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Windows does have emulation to try to run non-ARM Windows apps. And that would then be macOS running Windows ARM emulation running Windows X86 emulation. A search for Windows apps that don't run well in ARM Windows should be telling.

Again, if I'm OP, I'm attempting to check every Windows app I may need to run to insure it runs fine on ARM Windows. If so, a new Mac running ARM Windows emulation may be just fine. However, if I have at least 1 important app that does NOT run well or at all with ARM Windows, I have to think of a different strategy if I need that app(s). And one strategy is to keep the existing PC or buy a new PC to cover full Windows compatibility and thus not find myself depending on hope that ARM Windows emulators can cover all Windows needs on a Mac.