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VMware Fusion 13 Now Available With Native Support for Apple Silicon Macs

Fusion 13 Pro and Fusion 13 Player are compatible with both Intel Macs and Apple silicon Macs equipped with M-series chips, offering native support. VMware has been testing Apple silicon support for several months now ahead of the launch of the latest version of Fusion.
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Great to see another VM environment arrive as native for AS Mac owners.

For Graphics, Fusion 13 sports OpenGL 4.3 in Windows and Linux VMs on Intel, and in Linux VMs on Apple Silicon.

On Intel, Windows continues to enjoy DirectX 11 graphics, and Fusion continues to support eGPU devices for incredible performance using some of the fastest GPU’s available.

On Apple Silicon, Fusion can deliver OpenGL 4.3 with blazing fast 3D hardware acceleration to arm-based Linux virtual machines with Linux kernel 5.19 or greater.
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On Apple Silicon, we’ve introduced our first round of features for Windows 11 on Arm. In this release VMware Tools provides virtual graphics and networking, and more is still to come. With certified and signed drivers Windows 11 looks fantastic, and adjust the resolution to 4K and beyond!
Note that Fusion on Apple Silicon must run the Arm variant of Windows 11, and it does not support the x86/Intel version of Windows.

However, for users who want to run more traditional win32 and x64 apps, Windows 11 on Arm has built-in emulation to run those applications compiled for Intel/AMD, and as a user-level process our testing has shown us that this works ‘out of the box’.
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winrar-emulated-2048x1398.png
 
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Veeper said:
I can’t wait to start arguing with my engineering staff again about how this time they should be able to boot/run their x86 VMs. :rolleyes:
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The original post was confusing, but I don't think they'll be able to run their x86 VM's under it. I would be very surprised if it includes an x86 platform emulator.

I really wish it did though!
 
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I’ve been in the beta program since the start, and it was pretty awful. I haven’t messed with it in about 2 months or so, hopefully they have improved a lot since I used it. They couldn’t even touch Parallels in performance ease of use, even going the the UTM route was better.

I’m going to have to try it out and see how it goes. I would love it if they can get better graphics performance out of Windows, and the ability to run macOS VMs, and actually have any kind of decent features (Parallels’ support for ARM macOS is awful and featureless)
 
In one respect, great to see Fusion 13 get released. One caveat though, even if there are ARM-based o/s installs for your favourite linux distro, the vmware-tools are unlikely to be readily available (probably requires having to locally compile these).
 
So download the vm player and get a win 11 key and away we go? M1 Max with 64GB ram and 2TB so should run decently but not a gamer but…… would be interesting to see how it runs. Hmmm a weekend project lol
 
Veeper said:
I can’t wait to start arguing with my engineering staff again about how this time they should be able to boot/run their x86 VMs. :rolleyes:
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That would be emulation, not virtualization. You would need UTM for that, but last I checked, x86/x64 Windows is basically unusable in emulation. Your best bet is to setup either an ARM Win 11 VM (if you can use that), or switch over to an either a Terminal Server or a cloud virtual environment for x86/x64 Windows.
 
Edgecrusherr said:
I’ve been in the beta program since the start, and it was pretty awful. I haven’t messed with it in about 2 months or so, hopefully they have improved a lot since I used it. They couldn’t even touch Parallels in performance ease of use, even going the the UTM route was better.

I’m going to have to try it out and see how it goes. I would love it if they can get better graphics performance out of Windows, and the ability to run macOS VMs, and actually have any kind of decent features (Parallels’ support for ARM macOS is awful and featureless)
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It’s buggy alright.
In the release notes they claim to have fixed a know bug present in previous versions that caused 100% CPU. It’s not fixed. If anything it now occurs more often.
 
The site must be getting slammed or something. That was like pulling teeth just to sign in, sign up for a NEW license (the 12 ones don't work) and then waiting for it to finally show my info in my account (once I figured out how to actually get to that page with the license on it).
 
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A few things I noticed:
  • Yes, it's free for home use. No using it for work, but for most of us everything we need is indeed free. This is the same as it was in v12.
  • VMware is extremely careful/cagey in their descriptions of Win11 on ARM support (i.e. on Apple Silicon). It strongly reads that while there is graphics and networking support, there does not appear to be any graphics acceleration support - so no 3D whatsoever. They are very careful to specify Linux only on ARM, and Windows only on Intel.
  • Likewise, the only VMware Tools mentioned for Windows/ARM are for networking and graphics, meaning no file sharing, clipboard integration, etc. They might be there, but it sure doesn't look like it from how careful they were in specifying what edition does what.
I have a feeling if they just came out and said "Windows 11 on ARM doesn't do these things" then people would be a lot less excited. All in all, very disappointing. Parallels did full Windows integration with acceleration what - over a year ago? It's worked great for me, even though their Mac look-and-feel is always a bit janky.
 
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TSE said:
How does this compare to Parallels? I'd love to dump that company out on the street but in past versions they just didn't compare, Parallels was way better! Especially with 3D stuff!
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Why do you want to dump Parallels out on the street? What did they do to you?
 
rmcq said:
Yes it can run x64 Windows apps well. The biggest issue for me is the pathetic driver support. Very few (any?) printer companies provide ARM drivers, so you’re left with either no support or just basic generic driver support.

Note that you can’t use x64 drivers.

For me that was a deal breaker since my printer had multiple trays.
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Just share your Mac printer with Windows.
 
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Cannot wait for law enforcing Apple to allow side loading apps on iOS / iPasOS so that VMware releases Fusion Player for iPad.

Et voilà, macOS on iPad (with mouse + keyboard of course). Topic closed.
 
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Kierkegaarden said:
Exactly the same question I have. I have a family member that still uses Windows, so being able to run Windows 11 would move then towards the wonderful magical world of Mac.
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If your family member uses Windows, why would they be better off virtualising it on a Mac? Just let them continue using a PC. A PC isn't that scary, really.
 
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london_r said:
In one respect, great to see Fusion 13 get released. One caveat though, even if there are ARM-based o/s installs for your favourite linux distro, the vmware-tools are unlikely to be readily available (probably requires having to locally compile these).
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Those should all be available for distros that have Arm64 ISOs to install with by now.
 
Kierkegaarden said:
Exactly the same question I have. I have a family member that still uses Windows, so being able to run Windows 11 would move then towards the wonderful magical world of Mac.
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I found the quality of the two excellent. But I find the vmware licensing model less restrictive. Quite frankly, Parallels licensing model is a pain in the butt. It "calls in" to license, which can be a pain to move it to another machine. Vmware doesn't give a crap, it's just a text number, the app doesn't check a licensing server for validation.
 
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Can't wait until more apps will be windows on arm compatible (with decent performance). It would be lovely to have macOS and Windows 11 (fully usable) on the same machine, nut emulated apps lose performance.
 
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the writer said:
It says I need to be a member of the Windows Insider Program, which I am not. Help!

So I caved and registered for the Windows Insider Program but I keep getting page not found errors.
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FYI, Parallels has some way to download a non-Insider version of Win 11 Arm. Some more details here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nning-x86-software-beautifully.2331575/page-2

So a non-Insider version does exist, but I'm not sure if there's a public link to it anywhere. The ISO filename is:

22000.318.211104-1236.co_release_svc_refresh_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_A64FRE_en-us.iso

and it activates fine with a standard Win 10 Home key.
 
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So in the past VMWare Fusion has not been good for things like games but very solid work work. I have used it for years for development project for my company. So this announcement is good for me but for all the people that want to use it for gaming have they update their graphics support?
 
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