VMware Fusion Tech Preview Brings Windows 11 to Apple Silicon Macs

[Spanky Deluxe]

This really is too little too late. I used VMWare for years, way back since the first version of VMWare Fusion and for the last three years I'd been using it daily for work. I didn't upgrade to an Apple Silicon mac for a good while but the writing appeared to be on the wall when VMWare refused to support Windows on Apple Silicon. When I finally upgraded to a Mac Studio, I also made the jump to Parallels. They had two years to sort their **** out from when Apple announced the move before I finally needed them to be ready for it and they spent most of that time actively saying "no, we'll never do that".

 

[RabidMacFan]

It's kind of dead out of the gate without the x86 W11 capability. I know that the limitations and difficulties aren't VMware's fault - its a huge downside for me of the AS platform as Windows VMs were so handy for my line of work. I moved ahead anyway as I couldn't stand the noise of those i9s any longer.

Windows 11 on arm will emulate Many x86 apps, similar to how Rosetta works. You may be surprised how well it works.

 

[HenrikWivel]

Windows 11 on arm will emulate Many x86 apps, similar to how Rosetta works. You may be surprised how well it works.

I can vouch for that. Have been using Windows 11 ARM under parallels 17.5 for almost a year now, and haven’t encountered anything that didn’t work.

 

[dwaite]

This really is too little too late. I used VMWare for years, way back since the first version of VMWare Fusion and for the last three years I'd been using it daily for work. I didn't upgrade to an Apple Silicon mac for a good while but the writing appeared to be on the wall when VMWare refused to support Windows on Apple Silicon. When I finally upgraded to a Mac Studio, I also made the jump to Parallels. They had two years to sort their **** out from when Apple announced the move before I finally needed them to be ready for it and they spent most of that time actively saying "no, we'll never do that".

If you mean they will never run X86 VMs, Parallels also does not run X86 VMs and will likely never support running X86 VMs. That is because they are both virtualization products, not emulators.

 

[noraa]

So no x64 Windows on M1 still.

Actually yes. Windows 11 for ARM has both x86 and x64 emulation - so running Windows for ARM in a VM will give you x86 and x64 emulation. I can't speak for VMware, but I've been running Win 11 in Parallels on my M1 MacBook Air for a while now, and it works surprisingly well. I haven't tried any type of gaming, but I've had zero issues with the vast majority of productivity apps.

 

[Cide]

Is there anyway I can run Windows 11 under a Catalina environment? Does anyone here know if this latest version of Fusion is supporting Catalina?

I didn't know that Windows 11 was working under parallels 17.5 already, why is parallels preferred over VMWare Fusion?

 

[sudo-sandwich]

Will be interesting to see how Windows 11 actually runs. Especially with some games running in the VM.

If it's similar to before, it won't run games well at all.

 

[sudo-sandwich]

Zorin, elementaryOS, Mint, Pop!_OS, SteamOS, and Peppermint are all user friendly too, even moreso than Ubuntu. People pick Ubuntu since it’s a recognizable name and the distro that started making Linux user friendly. However that was in the past. Nowadays there’s zero reason to run Ubuntu anymore other than you just hate yourself. The distro used to be good but using it is just a joke now with all the horrible decisions Canonical did to it such as Snaps and the fact there’s much better options now

Ubuntu is user-friendly on desktop and server purely because it's what tons of people use, so you can always find online help and get first-class support by software devs, vs say Arch where even Docker doesn't make official packages for you. Whatever technical decisions some people are objecting to, maybe they matter at some level, but they're nearly invisible to most users and dwarfed by the difference in support level.

My servers have been running Ubuntu for 7 years, and I don't hate that setup or myself. If you point newbies to use some random thing lacking support from all angles, it might turn them away from Linux altogether.

 

[startergo]

so I understand why people have issues with x86 virtualisation

What you run is not x86 virtualization. You run Windows ARM inside Apple silicon Mac.

 

[startergo]

You may be surprised how well it works

Not so well... Have you tried running Visual Studio or Microsoft Visio?

 

[dysamoria]

It isn't possible for it to work as well - Rosetta 2 relies on custom hardware features of the Apple CPUs, while Microsoft's implementation is written for generic ARM.

It is possible that Microsoft might work with Apple to fix this in the future - Apple does have a facility for linux VMs to use Rosetta 2 internally coming in Ventura.

Thanks for the info 👍🏽

 

[Romain_H]

Not so well... Have you tried running Visual Studio or Microsoft Visio?

Well, I agree VS is slow. But not much slower compared to the Intel version. I hear there‘s an Arm native version as well now - have not tried that one though

 

[MacBH928]

It's kind of dead out of the gate without the x86 W11 capability. I know that the limitations and difficulties aren't VMware's fault - its a huge downside for me of the AS platform as Windows VMs were so handy for my line of work. I moved ahead anyway as I couldn't stand the noise of those i9s any longer.

are you saying I can run the ARM windows on Mac then run modern games in emulation?!
how well does that work?

 

[mainemini]

If you want to run x86 based Operating Systems on Mx Mac, you need UTM.
This is similar to the good ol' PPC days where Real PC and Virtual PC could run Windows on a PPC based Mac. But... my word.... those were slow as h***. Luckily Apple SOC processors are infinite faster than the PPC CPUs 😛

I thought Windows 11 for ARM had it's own x86 emulator so no MacOS emulator like UTM is needed, just Parallels or VMWare to run Windows 11.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

If you mean they will never run X86 VMs, Parallels also does not run X86 VMs and will likely never support running X86 VMs. That is because they are both virtualization products, not emulators.

Of course not, I meant VMWare said they’d never run Windows ARM. I have no need for x86 emulation, just Windows that lets me run the apps I need. Windows ARM has its own x86 in-built emulation and I can run the Windows only x86 app I need for work just fine on Windows ARM through Parallels on my Mac Studio.

 

[McTaste]

"2D GFX" just couldn't spare the characters...

 

[l3it3r]

There sure are a lot of uninformed comments here.

I’ve been using windows on M1 and now M1 Max computers for a well over a year now.

Parallels has supported the ability pretty much from day one on the original M1 MacBook Pro, and while windows 10 ARM wasn’t amazing, it worked fairly well with a few limitations which basically made it feel very ‘tech demo’.

That said, in a rare change Windows 11 ARM is actually quite good. Microsoft makes Windows 11 ARM very easy to access (and you can even apply a win10 pro license to it) and it runs everything like its native x86/64. All of my company’s software runs fine on it, I can install anything I’d usually run in windows on it, and have even tested games from Steam running on windows 11 ARM, in Parallels. (Granted I’m using a fully spec’d 16” M1 Max, so your experience may vary).

Early on there were a few key pieces of software and capability that weren’t present in builds of windows 11 arm like sql, iis, etc. but they’ve been getting addressed. IIS works now, and I used an azure sql edge container in Docker on macOS to get around not having sql in windows at the time, but I believe the update is either out or forthcoming.

Anyway, I use windows 11 arm for my professional job every single day, without issue, fail, or concern. Parallels is my platform of choice for over a decade (own a license of each) and is literally where my money is made

 

[jlc1978]

UTM is great for free - and has the advantage that (being based on QUEMU) it is both a hypervisor and an emulator - so it can run x86 OSs as well (if slowly). I don't think it can match Parallels for bells and whistles, though.

I've never been able to get it to run properly. I set it up, it runs for a while then crashes and won't launch. It's been a PITA to get working, unlike Parallels.

Not so well... Have you tried running Visual Studio or Microsoft Visio?

I ran Visio just fine. What issues did you have?

 

[macsplusmacs]

Couldn't figure out how to convert the

VHDX​

The file that Arm windows downloaded as.

Drag and dropping a

​

VHDX​

does not work in the current Fusion for me.

 

[theluggage]

Of course not, I meant VMWare said they’d never run Windows ARM.

Well, they clearly meant "never" in the political sense...

Thing is, as already discussed, the situation vis. getting a licensed, production version of Window for ARM apparently changed late last year with the release of Windows 11. Parallels took a bit of a punt on advertising support based on the "insiders" preview version of Win10 - looks like VMWare were just a bit more cautious: if they started back in October when Windows 11 launched then a tech preview now sounds about right.

 

[AndyStarr]

What is the fascination with running Windows on an Apple device. Seriously choose your platform. The very last thing I want on my Mac is Windows.

 

[macsplusmacs]

What is the fascination with running Windows on an Apple device. Seriously choose your platform. The very last thing I want on my Mac is Windows.

Some people only need to run one program from windows, like for work or something, everything else can be run on the mac.

Not rocket science here.

Different people have different needs.

 

[seek3r]

What is the fascination with running Windows on an Apple device. Seriously choose your platform. The very last thing I want on my Mac is Windows.

Some of us work with remote platforms that have different OSes and want local test environments. Some people have a mac but want to easily be able to play some of their favorite games. Some people want to learn about another OS. Some people have a business or personal need for a specific windows only app but prefer macs in general. Etc. Not everyone's needs are yours, my dude.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

Zorin, elementaryOS, Mint, Pop!_OS, SteamOS, and Peppermint are all user friendly too, even moreso than Ubuntu. People pick Ubuntu since it’s a recognizable name and the distro that started making Linux user friendly. However that was in the past. Nowadays there’s zero reason to run Ubuntu anymore other than you just hate yourself. The distro used to be good but using it is just a joke now with all the horrible decisions Canonical did to it such as Snaps and the fact there’s much better options now

There’s better Linux distros to use. I’d recommend Zorin nowadays to newcomers, especially since it has a macOS UI mode.

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Fedora isn't based on Red Hat. Red Hat is based on Fedora.

Fedora is the bleeding-edge testing distro that they use as a base for RHEL. CentOS is now their rolling-release pre-RHEL distro.

If you want a distro that's based on Red Hat, you need Rocky Linux.

 

[david0128]

What you run is not x86 virtualization. You run Windows ARM inside Apple silicon Mac.

I know, that was my point. I don’t need x86 virtualisation. I need excel. That’s why I made the point that I understand why people that need the x86 virtualisation have an issue [even though I don’t need it].