Parallels is incredibly easy to use even for beginners and once you’ve downloaded everything, will install Windows on an Apple Silicon M1 or M2 Mac in little more than 10 minutes. Microsoft has recently released a new emulator to bring support for 64-bit x86 programs for Windows 10 ARM. Parallels is a virtual machine which runs Windows virtually within macOS meaning you can switch between Windows and macOS instantly. This means that a lot of apps that are 64-bit will not work. Currently, only 32-bit programs are supported by the Windows 10 ARM version. Even if there is support planned for Boot Camp, you can only run the ARM version of Windows 10 that has its own limitations. Boot Camp is not supported on the Mac devices with Apple M1 chip. However, the entirely different architecture of M1 Macs makes them unable to run Windows. This was because both the Intel Macs and PCs had the same hardware architecture.

Parallels is a registered trademark of Parallels International GmbH. Intel-based Macs used a feature called “Boot Camp” to install and use Windows on Mac. Apple, Apple M1, Apple M2, and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc. While existing Mac apps that haven’t upgraded support for Apple Silicon can still be run using the built-in translator called Rosetta 2. However, the shift from the x86 Intel architecture to ARM architecture to gain greater battery efficiency and tighter optimizations have made many apps incompatible to run on the new Mac computers. Figure 1macOS Monterey There are three ways to create a VM for a macOS: Use the Install macOS (name) app directly in the creation of a new VM. The introduction of the Apple Silicon aka Apple M1 Chip has been revolutionary for Apple’s new lineup of Mac M1 devices – MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13”, and Mac mini. My Mac is a low-end M1 model with just 8 GB of RAM, but I’d go for a 16 GB version if I were buying now and would give more RAM to Windows (the Automatic setting on my system is up to 4 CPUs, 3.

Parallels macos m1