Today Apple announced new Macs with Apple M1 Processor and MacOS BigSur. Will it be supported to install Windows 10 x64 on those, and when? Some Months ago Parallels had announced to be working together with Apple on support, but nothing mentioned anymore since that.
I read this and am still confused. I just last week paid for a new Parallels license because you told me BigSur would not be compatible. Are you saying this WILL support Windows Guest OS on M1, or that a future in-development version will and this purchase was a bit of a waste? I am due to upgrade my Mac and Parallels is essential to my work... please confirm at this time will new Macs be able to run Windows VMs or not? I might have to upgrade to an Intel based MacMini while I can still buy one! I also am unclear HOW an ARM Mac can host x64 guest OS, can anyone explain? Is that what this Rosetta is, some kind of emulator?
From my understandin Parallels cannot support Windows 10 x64 on a M1 based Mac. Instead it will support Windows ARM. And Parallels is hoping that Windows Arm will get a x64 emulator. So it will end up in running a emulaor on a virtualized machine. Sounds not very promising to me. Another problem is that Windows Arm license cannot be bought, it is included in hardware. This is another problem. So a lot of questions still there, at the moment it seems there is no way to use Windows on a M1 Mac.
Ah, I had thought they were saying Win x64 could itself run in some sort of emulated mode which didn't sound very likely to work well. Though I'm not sure this is much better. So if I get a new M1 Mac, all my existing Windows VMs will simply be unusable? I think I would like Parallels to make a bit more of a fuss about this, because lots of people might just buy a shiny new Mac without realising this at all. A big service notification like you get for new versions "DON'T BUY A NEW MAC"
The issue really is, that they don't really get they act togehter. From my perspective the whole blog post is just very underwhelming information (adapted froma comment I made on the blog post): - what do they mean with 'Parallels is also amazed by the news from Microsoft about adding support of x64 applications in Windows on ARM' - as they for sure now, the ARM based version of Windows 10 ist not freely available to anybody, therefore even if Parallels would support it nobody could get it (at least legally) right now - We (yes, paying clients using Parallels Desktop on Mac, the ones ensuring they get a paycheck even in Corona times) use Parallels also for running older Windows versions (in my case for some stuff down to Windows XP) and of course expect that to run on Apple Silicon as well, no information about that? And here Windows 10 on ARM would be without ANY benefit to all of us! Sorry, if they want to engage customers they need to get their acts together and announce what Parallels will be able to do regarding x86/AMD64 code (Windows XP / 7 / 10 /...)! Else customer relying on Windows based tools (I read somewhere, they have millions of customers using Windows through Parallels on Mac?) will either jump ship and buy a Windows computer or get a current Intel based Mac! Both could run afoul their business case for the development efforts they are likely doing right now (at least that's how I understand the announcement/blog post). What is in it for us customers? Or shall we get OUR acts together before we get the details from them? Currently wondering, if it is better to get an Intel based mac, too. At least that would give me peace of mind for some years, knowing that I can rely on the tools I need for some more years...
Apple Silicon M1, which is ARM, is a completely different architecture than x86. There's no "support" at all. You cannot run an OS built for x86 on an ARM-based computer, unless you "emulate" the architecture, and that's different than plain "virtualization". Now, if there's an ARM version of Windows, that "could" be virtualized on M1 and would give full expected speed but, it all depends on the CPU features and hypervisor implementations.
