Let's Address the Elephant in the Room: Parallels on Silicon Almost Useless

Look, I don't virtualise linux boxes so that 'Feature' is no good to me.

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I have been able to get macOS running in a VM on silicon. It is slow, buggy and no snapshots. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it is unworkable. And if you have software that still uses kernel extensions, installing them is impossible because of the way you (cannot) get into recovery mode on a VM because it requires physical access.

Further, I have the Windows RISC version 11 running. Again, this is basically useless for me. No snapshots, no Dropbox client (it's a fudged wrapper around the web based client) and even MS are only using it on their surface PAD device. Little or no market penetration and hard to see Windows make a mega-shift away from INTEL.

You cannot run INTEL based VMs on an M1 silicon mac. So, for me, 99.99% of the value of Parallels has gone. The other 00.01% of value has gone because even the M1 version is so handicapped it is useless. For testing, We have bought cheap(er) M1 macMinis which is a really crappy solution, but necessary because Parallels on silicon is so bad. When the legacy INTEL macs are gone (try buying a non-Silicon mac (other than maybe refurbished) from Apple) which will be in about 18 months time, about the time it took to 'forget' the PowerPC, Parallels will be a spent force. My prediction is that Parallels, as a company will not exist in 2 Years or it will simply be a shadow of its former self.

FUSION is no better, but VMWare do not have too many eggs in this basket, they have other markets.

The game changer would be the ability to run INTEL based VMs on Silicon based hardware. That's not going to happen, so if you have shares in Parallels, I'd be offloading them sooner rather than later.
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Of course, if you see some light at the end of this very dark tunnel, please chip in, but if 99% of your business is running Windows VMs on macOS devices I'd be looking for a change of business.

 

I'm so disappointed with running a macOS Monterey VM. You can't change resolutions, make snapshots, access local drives, etc... all the things that Parallels does well on Intel. Parallels support for macOS VMs on M1 is a joke, despite the hype they've created.

 

@KevinB7 - I'm sorry that this isn't working for you, however, I think you've misunderstood the situation.

Apple Silicon is the future of Mac computers. It is faster and uses so much less power than an Intel-based machine, that it is starting to revolutionize how people think of using their MacBooks. In addition, there has never been a suggestion, much less a promise, from Parallels of backward compatibility of VMs running on an M1-based Mac.

Some of us (myself included) need to run a handful of Windows apps on our Macs. For us, Parallels, running Windows 11 ARM version, creates that possibility. I too am leaving behind 10 years of Virtual Machines, a few of which I wish I could run (for product maintenance purposes) on the M1-based Mac, but sadly that is not possible. At the same time, Parallels and Windows 11 running on the M1 ARM processor is working great for me for all the apps I need.

Should you need an Intel-based virtual environment that is good for another 3-4 years, there is no reason you could not get a high-end, refurbished or new, MacBook Pro that is Intel-based. I've already purchased one of those myself for my legacy VMs.

 

I have been running and using Windows 11 Arm since day 1 on Parallels in my work every single day and find it flawless, fast, efficient and a joy to use. Admittedly I dont try use 20 year old hardware (Serial Ports, parallel ports etc, or software written for windows 95 etc). This is the perfect solution for me and has never let me down. Im running it on an M1 MacBook Air (8,7 Cores) so nothing fancy at all). Keep up the great work Parallels!

 

I came back to Parallels after about 13 years with Bootcamp in order to be able to run Windows 11 on my new M1 MacBook Air. Everything seems very fast. The only thing that didn't work for a time was Microsoft Access, but an update from MS soon put that right. No problems with backwards compatibility, a copy of Metrowerks CodeWarrior from 20 years ago runs happily in Windows 11. I am now thinking of Parallels for the Intel iMac on account of the TPM 2.0 emulation. Browsing the Microsoft Update Catalog shows they are working quite hard on Arm64.