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Apple Silicon M1: New Virtualization Options available
We have already discussed the available virtualization options when it comes to running Virtual Machines on your Apple M1 computer. This article was written at the beginning of the year when I just bought my MacBook Air on an M1 chip and started learning about the available options.
It’s November of 2021 now and I have learned a few things about Virtualization. First of all, seems like x86 Virtualization is going away as a class on Apple Silicon Macs.
Virtual Box will not be available for new chips. And even though there are some options for running x86 VMs — seems like this is either not a priority or running at quite a slow speed. There are UTM and QEMU available, but in my experience, it doesn’t work that good.
VMWare Fusion is back in town
First of all, a technical preview of VMWare Fusion for M1 Macs is available. This means that you can run ARM-based Operating Systems using one of the best virtualization methods.
I’ve been using VMWare for a long time on Mac and I think that once the final release is there we will get a really dependable solution.
Mac OS Monterey for Parallels
A surprising discovery was finding a Mac OS Monterey image available for download using the Parallels. It’s a quick and seamless process. You are able to run a separate copy of Mac OS Monterey on your Mac OS machine.
Honestly, this was a nice surprise. I haven’t thought that this option will be available. This would be a great option for running a separate instance of Mac OS for debugging purposes.
Conclusion
We have a few more options available now, but the M1 Virtualization scene will continue to develop in the future.
Since we no longer have a BootCamp/Dual-boot option — we need to rely on virtualization. And in this case — primarily on ARM virtualization.
I will continue to look up additional options — who knows what interesting stuff the future has for us.
