Apple Silicon M1: New Virtualization Options available
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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.
