Microsoft Now Supports Windows 11 on Arm on Apple Silicon Macs

LeLibran said:

The article is a bit behind the times as there are other alternative options to Parallels available for for running Windows 11 for ARM on Silicon Macs e.g. UTM (Free and Open Source can run VMs on both macOS and iOS) and VMWare Fusion 13/Fusion Player 13 although, like Parallels, these do still have some significant limitations. And, of course, macOS also has it's own built-in hypervisor platform, but that can only be 'programmed' to create macOS and 'Linux' ARM VMs.

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LeLibran said:

As Microsoft does not currently provide Windows ARM ISO downloads, both of the alternatives to Parallels mentioned recommend using the UUP dump site to obtain the installation ISO media required. From what I can find on the Parallels site it appears that they do not use an ISO installer but employ an entirely online installation process. Very limiting if users ever need to carry out repair/recovery installations.

UUP dump is widely published safe source for creating Windows ISO builds; and the only potential 'inconvenience' for Mac Users is that they would initially need access to an existing Windows x86 system (real or virtual) to build the required ISO from the downloaded files.

Personally, if I was going this route I wouldn't be particularly happy with Parallels 'no ISO' installation; and nor would I want to lock myself in to their expensive annual subscription approach; and would much rather support the continued development of the Open Source UTM software. UTM makes direct use of Apple's hypervisor platform for virtualisation (on both Intel x86, M1/2 ARM platforms) and complements that with QEMU for additional hardware emulation; the development of VMWare Fusion currently appears to have some way to go to catch up with both Parallels and UTM; and VirtualBox is only at a very early stage of development having initially started concept testing with an x86 emulation approach rather than ARM virtualisation.

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LeLibran said:

Your understanding is completely wrong and you obviously know nothing about any of the developments mentioned in my response? There is no breach of Microsoft licensing by any of the development 'organisations' mentioned and the various developments are publicly known, so their information is open and visible to both Microsoft and Apple so not in any way 'shady'. VMWare and Oracle (VirtualBox) are both major corporations far larger than Parallels and UTM is developed as an Open Source project on GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft so definitely not hiding any of its work from scrutiny!

All Windows ARM installations are subject to normal Windows Licensing requirements and can be legitimately activated with an appropriate Windows 11 Key, which will be checked by Microsoft in exactly the same way as any other Windows installation. All the developments I quoted are simply providing a means to install virtualised operating systems, NOT a way to bypass any of the Terms and Conditions of use.

We are not talking about the shady subject of Hackintosh style development!

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