So what’s the difference? Let’s do a quick comparison. VMware then later released a tech preview for their own VMware Fusion software (free while in preview). Initially, the only option for running virtual machines on M1 Macs was Parallels Desktop, so that’s where I started. (You might think the first VM was a Windows VM, but that’s not the case, the first was a Fedora 34 Linux installation. Not surprisingly, the first thing I wanted to do on it was to run virtual machines. I have a Mac Mini with the original ARM-based M1 chip. Oh, and you can generate your own Windows 11 ARM64 ISOs now too, just like Parallels does.

Also see this post that clarifies Microsoft’s licensing for Windows for ARM64. The AMD kernel is only built for 10.15.0 and you will break your virtual machine if you update it.: Feel free to read through this post and then check out the new follow-up post that compares the latest versions of Parallels and VMware Fusion. ICloud, iMessage, FaceTime & Siri will not work at all.ĭo not update you virtual machine. You will need to do some tweaking to the virtual machine, which you can find in the 'Post Installation Tweaks' page. The Mac App Store does work, but it will not work straightaway. That means that apps like Final Cut Pro will not work at all on this. Things like the Launchpad will be extremely laggy, the Dock will be opaque and the virtual machine will not have multiple monitor support. You can use CPU-Z to check these if you're not sure.ĭue to VMware's graphics acceleration not being compatible with macOS, you will not have any graphics acceleration in your virtual machine. If you have an older CPU, again you should double check.

Your CPU also needs to support the SSE4.1 instruction set in order to run macOS Sierra and newer. Modern CPUs will definitely support this, but if you have an older CPU, you may want to double check. Make sure that Virtualization/AMD-V is supported by your CPU and is enabled in your BIOS. Modern CPUs = Anything made from 2010 and onwards I see that you want to make a macOS VM in VMware on your AMD CPU but have no idea how or you need a macOS virtual machine.

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