Parallels
Without a version of Boot Camp that worked on Apple Silicon Macs, the best way to get Windows running on those Macs was with a virtualization app like Parallels or (more recently) VMware Fusion. The problem is that until now, due to Microsoft’s licensing restrictions, Arm versions of Windows running on Apple Silicon Macs were technically not allowed to run on anything other than the Arm PC they came with.
These licensing issues haven’t technically stopped people from running the Arm version of Windows on other hardware such as Apple Silicon Macs and Raspberry Pi. Liability.
Today, Microsoft officially recognizes Parallels as the way to run Professional and Enterprise versions of Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs. The Arm version of Windows running in Parallels has some limitations. OpenGL versions above DirectX 12 are not supported, no Linux or Android subsystems are supported, and some security features are missing. However, the x86 to Arm transcoding feature of Windows 11 allows you to run 32-bit and 64-bit x86 apps as well as Arm-native Windows apps. Most non-gaming things should work reasonably well given the speed of Apple’s M1 and M2 chip families, but certain apps still have weird edge cases and require special tools to run on Windows. Hardware that requires proper drivers is the ARM version.
Parallels has allowed Windows installations for some time, but always used the Windows Insider Program loophole that allowed installations without activation. Starting today, users will be able to run standard release versions of Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise with full support from Microsoft.
For administrators or power users who want a more centralized and manageable way to deploy Windows on these Macs, or who simply want to run Windows without the technical limitations of Parallels, Microsoft recommends using Windows 365 Cloud PC instead. These plans are more expensive, but they save you the trouble of installing and configuring Windows on each Mac that needs to run Windows. It doesn’t consume as much local storage space or RAM as a virtualized copy of Windows running in Parallels.
Any plans to get Boot Camp for Apple Silicon Macs?
Nothing in today’s announcement prevents Microsoft or Apple from announcing support for running Windows directly on Apple Silicon Macs well in the future. However, the technical barriers to running Windows on these Macs remain high, making it difficult to justify solving the problem.
The Asahi Linux project is a good reference here. We know from the Asahi team that Apple has no restrictions on running third-party operating systems on his Apple Silicon Macs. However, Apple does not provide hardware support beyond that. Asahi’s team has struggled for years to build his Linux drivers for Apple’s hardware from scratch.
“Apple’s approach to third-party OSes is essentially ‘have fun,'” explains Asahi Linux Introduction to Apple Silicon. “We don’t expect direct support, documentation, or additional development effort from them, nor do we expect them to deliberately try to interfere with a third-party OS. We’ve explicitly developed the ability to do it safely: add an OS and bootloader to these machines and leave the rest to us.”
To run a fully functional copy of Windows on your Apple Silicon Mac, who You will need to recreate this driver on Windows as well.
Apple provided several Windows drivers for Intel Macs for components such as mice and trackpads. But Intel Macs were mostly just PCs under the hood, so the company relied on his Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, and other companies to actually provide drivers for the most important components. I made it. That’s not the case with Apple Silicon Macs, where Apple took the time to develop and maintain alternative graphics, networking, and chipset drivers just to allow a handful of users to run a competitor’s operating system. There is absolutely no good reason to spend resources with .
When I asked Microsoft if there was any new information about running Windows directly on Apple Silicon Mac hardware, Microsoft said it had “nothing more to share” on that point. But today’s announcement is another signal that virtualization and cloud computing are the way forward for those who need to run Windows apps on their Macs. If you still want the Apple Silicon version of Boot Camp, it’s time to start moving on.
