Using Parallels for Mac (2022)

Hello,
I regularly use Windows 11 on my Mac M1.
It's far from ideal, but if you need it, it is certainly usable.
First of all, you absolutely must use Windows 11 insider preview builds for the best performance, but more importantly because that is the only way to legally get an ARM version of Windows. Insider preview is a kind of beta of Windows releases, where you have 2 different channels, dev, less stable and with frequent updates, and beta, more stable and not so frequent updates. Both are fine to use with Parallels, you can use them as you like. In fact, the only reason you even need to be on insider builds is because Microsoft doesn't provide Iso files for the ARM version of Windows as regular releases, but rather as a testing preview. I'm pretty sure that once you are on an insider build, you can wait for the latest stable release, and then leave the insider program and use it that way, though I never tried this latter possibility.

Now, about Parallels. In fact, you need VOCR for everything in the first time setup, to sign in to your account and create a VM. After that, it's possible to start or shut a VM down without VOCR. This shouldn't scare you though, the OCR is really good and not hard to use at all.

About 2 screen readers, your Windows screen reader will never be able to read the content of your Mac OS, since it doesn't even know about it. It could happen that VoiceOver and NVDA talk at the same time, if for example a notification comes in and VoiceOver reads it while you are doing something on Windows, but of course you can always mute speech in VO temporarily.
There are a few more details I could mention like a few shortcut conflicts you will have to get around, but generally, once you set the VM up, it works for all your basic tasks, and things you might be missing from the Mac such as audiogames. If you decide to go for it, you can ask more specific questions and I'd be happy to answer and provide help.
There is also a free option instead of Parallels called UTM. UTM is fully accessible with VoiceOver without having to use VOCR, but in places is a little harder to setup and has a few more bugs with Windows, since it is an open source implementation driven by mainly a few active developers, but it is also a good option and has improved a lot recently. Best of all it's free, so you can always try both and see if UTM fits your needs, if it does, it's certainly easier to set up and work with using VoiceOver.

Hi everyone,

I've been running Windows in a virtual machine on an Intel-based Mac since around 2008 using VMWare fusion, but my current Mac is 7 Years old and has some issues, so I'm seriously thinking about getting an M2-Series MacBook Air. I really appreciate the information you are sharing about running Windows in a virtual machine on Macs running Apple Silicon. What is VOCR? I hadn't heard of that before. And when you say using Windows isn't ideal, how bad is it? I currently use Windows to broadcast on an Internet radio station; that would be my main use for it along with sometimes using MS Office. Do you think this would be doable?

By the way, I originally intended to use Parallels to create my Windows virtual machine, but at that time, it was completely inaccessible, so I'm glad to hear that's no longer the case.

Thanks a lot,
Anna

Hello,

Thanks for the link to VOCR, Matthew. Do apps built for the Intel version of Windows work on the ARM version, such as JAWS, MS Office, etc.?

Thanks a lot,
Anna

Something to note about VOCR. Sometimes, when you are updating, it usually does not work on the latest versions of Mac.

Hello,
Windows does offer emulation so you can use standard x86 / x64 apps on ARM.
However, I don't think Jaws works. Office certainly does, just like NVDA.

Does vmware fusion still work on m1 macs?

Hello,
My understanding is that VMWare has chosen not to support Windows virtual machines on Macs running Apple Silicon. There's some sort of licensing issue, I think. I would love to be wrong on this, since I already know how to use VMWare.

You can use Intel apps on Windows for ARM, yes, but not JAWS which needs drivers. Apparently FS/VFO (or whatever they're called nowadays) are contemplating an ARM build of JAWS and even have Mac users in mind if not consideration. As to VMWare, well, given they've said some fairly unflattering things about non-enterprise customers following the Broadcom acquisition and given they'll move to subscriptions, I'd get ready to look elsewhere, even as a predominantly Linux user. Even so, bear in mind that Fusion for Apple Silicon will still talk to an x86-64 ESXI hypervisor host, including streaming audio, so, if you're up to it, you could stream your Windows VMs over the network from a nearby machine to your Apple Silicon Mac, assuming that was practical for you. Personally I want the full Windows experience, and for me that includes JAWS and Supernova, so I'll run supported versions on supported Intel hardware until the situation changes. You might be able to use Wine/Crossover if you just want to run the odd audiogame, and the latency will be way better too. UTM is quite nice too, albeit you have to jump a few hoops to deal with Windows latest megaforce network requirements. JMO.