WINDOWS 10 ON M1 MACS: WHAT YOU CAN DO (VIRTUALIZATION, SORTA) AND CAN'T (BOOT CAMP)

VIRTUALIZATION IS KEY, BUT THE LACK OF A CONSUMER VERSION OF MICROSOFT’S M1 -COMPATIBLE OS KEEPS THE SITUATION IN DOUBT.

- JON L. JACOBI

There’s no doubt that Apple’s new M1 Macs have shaken up the marketplace with its low power consumption and fantastic performance—even with nonnative Mac apps, surprisingly. But users who want to run Windows on the Mac are officially and natively left out in the cold.

Admittedly, those of us who run Windows on a Mac are a distinct minority. I run Windows 10 quite a bit on my iMac for professional reasons (and sharper small fonts), and the M1 Mac’s lack of Boot Camp support seemed to be a nonstarter for me. And after witnessing the M1’s scintillating performance in the testing for this article, I was not happy about it in the least.

Fortunately, the situation is far from hopeless. Thanks to Parallels (go. macworld.com/t2pa), the venerable Apple virtual machine software company, the Windows 10 for ARM preview will run on an M1 Mac with surprisingly workable performance. It’s hardly like running Windows natively via Boot Camp, but it’s not half-bad with native ARM apps.

Alas, Windows on the Mac involves a slew of “ifs” and “maybes.” Primarily, there is no guarantee that Microsoft will acquiesce to make Windows 10 for ARM (the required OS) available to end users. I’m guessing the company eventually will, given the upbeat moods of the participants I queried. But who knows? There are many forces in play.

ARM VERSUS ARM