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Hands-On: Windows 11 on Arm with Parallels on MacOS

Posted February 27, 2023 | Mac and macOS | Parallels | Parallels Desktop 18 | virtualization | Windows | Windows 11 | Windows 11 on Arm


For years, Mac enthusiasts have spread the lie that the best way to run Windows was on a Mac. But with Windows 11 on Arm, it’s might not be a lie: Windows 11 on Arm seems to run better in a Parallels Desktop 18-based virtualized environment than it does on native Arm PC hardware.

Now, that may change: Qualcomm should announce its first Nuvia-based Arm chipsets for chipsets later this year, and the first PCs based on these chipsets should arrive in early 2024. But until that happens, there’s only one truly great way to run Windows 11 on Arm. And it’s not on a PC.

This information isn’t new, and it’s been true ever since Parallels released an Apple Silicon-compatible version of its virtualization platform, despite Qualcomm’s steady progress on the in-house chipsets used in newer PCs like the ThinkPad X13s. But what is new is that Microsoft now officially supports this configuration: previously, Mac users who needed to run a Windows app locally had to make do with a Windows Insider Preview version of Windows 11 on Arm that was not supported by Microsoft and had to be laboriously kept up-to-date as new builds were released.

Naturally, I wanted to test how this works and experience Parallels’ simple new onboarding process. There was just one problem: my wife and I are in the process of moving and my MacBook Pro was hidden away in a storage unit while we showed the house to potential buyers. But with that complete—the house is sold and we’ll move out in late March—I ran over to the storage unit, grabbed the Mac, and took a look.

I had already installed Parallels Desktop 18 late last summer, but I wanted to start fresh. So I factory reset the Mac, brought it back up new, updated it to the latest macOS version, and then installed Parallels Desktop 18 straightaway.

That took just a few minutes and didn’t require any reboots. And then I was prompted to install Windows 11.

Curiously, that also took just a few minutes. But installing Windows 11 took a bit longer: it started normally but hung on a “Just a moment…” screen for a long time. A really long time.

So I killed it and started again. And that didn’t work either. So I stopped the install and restarted the process. Which required me to download Windows 11 again for some reason. Anyway, it was quick, and Windows Setup began again as before. But this time it worked, blowing right past the screen where it had hung before: the white intro screen to the Out of Box Experience (OOBE) appeared, but not the OOBE. Instead, Setup went right into that series of screens that begins with “Hi” and opened the desktop and the Installation Assistant told me it was done.

After signing into my Parallels account and activating my Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition, I was presented with the Windows 11 EULA.

But I wasn’t done: the next step was to activate Windows 11. To do so, you open the Windows 11 Settings app, navigate to System > Activation, and buy or enter a product key.

A Windows 11 Pro product key (which is required) is $199, so I used a key I already had, and it worked fine.

From there, I visited Windows Update and installed any pending updates. I also visited the Microsoft Store and updated all the apps.

While this was happening, I had time to reflect on what I had just done. It’s pretty clear that what Parallels doing here is what most users will want, a streamlined experience that lets them get into Windows as quickly as possible so they can install that one app, or a handful of apps, they need and then move on with their lives.

For me, however, the Parallels process is not ideal. I prefer to custom-install Windows to my preferences because what I’m concerned about is using Windows, not using a few Windows apps under macOS. I realize this isn’t a big need, but I suspect some developers might also want to customize how Windows is installed.

I assume this is possible: the Parallels Installation Assistant presents two choices, “Get Windows 11 from Microsoft” and “Install Windows or another OS from a DVD or image file,” and there are links for various Linuxes as well. But until we can download a Windows 11 on Arm ISO directly from Microsoft—which is still not possible—we have to deal with the tools Parallels gives us.

You can customize the Windows 11 install, of course, both from within Windows and from Parallels, and the latter option provides many software and hardware configuration choices. My Mac is a low-end M1 model with just 8 GB of RAM, but I’d go for a 16 GB version if I were buying now and would give more RAM to Windows (the Automatic setting on my system is up to 4 CPUs, 3 GB of RAM, and 1.5 GB for graphics).

What makes Parallels special is the passthrough capabilities. In addition to automatically sharing things like printers, networking, sound, and camera, you can also optionally share USB and Bluetooth devices. Key user folders like Documents, Desktop, Downloads, and so on are shared. And Mac drives appear in the Windows 11 File Explorer as shared network locations.

But the cherry on this compatibility sundae is a feature called Coherence that makes Windows 11 mostly disappear so that you can simply run its apps side-by-side on the Mac desktop with native apps. This, ultimately, is what most people are looking for: not Windows, but access to those apps.

Windows without the Windows. I guess that’s one way to get rid of some of the annoyances.



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