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Parallels Desktop for Mac Running on Mac with Apple Silicon
- guidedlight 6y agoI believe the concern is around Windows x64 virtualization, not presumably Linux ARM virtualization.
- chrisseaton 6y agoPresumably you’d run the AArch64 Windows builds, not the AMD64 builds, if you were on an Apple Silicon machine.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoThat doesn't help you if the particular Windows software you need to run hasn't been built for ARM. People run Windows for the software library - not because they really like Windows.
- chrisseaton 6y agoI’m not sure what people can reasonably expect - you want to run one OS, virtualising another OS for a completely different architecture? You should probably just run a separate machine for a better experience at this point.
- moondev 6y agoExactly! I don't think most people understand how bad this move to ARM will be for developers. You are losing the ability to run/test/develop the vms and containers that are deployed in prod.
- red_phone 6y agoWindows for ARM can already run 32-bit x86 executables. They’re working to bring similar support for 64-bit software.
- miles 6y agoThanks for posting that. It was news to me; I haven't been following Windows on ARM, but am now interested due to Apple's upcoming hardware. I was under the impression (like many others apparently) that Windows 10 ARM64 wouldn't be very useful (since so few native apps are available), but being able to run 32-bit (x86) apps is huge: Running 32-bit Applications https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/running-32-bit-applications https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/run...
- justaguy88 6y agoaarch64 windows isn't useful to many (most?) people
- oneplane 6y agoMost people don't even know what an architecture or ISA is ;-) But in terms of usefulness people will want to be able to execute their tasks and if a program that they use doesn't work (be it because it doesn't have an AArch64 version or anything else) they will not find that very useful. I think you were mostly pointing at Windows's ARM failure so far, which is fair -- a lot of applications simply won't run unless they make an ARM specific version or have a binary that happens to be compatible with the Windows built in x86 emulator
- ogre_codes 6y ago> I believe the concern is around Windows x64 virtualization Linux support is likely much more important to Mac users, likely by a large margin. Not necessarily Linux ARM virtualization, but Linux on x86 for web developers working with Docker or Linux VMs. Nobody likes playing guessing games about whether their local setup is close enough to their production environment.
- mrpippy 6y ago> Linux support is likely much more important to Mac users, likely by a large margin I very much doubt that. Maybe for the HN crowd of web developers, but for normal users, embedded/desktop developers, basically everyone else, Windows is more important.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> but for normal users, embedded/desktop developers I hate to break it to you, but web developers outnumber embedded/ desktop users about 5 : 1 or more, particularly now that a huge chunk of desktop software has turned into glorified web apps.
- mrpippy 6y agoAgreed. “Normal users” as a group far outnumber both though.
- ogre_codes 6y agoHow many people run Parallels outside of development circles? Most users are barely capable of running one computer, let alone a virtual environment with a whole second OS on top. People who rely on Windows software generally run Windows.
- dogma1138 6y agoNearly anyone with a corporate issued Mac... And in fact probably far more corporate users run Parallels/Fusion than developers as there are far far more corporate dependencies on Windows and older Mac OSes if MacOS was always an integral part of your business pipeline than there are developers. Bespoke business software, accounting software, control software and most importantly legacy software people are still running Macromedia software and even older things to be able to pull out and open legacy projects. Sorry to break it to you but just like Linux for desktops - Linux virtualization for Mac is a rounding error. You also seem to not understand how people actually use parallels or fusion they aren’t running or managing guests directly, those are packaged and presented as apps by their IT department. Half if not more of the apps on our Corp App Store for MacOS are packaged like that. When Jane from accounting opens her managed Mac and clicks on Sage Book 2005 or some 20 years old bespoke Oracle Forms application she doesn’t know it runs in a VM likely under Windows and quite possibly even Windows XP. I think you view is really detached from reality since you seem to not know how most businesses run and managed their endpoints. There is a whole industry of abstracting “having to manage their computer” not because most people aren’t capable of doing that but because they weren’t trained to do so and even if they were/are it’s a complete waste of time and resources for them to do so.
- sys_64738 6y agoHow useful is ARM Linux virtualisation nowadays? If you use Docker then are the ARM variations as mature as alpine based Dockers containers? Can you really deploy to x86 with just ARM Docker testing? If not then what utility do you gain here?
- icedchai 6y agoI’d say it depends on your app. For something in Java, Python, Ruby, JS, PHP... probably. For something compiled natively, I’d be more concerned.
- mcspiff 6y agoYou could just deploy to ARM too: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/
- sys_64738 6y agoWishful thinking for most businesses.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> Can you really deploy to x86 with just ARM Docker testing? Not if you like paying your bills and sleeping.
- icedchai 6y agoThis is a big exaggeration. Practically speaking, for most web development this just won’t matter. Many folks already develop on Mac and deploy on Linux.
- sheeshkebab 6y agoIt’s more like - many mobile developers develop on x86 but deploy to ARM. Although if you’ve ever done it and had to deal with a a complex piece of software that had native code, you’d know how painful it gets sometime.
- kccqzy 6y agoWhat about VMware Fusion? I understand desktop virtualization isn't how VMware makes money, but still VMware is the 800-pound gorilla in the virtualization space. I would be very surprised if Apple isn't also working with VMware to bring their product to Apple Silicon.
- mrpippy 6y agoI’ve always used Fusion, I hope they bring it to ARM. They’ll be maintaining it for Intel for years anyway, and the ESXi management features are great
- snuxoll 6y agoFusion and Workstation are important ancillary products for VMWare - they are regularly used as remote admin tools for VMWare server deployments and for building images that go off to live on both on-prem and public cloud environments (they are making a big push into getting you to run VMWare on AWS/Azure/etc. right now). No chance they aren’t already deep into work on porting VMWare Fusion over as a result. EDIT: they are - but I guess it will only support aarch64 guests. https://twitter.com/mikeroysoft/status/1275483550985318400?s=21 https://twitter.com/mikeroysoft/status/1275483550985318400?s...
- justaguy88 6y agoWill qemu support be available?
- johnwheeler 6y agoThis is not a solution to getting Mac binaries compiled for intel to work with apple processors is it? Do the apple processors not have the same instruction set?
- ogre_codes 6y agoIf you are trying to run 64 bit Mac binaries on the next generation Mac, that's not Paralllels, that's Rosetta which is built into the next version of MacOS. Parallels lets you run an operating system on top of your operating system. But based on Apple's docs, it won't support emulating Intel CPUs well enough to run an x86 virtual machine, it will only run operating systems which run on ARM.
- rovr138 6y ago> But based on Apple's docs, it won't support emulating Intel CPUs well enough to run an x86 virtual machine, it will only run operating systems which run on ARM. And that’s the big thing a lot aren’t understanding.
- awinder 6y agoCharitably a lot of people (or at least me) are trying to understand how to square that reality with Apple hand leaving that they’re going to “take care of that audience”. I’m starting to worry this is take care of in The Godfather sense of the term.
- rovr138 6y agoIt’s possible to do, don’t get me wrong. For example, QEMU[0] does hardware virtualization. Having said that, performance is not the same. On the other hand, there are builds of Linux that are ARM. Windows also has ARM builds[1] and they also have a translation layer to run x86 applications[2]. This is done in software, so there’s a performance hit[3]. [0]: https://www.qemu.org/ https://www.qemu.org/ [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/ [2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on... [3]: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performance/page2.html https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa... (Other parts are good if you’re looking to get an overview of how it works and limitations).
- thesquib 6y agoDoes anyone know why virtual machines running on macOS seem so much slower than the same virtual machines on the same hardware bit running Windows? This is what I have observed but I have not studied it in any depth. Maybe this change will improve things?
- rovr138 6y ago> Maybe this change will improve things If you’re talking about running x86 on a VM on Apple’s chips, I doubt it. You’ll need to emulate the architecture or add a translation layer to map the instructions from one architecture to another.
- RodgerTheGreat 6y agoMany years ago I purchased a retail copy of Parallels. Some time later, the product began displaying a splash screen on startup featuring ads for an upsell product. Ads in paid software is unacceptable; I immediately uninstalled Parallels and vowed to never give the creators money again. This experience will always be the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name "Parallels".
- 1123581321 6y agoHow portable was the Windows VM you were using before you uninstalled it?
- zymhan 6y agoThe linked post says absolutely nothing of significance.
- johnklos 6y agoParallels really tries to constantly force people to upgrade every time there's a new version. They even pushed disfunction back to older versions - VMs which previously started unattended would be hung up with a "sales" window touting a new version, the VMs themselves wouldn't start, and Parallels had no way to fix the "issue" aside from the same bullshit we'd expect from outsourced IT ("Try uninstalling and reinstalling", et cetera). Upgrades often required reactivating Windows VMs, which is a huge pain in the ass. I wouldn't trust Parallels with shit.
- jshaqaw 6y agoI agree. Many of their practices are predatory.
- moepstar 6y agoAbsolutely. After being extorted for a few years, paying the "Parallels Tax" i'm pretty keen on never giving them another $... There's one thing of a company having to pay their employees and another of basically robbing your customers of what they've paid for (for no technical reason whatsoever).
- Vomzor 6y agoI hope Apple silicon will be fast enough to emulate x86-64 at decent speeds. Would be nice to be able to keep using 3DS Max on macOS.
- jagged-chisel 6y agoI'm curious about the adoption of Apple Silicon at Autodesk. I would hope they'd be onboard with recompiling their flagship products. However, if you want to keep an older license without upgrading, I think Rosetta 2 is going to attempt to translate to ARM and cache that translation, which should provide reasonable execution speed. Surely, though, when it has to fall back to emulation, performance is gonna feel pretty bad. That's my expectation.
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago> recompiling their flagship products Do people really think it's just a matter of "recompiling" their software? Autodesk, Photoshop, etc. have decades of code that has been hand-optimized for x86 ASM. They're not just going to "recompile" the code to run on Apple's ARM chips. At best they're going to ship something that runs in a dog-slow virtualization layer.
- tpetry 6y agoVery often you have a basic c implementation for every asm optimized code block. So in this case they simply ditch all the implementations and compile to arm the c implementation and will start adding arm optimizations.
- whatever1 6y agoSorry for the uninitiated question, but is macOS on ARM only going to support virtualization of ARM OSes? Does that mean that we cannot get amd64 linux virtualization on macOS anymore?
- banana_giraffe 6y agoBoth Parallels and Apple are refusing to answer this question. I suspect the answer is "only x86-32 bit virtualization works, but we're cracking the whip on our devs to make x86-64 bit work too" Honestly though, I have no clue, I just know it's odd they're being so cagey. My question is how good is the GPU emulation? That can really make or break GUI stuff.
- snuxoll 6y agoApple just killed off x86 support in 10.15 - likely as a precursor for this exact transition. I will be shocked if you can’t run x64 VMs as a result. Welp - guess it’s aarch64 only. https://twitter.com/mikeroysoft/status/1275483550985318400?s=21 https://twitter.com/mikeroysoft/status/1275483550985318400?s...
- whatever1 6y agoI have some proprietary linux amd64 binaries that I am using frequently, and I am not even sure whether the vendor is going to support ARM in the future. So for my case it seems that I should either stick with macOS for intel, or move my business to Windows. Anyway thank you for the help!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- apple4ever 6y agoI think they answer is "not likely". At least not for awhile. They did go out of their way to show Linux working. But it was Linux ARM. Which is not nothing but also not everything.
- testfoobar 6y ago"Apple Silicon" is an odd term. Given Apple's brilliant global PR and marketing teams, I'm sure they had other candidates for branding their processor line in PR docs. Is "Apple Silicon" really the best they could conjure. It is snobbish and vague. It evokes nothing about power, speed, performance or for that matter computation in general. It likely originated from the title of apple internal presentations over the years titled "Transitioning x86 to Apple Silicon." Who is the term "Apple Silicon" for? For buyers of ipads/iphones. They don't care at all. For buyers of MBA/MBP/iMac/MacPro. Some will care. A PR/Marcom team got the latest presentation and was tasked with developing the external messaging. Instead of doing the challenging work of naming the Apple processor line, they just went with "Apple Silicon". What would Steve Jobs have done? The term "Apple Silicon" appears 15 times on this page: "Apple announces Mac transition to Apple silicon" https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-transition-to-apple-silicon/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-t...
- untog 6y agoThe term “Apple Silicon” is for very few people, really. How many people who purchase a MacBook know what “x86” is? Almost none. I suspect Apple don’t want the name to be all that memorable because they don’t want a large segment of their customer base to be worried about a big change they barely understand.
- herpderperator 6y agoThey could just say Apple ARM chips. So the two would be Apple computers with Intel chips, vs Apple computers with ARM chips.
- olliej 6y agoUsers definitely don't know what ARM is - they more likely to think intel==computer than know what ARM is. Look at the iPhone/Pad advertising - it doesn't mention arm. Especially given the apple only uses the ISA, not the ARM reference designs.
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- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoParallels is some of the worst software I've ever had to use. If you need to run virtual machines on your Mac, then just use VirtualBox. Trying to run "seamless" windows apps on your Mac OS computer is a totally shit experience and nightmare.
- bfrog 6y agoWhy is it when parallels is brought up, its always "award winning" whats so award winning this point about virtual machine software.