If you have a spiffy new M1-based Mac, you can now use Parallels to virtualize Windows on your machine.
Parallels officially released Parallels Desktop 16.5 on Wednesday, complete with native support for Apple Silicon, allowing users to run the Windows 10 ARM Insider Preview on M1 Macs.
The company stated that more than 100,000 M1 Mac users tested the Technical Preview of Parallels Desktop 16.5 running Windows 10 ARM Insider Preview on the machines.
Parallels VP of engineering and support, Nick Dobrovolskiy, said:
“We received enthusiastic feedback about the remarkable performance of both the Technical Preview of Parallels Desktop 16 for M1 Mac and Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview as well as x86 applications and games, including Rocket League, Among Us, Roblox, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Sam & Max Save the World and many others. Testers loved Parallels Desktop’s easy-to-use features and seamless integration of Windows with macOS Big Sur, which increased productivity,” said Dobrovolskiy.
Parallels touted the following bells and whistles of the new version on M1-basd Macs:
- Up to 250 percent less energy used: On a Mac with an Apple M1 chip, Parallels Desktop 16.5 uses 2.5 times less energy than on a 2020 Intel-based MacBook Air computer.
- Up to 60 percent better DirectX 11 performance: Parallels Desktop 16.5 running on an M1 Mac delivers up to 60 percent better DirectX 11performance than on an Intel-based MacBook Pro with Radeon Pro 555X GPU.
- Up to 30 percent better virtual machine performance (Windows): Running a virtual machine (VM) of Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview on Parallels Desktop 16.5 on an M1 Mac performs up to 30 percent better than a Windows 10 VM running on Intel-based MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9 processor.
Microsoft has yet to officially release a Windows 10 version with ARM support although the ARM Insider preview can be snagged from Microsoft’s website. In the Windows 10 ARM Insider preview, you can then emulate Intel applications as well.
If you’ve had a chance to try