The good news is that the new Parallels 16 invite-only Technical Preview has launched and it runs Windows.
The caveat is that it lacks Intel support at this point.
The Technical Preview, which only functions on M1-based Macs, only allows installations of system images of ARM-based operating systems. At present, Intel-based OS images are not supported.
The only way to run Windows in the Technical Preview is to sign up for Microsoft’s Insider program and download the Windows 10 Client ARM64 Insider Preview VHDX file. The Parallels preview will recognize the file and create a Windows 10 on ARM virtual machine.
At present, the Technical Preview is not yet compatible with existing disk images used in previous versions of Parallels. The software doesn’t allow support suspending and resuming virtual machines, and users will need to close down the virtual machine to close the application.
Parallels is among a group of virtualization software developers, such as Docker and VMWare, racing to sort out the new Apple Silicon hardware, which was just released in November.
After Apple had announced the first Apple Silicon Macs in November, Parallels said it was “excited to see the performance, power efficiency, and virtualization features” and had promised “tremendous progress” made since the annual Worldwide Developers Conference back in June.
Still, there’s some interesting groundwork being laid here, and if you own an M1-based Mac, you can request access to the Technical Preview via the link below and play around with it.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider and Parallels