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I am a current Intel MacBook Pro user and I am deciding to upgrade my laptop to the latest M2 MacBook Pro so that I can get more memory. My concern is that Parallels will not be able to run Windows 11 and Visual Studio software as well as run Linux based distributions on Parallels.

Is there any major limitations I should know about before deciding to get a new MacBook pro as far Parallels and Windows 11/Linux VMs go?

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  • parallels.com/products/desktop/whats-new seems like a good place to look at.
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 6:07
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    I agree that a simple read of Parallels' website will provide the answers, but it shouldn't have been closed as opinion-based. "What are the limitations of Parallels on ARM" has factual answers.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 8:39
  • I agree with @benwiggy and voted to re-open but the question is also bordering on "not enough self research" because it can be answered with a visit to the Parallels web page
    – Allan
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 15:03
  • Although this answer might help apple.stackexchange.com/a/422566/237 re Virtual Machines on Mac ARM machines
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 16:57

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Yes, for many the main limitation is that you cannot practically reuse the virtual Windows machine you hvae created on your older, Intel computer.

If you create a new virtual machine with Windows 11 for ARM, in my experience that runs really well including Visual Studio.

However, if you have an existing virtual machine of Windows 11 (or older) for Intel CPUs, with all of your preferred tools and lots of special configuration, that will run really, really, really slow. If you have many such virtual machines, it can be a quite length process to reinstall and reconfigure everything.

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  • So you are saying that the Windows ARM running in Parallels on the new MacBook Pro 16 will run very slowly?
    – Philoxopher
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 21:43
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    No, I didn't say that. I wrote "runs really well".
    – jksoegaard
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 22:11
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    Any Intel VM will run very slowly - although you might need UTM for those - Intel Applications will run on Windows ARM through MS conversion layer but not as quick as ARM applications
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 8:27
  • "However, if you have an existing virtual machine of Windows 11 (or older) for Intel CPUs, with all of your preferred tools and lots of special configuration, that will run really, really, really slow." – How will it "run really, really, really slow"? I was not aware that Parallels supports emulation now. Is that a new feature? Also, why would emulation be "really, really, really slow"? How to make emulation fast has been known since at least the HP Dynamo project in 1999. In fact, Dynamo showed that programs running in an emulation can be faster than running natively.
    – Jörg W Mittag
    Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 18:17
  • You cannot just apply learnings from HP Dynamo and make any emulation fast with the snap of your fingers. That’s not how it works. The fact is that emulating a full Intel virtual machine on Apple M-series ARM using software such as qemu is really, really slow right now. However using a virtualized ARM operating system (Windows or Linux) and running Intel user space binaries within that context is practically near-native speed today. Those binaries are translated (AoT or JIT), not interpreted.
    – jksoegaard
    Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 19:20

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