The whole “Windows on M1 Mac” thing is complicated by the need to run a version of Windows built for ARM chips (Apple Silicon is a customized derivative of an ARM cpu chip) rather than Intel chips, and Microsoft’s stance on support for that version of Windows running on the Mac (they currently don’t even though it runs). The answer gets more murky when you add “will it run Windows”. VMware has indicated recently that they are looking at a official Fusion release later this year that runs on Apple Silicon Macs. To your question about when will there be a version of Fusion that runs Windows on M1 Macs, the short answer based on what we’ve heard from VMware lately is “maybe later this year”. The following is my personal opinion based on what I’ve seen recently, and I hope this helps. I also don’t know how that title “commander” got attached to me, so just plain old “Technogeezer” is fine I’m after all just another user even though I have a tech background. If you have Intel Windows applications that you expect to run, you are at the mercy of Microsoft’s implementation of a Intel-to-ARM translator which is not as far along as Apple’s Rosetta we do sometimes get mired in jargon (myself included, so I do have to watch it). There are things that may not work as you expect because of that. You can get the Windows For ARM Insider Preview to work on M1 Macs, but it is unsupported by both VMware and Microsoft (no VMware Tools).

Windows 10/11 do have an ARM version but Microsoft does not sell a license to end users for it nor do they support it on Apple Silicon processors. Neither Windows 7 nor Windows Server have versions that run on ARM architecture devices.

but any applications you have will need to be recompiled on those versions to run. Any operating system that runs under the Fusion Tech Preview on Apple Silicon (M1, etc.) has to be an ARM architecture (arm64/aarch64), not Intel.īoth Ubuntu and Kali have arm64/aarch64 versions that run on M1. Second, any VMs that you have created under Fusion on an Intel Mac will not and will never run on an M1 Mac. First you will have to run the Fusion Tech Preview for Apple Silicon to run any virtual machines on the M1 Mac.

Fusion 360 m1 macbook