Microsoft Now Officially Supports Running Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs

pcmag.com:

Microsoft today published a support page(Opens in a new window) that shows how Mac users can run Windows 11 on their Apple silicon M1- and M2-powered Macs.

Previously, Alludo (the rebranded Corel) had announced the capability in its Parallels Desktop virtual machine software, but by publishing the options on its support page, Redmond officially acknowledges that the setup works and is approved.

Installing Windows directly on Macs using Apple's Boot Camp feature is not an option unless your Mac has an Intel CPU, so it doesn't work with M1- and M2-based Macs.

The support page details how to run Windows 11 on Apple silicon Macs. In general, there are two options: using Windows 365 Cloud PCs and using Parallels Desktop.

The first option is only available to business and enterprise customers, and is priced accordingly, with Windows 365 starting at $31 per user per month. With this option, the OS is running on Microsoft servers connected to your PC (or Mac or iPad) via superfast broadband. So it's no surprise that this can run on M1 and M2 Macs. Purchasers of the service choose how many CPUs, and how much RAM and storage they want to pay for. This solution enables companies to easily manage fleets of devices.

For everyday individual users, the Parallels route makes the most sense. According to the newly published support page, "Parallels Desktop version 18 is an authorized solution for running Arm versions of Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Enterprise in a virtual environment on its platform on Apple M1 and M2 computers."

In this case, unlike Windows 365, the Windows OS is actually running on the Mac in a virtual machine. That's why it's the Windows on Arm version rather than the standard Windows 11. That means that it comes