Despite hardware limits, Parallels supports running Windows on MacBook Neo
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I can confirm this, as we just got a Neo, though Windows 11 ARM downloaded from Parallels runs much more efficiently than X86 versions on my other Macs. Good news, if you have to do it you can....
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I don’t think anyone is disputing anything in your entire post. The article is just saying that you can run x86-64 Windows on Mac Neo, if you really need to. Not that it would be a great experience.
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With RAM being obscenely expensive, get ready for software companies to talk about how you can get away with less if it means you'll buy their software.
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That's surprising. I tried running an Ubuntu VM using VMware on an M3 Macbook Air with 16 GB RAM, and it was slow as molasses. Typing was a pain because there was noticeable lag between keypress and appearance of the char.
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All of that is true, but respectfully it misses the point, which is that you can do this at all, on a $500/$600 macOS laptop with a phone processor in it (and not even the latest-generation phone processor). This is (almost certainly) the worst MacBook Neo they'll ever make in terms of performance, and it's still good enough to do things that comparably-priced x86 laptops can't do, with a better OS and better support (don't underestimate the value of just "take it to the Apple Store"). Now imagine next year's model with A19 Pro in it, with 12GB of RAM instead.
No, it's not meant to do a lot of the things described in the article and you'd be better off with MacBook Air or Pro, but it's still amazing that it can do them at all, or to be able to do them and it not be entirely unusable.
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Despite the push towards OS-agnostic everything, there's still some software that requires Windows to run and doesn't have a MacOS/Linux substitute. This specific configuration probably isn't a great idea if one still needs such software, but the point is more that it's possible now, and future hardware improvements will make it even more feasible.
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Something was very wrong there. Not blaming you -- just quite sure that should have performed just fine.
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This is a perfectly timed article for me being in the market for a laptop to run Autocad Windows. If the Neo can run it then maybe a beefier Mac would run it sufficiently for a student learning the program while still avoiding Windows 11 as much as possible.
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macosandlinux
Ars Praefectus
You can make it work if you need to run a Win course app for school or the accounting app that is Win only, but yeah, nobody's saying it's a great fit, it's just a relief you can make it work at all, if the situation demands it once in a while.
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I'm looking forward to having to rethink of how we utilise resources.
As a dev I've become lazy (out of practicality) and as long as it works well enough I'm not investing more energy than necessary. And no I haven't been profiling my code, unless it involves database and network access. Should I do better: hell yes. Am I going to be given time to do better: maybe?
Typically the approach is: unless someone is complaining or providing constructive feedback, then its considered good enough for most of our scenarios.
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It seems you can run MacOS well, or you can run Windows well, just not both at the same time.
But can someone answer: if you buy an external TB drive, can you run Windows without using space on the internal drive? Or use both at different times, both using half of the terabyte? And both using minimal space on the internal drive?
But can someone answer: if you buy an external TB drive, can you run Windows without using space on the internal drive? Or use both at different times, both using half of the terabyte? And both using minimal space on the internal drive?
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macosandlinux
Ars Praefectus
That should give the PC OEMs headaches. Plus that nice colorful chassis at that price.
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My daughter had a similar situation. She got an M2 Macbook Pro 16/512 for college a few years ago. Then she switched majors to engineering, which requires Windows for things like Solidworks. She tried VMWare, but it didn’t work well. Switched to Parallels and had no problem running all of her engineering software.
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I'm not surprised by this. I've run Windows in Parallels on my 8GB M1 Air for light duty and it runs beautifully, better than on many Intel laptops I've had.
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Not everyone lives in a big city. I would have to make an over night trip to go to an apple store.
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I've used Parallels for years and even at this moment it's running Lattice Radiant FPGA synthesis on my M2pro, but something about Windows on the cute little Neo just feels dirty.
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You a run VMs on any attached drive, I mix and match mine, with some external, some on internal drives, depending on the size.
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This is certainly a consideration I make.
What needs to be with more on the move and what can I relegate to a docked scenario. With something like a Mini it is easier since everything is essentially permanently docked, but with a laptop that a harder balance to find sometimes.
Portable terabyte drives make that a little easier, but here you'll also need to decide whether your apps can shift there load to be temp file based vs memory based.
It also makes me wonder how much space should/could be made available for swap space, when storage is an SSD?
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The performance of Windows for ARM under virtualization on Apple Silicon is nothing short of amazing. I'm able to run Vivado (a CPU intensive x86-64 app written in Java) under Microsoft's x86-64 emulator under Windows 11 ARM under Parallels on an M4 Pro Mini in a 24GB RAM, 6 core virtual machine. It's quite usable, and saves me from having to power up my older 10th gen i7 "tower of doom" when I want to synthesize some Verilog for a Xilinx part. Running Geekbench 6.5.0 in the Windows 11 ARM virtual system gives me a respectable single core 3086 and multi-core 11758.
I'd love to see some reporting that takes a close look at virtualization, what it's capable of, and how well it compares to native solutions.
I'd love to see some reporting that takes a close look at virtualization, what it's capable of, and how well it compares to native solutions.
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FWIW, instead of Parallels or VMware, you can also use UTM for free: https://mac.getutm.app
It doesn't deliver any deep integrations between host and guest, but it's more than good enough to validate compatibility and performance.
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If it forces companies to actually optimize their software then... well... it still sucks but at least some good will come out of it.
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I had.... acceptable results with UTM using 22.04. It was by no means pleasant, but it was usable. Mind you, I was using the ARM version. not sure if you were using x64 or not. Anyway, I discovered brew and iTerm and I really don't need to virtualize linux anymore.
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I ran Win11 in a VM on my OG M1 MacBook Pro with only 8GB of RAM and it ran very well. I needed it run Visio so on top of Win Arm running in a VM, it was also doing x86 to ARM translation in Windows.
It was actually usable and could open, edit, and export rather large files without much ado.
It was actually usable and could open, edit, and export rather large files without much ado.
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I did use the ARM version. I figured there'd be less overhead in translating instruction sets.
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I run Debian VMs using Parallels on an 5 year old M1 Macbook Pro (with 16Gb RAM) and it does Ada compilations as fast as macOS does natively.
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It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s ARM to x86 translation engine (the equivalent to Rosetta 2) has gotten a lot better over the last several years, and that’s an important part of the viability of VMs both on the Neo and on Macs more broadly. You really can run useful x86 software on the ARM version of Windows, which essential since most apps don’t have ARM-native Windows versions.
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This is a fascinating ballpark comparison to me. Sounds like basically virtualizing Windows-ARM on an M4 gives you roughly M3-grade style performance (M3 GB6 around ~3100/12000).
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I wonder if running x86 Windows in a VM and the running x86 software is slower or faster than running ARM Windows and then x86 software.
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Thanks for adding this to the conversation; I’m going to give it a try on mine. With only a 256GB hard drive, did you need to install Windows on an external drive? I’m recently retired doing a little contract work on the side and this would be a cheaper solution than buying a second laptop.
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I've run ARM Windows 11 on my 8 GB M1 MacBook Air in Parallels before. It's obviously not a great experience and it's not something you'd want to rely on, but it works if you're in a pinch where there's simply not an alternative to Windows for whatever reason.
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And probably never will outside of the top 100 or so packages (commercial, OSS will probably be better). Unless MS drops x64 support, and that’s not happening.
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As someone who uses AutoCAD LT, I certainly wouldn't call it a lightweight application. Yes, it uses fewer resources than full AutoCAD, but it isn't lightweight. Also, if you need Matlab and only have a Mac, I would try GNU Octave and see if it can do what you need before going through the hassle of setting up a Windows VM.
GNU Octave
GNU Octave
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With so many bright color options, I'm surprised they didn't name it Neon or Nemo.
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