MacBook – bootcamp

[Daybooks]

I understand the new MacBooks use an “M” chip and therefore you cannot use “bootcamp” to run Windows as this requires Intel.

I deliberately chose Bootcamp over Parallels on the presumption that performance would be better on the former; and have no quibbles. Has anyone experience of using Parallels on a MacBook to offer any experiences or indeed comparisons between the two.

Thanks

 

[WebDesires]

1. Spend 10x less and buy a PC instead?

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Spend 10x less and buy a PC instead?

You mean '1/10th of'!!!

Sorry, this use of a multiplier to indicate a fraction is one of the only things that winds me up!

 

[Daybooks]

1. Spend 10x less and buy a PC instead?

That would cost more as you'd need a MacBook and a PC laptop as the PC isn't capable (thankfully) of running MacOS. But thank you for your input.

 

[johndon68]

Not Parallels but I’ve used VirtualBox to run Windows on an Intel iMac and a Mac Book with no problems whatsoever with shared folders and a shared clipboard.

As I understand it, on an ‘M’ Mac, Parallels will only run the ARM version of Windows.

John

 

[Nico Albrecht]

PC isn't capable (thankfully) of running MacOS

not sure why thankful ??. Can you explain. This is quite confusing.

When running parallels to operate Windows 10 or 11, the performance is extremely inadequate, primarily because of the subpar hardware utilized by Apple. It functions, but that's about it. With the M2 chip recently launched, Apple is already trailing behind Intel and AMD by six months in terms of their latest flagship offerings. The limitations of the M arm-based CPU are now becoming increasingly evident. Overall its starting to show lines with lagging in MacOS and very few Apps run faster or do it better due to arm instruction being better suited in some codecs.

use “bootcamp

Incorrect. There is no need for bootcamp at all on intel based Macbooks. W11 installer plugged in, option key boot and install job done!


Like any other situation, it all depends on the specific workload. If you're sitting in a coffee shop, sipping trendy beverages, and merely checking emails on Windows through the Parallels virtual machine, it should perform adequately. However, if you require any substantial processing power, the performance is likely to be below par. For optimal speed, it would be ideal to have a minimum of 32GB of RAM—16GB for macOS and 16GB dedicated to running Windows 11 within the virtual machine.

 

[Daybooks]

Not Parallels but I’ve used VirtualBox to run Windows on an Intel iMac and a Mac Book with no problems whatsoever with shared folders and a shared clipboard.

As I understand it, on an ‘M’ Mac, Parallels will only run the ARM version of Windows.

John

I use the bootcamp to run some heavy processing which it does fine. I did read about the ARM version but "over my head".
Did you use VirtualBox for heavy processing? Thanks.

 

[johndon68]

I use the bootcamp to run some heavy processing which it does fine. I did read about the ARM version but "over my head".
Did you use VirtualBox for heavy processing? Thanks.

Don't know if it counts as heavy processing but I've used both the iMac and the MacBook as a dev machines for developing Windows desktop applications with multiple versions of Microsoft Visual Studio, MS Office and every version of Sage 50 from 9 to 29 installed and neither felt as though they were slow, certainly not to the point where I'd have cause for complaint.

One thing I did notice however and this applied to both machines, is that under heavy loads while running Windows, the fans would kick in, something that never happened in MacOS.

John

 

[Daybooks]

not sure why thankful ??. Can you explain. This is quite confusing.

When running parallels to operate Windows 10 or 11, the performance is extremely inadequate, primarily because of the subpar hardware utilized by Apple. It functions, but that's about it. With the M2 chip recently launched, Apple is already trailing behind Intel and AMD by six months in terms of their latest flagship offerings. The limitations of the M arm-based CPU are now becoming increasingly evident. Overall its starting to show lines with lagging in MacOS and very few Apps run faster or do it better due to arm instruction being better suited in some codecs.


Incorrect. There is no need for bootcamp at all on intel based Macbooks. W11 installer plugged in, option key boot and install job done!


Like any other situation, it all depends on the specific workload. If you're sitting in a coffee shop, sipping trendy beverages, and merely checking emails on Windows through the Parallels virtual machine, it should perform adequately. However, if you require any substantial processing power, the performance is likely to be below par. For optimal speed, it would be ideal to have a minimum of 32GB of RAM—16GB for macOS and 16GB dedicated to running Windows 11 within the virtual machine.

The MacBook was bought back in May 2018 replacing a Dell Desktop. The increase in performance was sizeable. Bootcamp or Parallels seemed to be the only choice then – at least all that was offered. I went with Bootcamp because I presumed the virtual environment would come as an overhead and there was no pressing need to swap between the two systems. The choice was definitely a good one.

Looking towards a possible upgrade and became aware of bootcamp not working. The new spec would exceed the minimum you suggest. The Windows OS is needed because of applications used being Windows only.

I could test out Parallels on the MacBook now just to get a feel. Do you think the performance under the M series is going to be less than under the intel Mac? Any likelihood of this Windows Installer coming to the M series Mac or a better solution on the horizon?

The quote was for the question only.
Thank you.

 

[Kerwin]

not sure why thankful ??. Can you explain. This is quite confusing.

When running parallels to operate Windows 10 or 11, the performance is extremely inadequate, primarily because of the subpar hardware utilized by Apple. It functions, but that's about it.

I'm curious why you say Apple hardware is subpar. I have an M1 Max Mac Studio with 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, and I find it fast enough to run multiple virtual machines simultaneously with VMWare Fusion Pro 13.

I also have a MacBook Air M1 with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD which is also fast enough for pretty much all business tasks I have, and the battery life is far superior to any Windows laptop I have used.

With the M2 chip recently launched, Apple is already trailing behind Intel and AMD by six months in terms of their latest flagship offerings. The limitations of the M arm-based CPU are now becoming increasingly evident. Overall its starting to show lines with lagging in MacOS and very few Apps run faster or do it better due to arm instruction being better suited in some codecs.

Can you provide the source you used to come to this conclusion, please? The consensus is that Apple Silicon is faster than its Intel counterparts, and the chips use less power for the same or greater performance.

Like any other situation, it all depends on the specific workload. If you're sitting in a coffee shop, sipping trendy beverages, and merely checking emails on Windows through the Parallels virtual machine, it should perform adequately. However, if you require any substantial processing power, the performance is likely to be below par. For optimal speed, it would be ideal to have a minimum of 32GB of RAM—16GB for macOS and 16GB dedicated to running Windows 11 within the virtual machine.

MacOS can happily run with 8GB of RAM, so you can allocate more RAM to Windows if required.

 

[Daybooks]

I'm curious why you say Apple hardware is subpar. I have an M1 Max Mac Studio with 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, and I find it fast enough to run multiple virtual machines simultaneously with VMWare Fusion Pro 13.

I also have a MacBook Air M1 with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD which is also fast enough for pretty much all business tasks I have, and the battery life is far superior to any Windows laptop I have used.

Can you provide the source you used to come to this conclusion, please? The consensus is that Apple Silicon is faster than its Intel counterparts, and the chips use less power for the same or greater performance.

MacOS can happily run with 8GB of RAM, so you can allocate more RAM to Windows if required.

When initially configuring the MacBook all I seem to remember having to choose was how much to partition between Mac and Windows and I split it 50:50 1TB each. Don’t recal having to decide on RAM. However I have no issues at all with its performance.

I realised I can simply put Parallels onto the Mac side and then run my own tests to get comparisons (although not in parallel you understand ). If that proves acceptable then the only question unanswered would be whether Parallels in the M series will be as good as Parallels under the Mac/Intel version.

As a general observation and based upon no scientific evidence my experience with Windows under bootcamp has been better than anything experienced under PC desktop/laptop.

 

[Kerwin]

Parallels should be fine on either Intel or M series. You must remember that on M series chips, you need the ARM64 version of Windows, not the Intel version.

If you want to emulate an Intel chip to run Intel Windows on an M series chip, then use UTM.

‎UTM Virtual Machines

‎UTM lets you run Windows® 10, Windows® 11, Ubuntu®, or macOS(*) fully virtualized with maximum performance. Run Windows® 7, Windows® XP, and other older operating system emulated with decent performance. UTM uses the popular QEMU system emulator securely in a sandboxed environment to protect...

apps.apple.com

You can get it from the UTM website for free, but I paid for it because it is really useful, and I hope they keep developing it.

 

[Ozzy]

Has anyone experience of using Parallels on a MacBook to offer any experiences or indeed comparisons between the two.

I don't know what heavy processing you use, but we do need to use Windows for one specific task - the BACS payment runs as the software provided by Natwest for managing the direct debit runs only runs on Windows! We're a MacOS based business with all staff working from MacBook Pro's but just for handling the monthly direct debt runs we use Parallels on one machine to do that one 1 hour activity every month

So I can answer the question to say it works fine on the new Macbook M1 chips, and no complaints from finance, but it only runs a web based app so not much heavy lifting.

I have tried VirtualBox separately and that didn't support Win11 running on an M1 chip Macbook so had to install Win10 - don't know why and to be honest don't care ? as I have no desire to use Windows unless forced to.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

use Windows

new Macbook M1 chips

I'm curious to know how you obtained a license for W11 on your system. From my understanding, the ARM version of Windows 11 is currently limited to insider previews and cannot be licensed for business usage. Microsoft has implemented restrictions on licensing ARM software through contracts, resulting in the availability of only the insider preview version. Although this preview version can be activated using an x86 key, it is not licensed for running actual ARM operations.

I don't know what heavy processing you use

Can't be GPU intensive as there is no actual hardware GPU acceleration or even arm drivers avaiaible.

 

[Ozzy]

I'm curious to know how you obtained a license for W11 on your system.

I didn't, I followed the steps to download the ISO from the Microsoft website and didn't get far enough to licence the OS through the wizard after installation.
If that wouldn't have been possible to licence it then I would have deleted anyway, if the licence isn't available as you describe above then I would have deleted it anyway. I was hoping to test an application to see if it would run so needed Win11 to be up and running for less than 3 minutes.

 

[Daybooks]

I don't know what heavy processing you use, but we do need to use Windows for one specific task - the BACS payment runs as the software provided by Natwest for managing the direct debit runs only runs on Windows! We're a MacOS based business with all staff working from MacBook Pro's but just for handling the monthly direct debt runs we use Parallels on one machine to do that one 1 hour activity every month

So I can answer the question to say it works fine on the new Macbook M1 chips, and no complaints from finance, but it only runs a web based app so not much heavy lifting.

I have tried VirtualBox separately and that didn't support Win11 running on an M1 chip Macbook so had to install Win10 - don't know why and to be honest don't care ? as I have no desire to use Windows unless forced to.

The last time I used NatWest for BACS payment it was a simple upload of a text file that took all of two minutes. Does seem like backward steps over the last twenty years if it takes anywhere near an hour these days.

The use is principally Microsoft Excel because it uses VBA which although supported on a Mac has limitations. The Excel files are also compiled to executables which requires Windows.

Although perhaps not so true in recent times the advantage of Mac was that it forced Microsoft to improve.

 

[Ozzy]

The last time I used NatWest for BACS payment it was a simple upload of a text file that took all of two minutes.

I don't know exactly how long it takes, I'm not actually involved in the process itself. What I do know is that it must be used with an old version of Internet Explorer and not Edge, Chrome or any other browser, and must use a particular card identity system that only works on Windows to log the user into the old web browser. All a pain LOLz

 

[Daybooks]

I don't know exactly how long it takes, I'm not actually involved in the process itself. What I do know is that it must be used with an old version of Internet Explorer and not Edge, Chrome or any other browser, and must use a particular card identity system that only works on Windows to log the user into the old web browser. All a pain LOLz

Making your staff use outdated technology - whatever next! Sounds like you have an overdue phone conversation with the bank.

 

[Ozzy]

Making your staff use outdated technology - whatever next! Sounds like you have an overdue phone conversation with the bank.

We've had numerous conversations with them about this, to no avail.

 

[Daybooks]

We've had numerous conversations with them about this, to no avail.

Sounds like they will only hear you when you leave them. Be warned - they are all as bad as each other!