Does VMware fusion pro run on Mac M1 chip?

[Benjaminbatwing]

I recently purchased VMware fusion 12 pro and when I got the download link it was for intel based Macs. I have the new MacBook Pro M1, so do I need to return the software and purchase something else or will it run on my M1? Thanks

[ColoradoMarmot]

Well, for windows, VMWare won't until Microsoft gives them the go-ahead, so that's a moot point.

For Linux, two things.  First, remember VMWare is an enterprise not consumer software company.  Fusion has many features, like esxi integration that are much more complicated.  Fusion has always been the 'slower to release a much more stable version' of the two (which is why I use it).

Having tried the competition, I can share that it's still effectively beta.  A lot of features don't work properly and the whole stack crashes at least a couple of times a week.  Calling something GA doesn't mean it's really GA.  

Do I wish they'd refresh?  Yup.  It'd be nice to not have to jump through all the hoops to stand up a linux VM with full support.  Who knows, maybe this year it'll be Fusion on stage at WWDC :-).

[coffeekomrade]

I am aware, the only reason we use VMWare at my org is because it’s enterprise and we get a deal on it.with a lot of our Mac fleet moving to M1, VMWare is less and less appealing. The same slower approach you are praising is putting them behind. 

Losing their CEO must have hurt though, not updating their tech beta since Sept 2021 is a good indication of a lack of direction. VMware had plenty of notice and time for the Apple Silicon transition that it’s crazy they are still in a tech demo. 

On top of that MSFT has already said that windows running on an M1 Mac either virtual or otherwise is not a supported scenario and won’t be.

[RDPetruska]

---

@coffeekomrade wrote:

On top of that MSFT has already said that windows running on an M1 Mac either virtual or otherwise is not a supported scenario and won’t be.

---

Well, there you go... so why are you even talking about it, when obviously the competition is doing shady stuff in order to desperately sell product to their customers, and the devil may care if they can continue or not?

[Technogeezer]

---

@coffeekomrade wrote:

I am aware, the only reason we use VMWare at my org is because it’s enterprise and we get a deal on it.with a lot of our Mac fleet moving to M1, VMWare is less and less appealing. The same slower approach you are praising is putting them behind. 

Losing their CEO must have hurt though, not updating their tech beta since Sept 2021 is a good indication of a lack of direction. VMware had plenty of notice and time for the Apple Silicon transition that it’s crazy they are still in a tech demo. 

On top of that MSFT has already said that windows running on an M1 Mac either virtual or otherwise is not a supported scenario and won’t be.

---

As far as "lack of direction", well, we have no idea on what VMware is doing behind the scenes. VMware is quiet about product plans. Us mere mortals don't have NDAs with them where they might speak openly about their plans. 

It appears that VMware's vision of where Fusion (and Workstation) fit into their overall product strategy is vastly different than what Parallels' is. I'm concerned that it's taken so long, as they are faced with the same dilemma in supporting Macs as Parallels has due to Apple's decision to stop using Intel. But if you're dependent on the Mac as a fancier platform to run Windows, well, Apple cut the mooring lines on that ship and it's currently drifting without power in the middle of the ocean.

I don't know what the "Losing their CEO" has to do with it. Yes VMware was spun off from Dell (which IMO is a very, very good thing), and Pat Gelsinger decided to move on. But I'm not concerned about their current CEO - according to his bio he is a long-time VMware employee and has been responsible for many things in his career there including product strategy, planning, and engineering execution. 

As far as "Microsoft says that Windows running on an M1 Mac is not a supported scenario and won't be", both VMware and Microsoft appear to be saying "never say never". 

To be honest, it might be time for businesses to look at either virtual desktops or Microsoft's Windows 365 "Windows in the cloud" service. Advantages there are that Windows can be accessed from Macs, Linux, Phones, Tablets, etc...

[ColoradoMarmot]

If I were a business today that needed windows access on Mac, I'd do exactly that.  Some form of Cloud VDI is the way to go.  I'd done that for some of my old windows games even before the M1 move via shadow.tech, but that company is having too many issues to continue with (and wasn't enterprise-grade either).

I have hope (no insider knowledge) that the silence is due to a waiting game, with a nice surprise at the end.

[jweisbin]

I don't use Windows for production work, I only use it for testing, and I have Windows VM's in the cloud that I can access. But it's much faster and more convenient to have a VM on my local computer, and especially if I can drag and drop and share between the Mac and Windows side. For that purpose Windows 11 ARM running on Parallels is working for me, as are the Linux VM's I have. It's a shame that Fusion Pro can't be used for this purpose, and in fact for me currently its only use is to open VM's from our vSphere servers, which can also be done just using VMWare Remote Console (though you don't get to see your whole library that way).

[ColoradoMarmot]

Oh agree, and if there were a clear 'license compliant' way of doing so, that'd be my preference too.

I don't know too many corporate legal departments that would allow it currently though - the license situation is murky at best, hence the GDI as the only 'for sure' way to go.

[AlexBowden]

"There is NO way to run Intel guests on an M1 machine (period, full stop - if you need Intel guests, run an intel machine)."

Having spent years running an old 68K soft PC which ran intel applications on a motorola mac, and subsiquently running the whole thing on a power PC Mac,  I laugh at your "period, full stop"

Its only a matter of time.

[telecastle]

You can already run Intel guests on the M1 machine. Look up UTM. 

[ColoradoMarmot]

At the time I wrote that it was absolutely true.  Is it still true today?  Basically yes.

Those were vastly simpler CPU's, and emulating to run applications is a far cry from supporting entire modern operating systems.  Are there hacks with partial functionality?  Sure.  But not remotely stable or performant.

Building a commercial grade (let alone enterprise grade) emulation system that supports full-featured modern OS virtualization is a huge lift, and not on the horizon.  My statement still stands.  If someone needs an intel guest, run an intel mac.

I wish it was different.  I also wish I was younger and taller.  Thinner I can do something about :-).

[Cirrus20]

If you are a mainstream user wanting macOS and Windows VMs, do NOT use the silicon version of Apple macOS. Get an INTEL macOS device. This will allow you to run the Virtual software from VMWare (FUSION) and Parallels. The experience on both is pretty damned good.

Regardless, the short answer to your question is YES.

The long answer is VMWare Fusion is very pre-release, buggy and only uses the ARM versions of Windows. I also have parallels (they tout it is M1 compatible -do not believe them, it's not) and many of the fanboys say running MS Windows arm is fine, for me it isn't and it will not run many of the applications I need to run on standard Windows. Further, trying to run macOS VMs on Parallels on an M1 device is totally useless for me. One of the main points of having VMs for me is the ability to roll back to a previous point (especially when testing). Parallels macOS VMs DO NOT even have snapshots.

If I could swap my new and heavily configured M1-plus  macbook pro, for an Intel version of the same capacity, I'd do it in a heartbeat and then could use FUSION (or Parallels) as it was intended. The happy world of interoperability is well and truly gone.

If you use an M1 mac simply as a mac then I'm sure it's fine, but the world of cranking up a Windows or macOS VM for whatever reason is long gone and the time for the vendors to develop something reasonable in FUSION or Parallels is way into the future. Both vendors seem to concentrate on LINUX? Possibly because it is simpler to virtualise. But I'm guessing the real need is for bog standard Windows first, macOS Next and Linux last.

[ColoradoMarmot]

They're focusing on Linux because that's the only legal licenses with full guest support.  MacOS (as you note) isn't really virtualizable yet, and Windows can't be legally licensed on a Mac.

It's definitely early days - earlier than 2006 when we had the very first intel machines in many ways.  I have some hope for windows arm with legal licenses, which runs much (but as you discovered) not all windows software.  That should get a lot better once VMWare can actually build real tools and support.  They've hinted something is coming in June...fingers crossed!

[Technogeezer]

And I think @Cirrus20 is being a bit harsh on the stability of the tech preview. Until the Linux kernel maintainers decided to test for a CPU capability register that exposed a "we never thought of that" in the Tech Preview, it's been remarkably stable for a pre-release. Since Linux on ARM is evolving quickly, expect to get best results with latest releases - older releases can and will be problematic.

macOS on M1 is an entirely different beast to virtualize, and Apple hasn't gotten around to making it viable on M1 yet.  (another "it's early"). Parallels IMO only checks the box for virtualizing macOS on M1. As is stated, there are some serious gaps in functionality that you'd expect would be there. I firmly believe they just put a wrapper around Apple's sample code - and that's as far as they could go.  (look at their "limitations" tech note and Apple's sample implementation and you'll find there's not a lot of differences in capabilities).

I would be interested in the programs @Cirrus20 was not able to be run on Windows for ARM, and if it was tried on a Parallels VM. That would say something about the degree of x86_64 compatibility that Microsoft is building into Windows 11 - and how serious they are about the ARM platform outside of Surface devices.

And for those that say "use UTM" to run Intel operating systems on the M1s:  🤣🤣 I suggest you give it a try. I did. It's slow. IMO, it's only considered usable if you set the bar really, really low.  I don't see anything on the horizon that will enable "vendors" to include adequately performing x86_64 full system emulation in their product. (seems QEMU is focusing more on integrating with KVM and other virtualization technologies lately than improving their emulation)..

[Technogeezer]

---

@ColoradoMarmot wrote:

They're focusing on Linux because that's the only legal licenses with full guest support.  MacOS (as you note) isn't really virtualizable yet, and Windows can't be legally licensed on a Mac.

Also consider that they're focusing on Linux because of the cloud. Lots of stuff up there is Linux based. Also a big win for cloud providers in power/cooling costs if they use ARM cpus. And if you look at some of VMware's other offerings - such as Tanzu - you start to see where there could be some synergies.

[dhlewis]

I keep seeing references that "Microsoft can't be legally virtualized on Apple silicon" -- but, a certain competitor to vmWare Fusion can and does offer that.  I installed and ran a trial version on my m1 MBP w/no trouble. Only Win11, granted, but, that's a step up from "no-can-do." Am I missing something? This is academic for me, as I need Win10 VMs to work. So, I'm back to carrying two computers - which, fwiw, sucks. This is a low priority question for me, at the moment, but, I'm curious as to how this is playing out. Thanks in advance.

[Technogeezer]

Nobody is saying “no can do”.  We all know Windows 11 ARM runs on the Tech Preview and that it runs better on Parallels right now because they waded into the gray area of Microsoft supportability and built in-guest tools.  

The real issue is that Microsoft has explicitly said that they do not support Windows 11 running on Apple Silicon. Some don’t care about this as long as Windows 11 runs for what they want to do. Others have a problem with this because it is very unclear who will fix any problems if they are encountered, fear of running afoul of the Microsoft compliance polic, or feat that Microsoft may not allow Windows 11 at run in unsupported configurations in the future. Individuals lean towards the former, businesses toward the latter. 

VMware could fix the lack of in-guest tools if they wanted to take the chance that Microsoft will continue to turn a blind eye. They can’t control what Microsoft will do if there’s a problem with windows on M1’s not caused by VMware, or if Microsoft decides it wants to clamp down. 

Microsoft is pushing Windows 11 hard.  Their Rosetta-like translator that allows Windows x64 apps to run on ARM is only available on Windows 11. 

[gringley]

I really do not think Microsoft is turning a blind eye - the root issue is that Apple no longer supports Windows on Mac hardware.

[Technogeezer]

Well, given that Microsoft has said that they will not support using Windows on M1 Macs, what do you think Apple’s position would be? IIRC there was a statement by an Apple executive stating they’d be willing to consider Windows support if Microsoft allows it. 

Why is it that nobody wants to hold Microsoft’s feet to the fire on this because it it their refusals that’s ultimately causing this issue. I firmly believe the rumored exclusivity agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm  is at the root of Microsoft’s position. 

[RDPetruska]

---

@Technogeezer wrote:

Why is it that nobody wants to hold Microsoft’s feet to the fire on this because it it their refusals that’s ultimately causing this issue. 

---

And please explain why they should?  Why should Microsoft be expected to spend their resources to create and then Support (which ultimately costs way more, with QA and Help Desk, etc. ongoing costs) their competitor's proprietary hardware?  Here we are and yet once again Apple proves they do not want to play with everybody else in the market... they have ALWAYS stuck with hardware which nobody else in the world uses, refused to allow 3rd party cloning like IBM did, etc.  Higher priced hardware at every level, and screwing their users by forcing them to keep buying more and more products at THEIR own monopolistic prices to stay within their infrastructure (e.g. lightning, thunderbolt, etc instead of the open standards which EVERY other hardware company on the planet used).  Why would you expect MS to kowtow to Apple's whims?  They have gone off and created a proprietary cpu chip which benefits their own OS only - yet again they do not want their hardware being used by ANYONE else.  You yourself have stated on this forum that there are flavors of Linux for ARM processors which will NOT work on this Apple M1 ARM-like processor because Apple did not include support for certain block sizes, which clearly EVERY other ARM processor manufacturer does!

[VirtualMac2009]

Microsoft can sell more Windows licenses if they run on Apple silicon Macs. As they do with Intel x86 Macs.