Fusion Pro 12 on M1 Mac with Big Sur??

[Ruppy1]

My old laptop died, and I just set up an M1 by restoring from a clone. So far everything except Fusion works fine. I am getting a message as follows: 

"Failed to power on '/Users/MY NAME OMITTED HERE/Virtual Machines/Windows 10x64.vmwarevm/Windows 7 x64 - New.vmx

1) Will Fusion work on an M1 Mac?

2) If so, can someone tell me what I need to do. Support used to address with install issues, but things seem to have changed. I appreciate any help.

[scott28tt]

1. No.

2. Wait til there's a new version of Fusion available, but even then it will only run guest OSes for ARM, not x86.

[Ruppy1]

Thanks for answering 1. 

I run (for now on another computer) the most recent version of Windows, running only 1 application. Sorry, I'm not sure how the ARM vs. x86 would affect me. 

[ColoradoMarmot]

So Fusion virtualizes the CPU.  Rosetta emulates the CPU.  They are very different.  Fusion passes through the instructions directly to the hardware, where rosetta translates the instructions from one language (intel in the app) to another (arm in the hardware).  Doing that is hard, and doing it well and fast is harder.  Rosetta is an amazing bit of technology, but it's still not enough to run an entire operating system.

That's why Fusion is working on virtualizing ARM based operating systems.  Right now those are all Linux.  Microsoft has a version of Windows that runs on ARM, but it's not licensed to run on Macs.  VMWare has announced that they are working towards supporting Linux on Fusion on M1's, but have no plans to do so for Windows unless Microsoft changes their licensing policy.

What that all means is that if you need to run windows software written for intel, you should keep your other machine until something changes.

[scott28tt]

See that x64 in the name of your VM?

That means you’re running an x86-based version of Windows, which won’t work on the M1 processor in a VM even after Fusion is able to power on VMs in the future.

Unless Microsoft change their license policy for ARM-compatible versions of Windows.

[Ruppy1]

Thank you for the thorough answer. Over the years, I've gone from being a power user of Macs (at least compared to the general population) to just wanting something to work. 

Alas, your last sentence says it all. I have a financial services program written for windows. I guess it is going to be go native on Mac or go home. 

[Ruppy1]

Thank you. I still have fusion installed on one older Mac. I really didn't want to buy another new intel based Mac, but we will see. 

[JXSynclair]

How is it that Parallels is able to release a version that will allow M1 Macs to run windows and VMFuxion is not?  

[scott28tt]

Might be that VMware appreciate that it’s illegal (according to Microsoft licensing) to do so?

[ColoradoMarmot]

So first, it's Windows ARM, not windows intel.  No VM Platform supports the latter, and it's highly unlikely that they will. 

For Windows ARM, the EULA clearly states that it can only be installed on the machine with which it originally came.  That means that there is no legal way to install it on a mac.  Parallels themselves violated the EULA by demoing it.  

Hopefully microsoft with windows 11 will allow end-user sales, at which point I expect Fusion to quickly have a release out that works.

[rschultz101]

still no news, on getting Vmware fusion for M1 and running intel code !!!!!! ? 

really don't want to switch to parallels 

[Technogeezer]

Better get your expectations aligned correctly. Neither Fusion nor Parallels will run Intel architecture VMs on Apple Silicon. They run operating systems for ARM architectures only. 

As @ColoradoMarmot says, there’s no legal way to run Windows for ARM developer preview on Apple Silicon today even though other vendors would encourage you to do so. Hopefully Microsoft changes that in the future. 

[SvenGus]

As also said before, you will always be able to emulate x86/x64 on M1 Macs, but with another app, called UTM, based on the famous and reliable but rather slow QEMU (of course, QEMU emulation will be much slower than VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop virtualization, but probably usable for simple tasks; and, sadly, still with no accelerated graphics); here are some examples for Intel Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 10 (of course, you would have to rebuild your existing Intel VMs, as there is currently no import function and the project is still at a rather early stage: but it looks promising, for those needing emulation of old Intel-only OSes):

https://youtu.be/gQ4fSwkLbWA

https://youtu.be/vfaM3J1qMTY

https://youtu.be/Kn_ATp96xLI

https://youtu.be/qUmb3rG2xkk

[SvenGus]

… While of course Windows 10 and 11 ARM version, once licensed also for retail, will be much faster on M1s: also on UTM/QEMU (with Apple’s built-in HVF hypervisor framework), but especially in future VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop versions, even more optimized for the Mac.

[ColoradoMarmot]

That's a big if on the licenses.

QEMU is problematic from all reports I've seen, it's nowhere near complete or stable, especially for a whole OS.

I plan to try Fusion->Linux ARM->QEMU->Wine when it's out.  Nothing like stacking elephants on eggs!