You cannot use VMware Fusion or any other virtualisation product to run 32-bit Mac applications on an Apple Silicon Mac. This is highly unlikely to change in future.
For starters, VMware Fusion does not yet work at all on an Apple Silicon Mac (any VM will "fail to power on").
A future version of VMware Fusion will support running ARM-based Linux and potentially other ARM-based operating systems in a VM on an Apple Silicon Mac. This will not extend to running Intel-based operating systems in a VM, since that requires emulation of a different processor instruction set, which is outside the scope of virtualisation.
That rules out running macOS 10.15 Catalina or earlier in a VM on an Apple Silicon Mac, which means you cannot run any version of macOS which is able to run 32-bit Intel applications.
Competing virtualisation products won't help because even the ones which already work on Apple Silicon cannot run Intel-based operating systems on the ARM-based processor in an Apple Silicon Mac.
To run 32-bit Mac applications you need one of these solutions:
- An Intel Mac booted into macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier. This must be a Mid 2019 or older model, since Late 2019 and newer models can only boot into macOS 10.15 Catalina or later.
- If the 32-bit Mac applications are able to run in a VM (some are not) then you can use VM software on an Intel Mac (2020 or older models with an Intel processor) to run macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier in a VM.
- It might be possible to use an emulator product like QEMU to emulate an Intel Mac on an Apple Silicon Mac, and boot an older macOS version inside the emulator. If this works at all then compared to a VM on a recent Intel Mac it will probably be even slower, may have feature limitations and some applications may not work at all.
My solution for occasional use of old Mac software is to keep one working Intel Mac able to run older macOS versions in a VM, plus a second Intel Mac booted into an older macOS version to run a few applications I have which don't work at all in a VM (these could be the same computer but for convenience I have two). My primary computer will be an Apple Silicon Mac, once Apple releases one with the features I need.
