A whole new virtual world. Parallels has announced the availability of version 16.5 of its virtualization software Parallels Desktop for Mac. It brings with it native support for Apple silicon.
In other words, the new Apple M1 chipset.
This also means that Windows 10 ARM is now compatible with these custom processors. And those of you who want to run Microsoft’s operating system on their M1 powered Apple computers can now do so effortlessly.
The benefits of native support are plenty evident, as virtualization programs tend to use a significant amount of hardware resources. Having native and fully optimized support means that it is possible to run all manners of Windows applications on Apple machines.
As the company explains:
“More than 100,000 M1 Mac users tested the Technical Preview of Parallels Desktop 16.5 for M1 Mac and ran Microsoft’s Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview, as well as tens of thousands of different Intel-based Windows applications—including Microsoft Office for Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio, SQL Server, Microsoft PowerBI and MetaTrader”.
Performance improvements, of course, are the highlight of this new launch.
Parallels claims that even running Windows 10 on ARM on an M1 powered device is faster than on Intel chips. Users can obtain a performance boost of up to 30% in a virtual machine. Though it merits a mention that these tests were conducted in a controlled environment on Intel Core i9-8950HK chip.
Either way, if you own a M1 based Mac, this should at the very least, improve your experience.
Apple announced its own silicon last fall, and since then developers have been hard at work to bring their apps to devices powered by the M1 processor.
Parallels 16.5 for Mac is available today, and those of you who are already running Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac are allowed to update to this new release at no extra cost.
Check it out here.
