Through software like Virtual Machine and Crossover, you are able to use Windows-based software.

You might recognize this term from mobile processors. However, M1 Macs now use a hardware category called ARM. The biggest problem with running Windows on M1 Macs is that Windows is meant to be run on X64 hardware. But now, you can run Windows on your Mac in a couple of different ways. So, for a while, there was no way to do it. Unfortunately, there was a lot of concern about losing this option, since Apple went over to their own processors. This software would allow you to run Windows and macOS on your Mac computer. This was all tested on the cheapest Apple Silicon laptop you can buy, the $999 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM.If you have used previous Macs that use Intel CPUs, you might have heard of a feature called Boot Camp before. While this video shows that frame rates were “all over the place,” the fact that it runs at all is pretty remarkable. We’ve reached emulation inception, but the M1’s sheer power means that the CrossOver team was able to run games including Among Us and Team Fortress 2. Imagine - a 32-bit Windows Intel binary, running in a 32-to-64 bridge in Wine / CrossOver on top of macOS, on an ARM CPU that is emulating x86 - and it works!” And somewhat surprisingly, performance is pretty solid, despite the fact that CrossOver is being emulated to run its x86 code through Apple’s Rosetta 2 tool - and then CrossOver itself is emulating Windows.Īs Jeremy White from the CrossOver team writes, “I can't tell you how cool that is there is so much emulation going on under the covers. And out of the box, M1 Macs can run the latest version of CrossOver, so Windows apps are on the table. However, Boot Camp isn’t the only way to run Windows apps - for years, CrossOver has provided a way to run Windows software on Linux, macOS and Chrome OS via the Wine open-source Windows compatibility layer.

Obviously, there’s no version of Windows that can run on the M1 chip, so Boot Camp is off the table for now. One thing that’s getting lost in the transition to M1 is Boot Camp, a tool that allowed you to install and run Windows on a separate partition of your Mac’s hard drive.

Apple’s new M1-powered Macs appear to meet the company’s audacious speed claims, but there are still some drawbacks compared to Intel Macs.

Windows emulation on mac m1