Microsoft has officially approved the use of Parallels Desktop 18 to run Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise on Macs with M1 and M2 processors. The business now offers Parallels Desktop version 18 as a “authorized solution” thanks to their collaboration with Parallel. The business has announced the same in a support article.
For those who don’t know, users can run Windows on Macs using the hardware virtualization software Parallels Desktop. According to the Microsoft article, Parallels Desktop version 18 is a certified method for running Arm versions of Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Enterprise in a virtual environment on Apple M1 and M2 computers.
However, the company warns that the Arm version of Windows 11 has limitations that can impact user’s ability to use various types of hardware, games, and apps, including those that rely on DirectX 12 or OpenGL3.3 or greater. For example, experiences that depend on an additional layer of virtualization (nested virtualization) are not supported. These include:
– Windows Subsystem for Android, which enables your Windows 11 device to run Android applications that are available in the Amazon Appstore
– Windows Subsystem for Linux, which enables a GNU/Linux environment on Windows 11
– Windows Sandbox, a lightweight desktop environment to safely run applications in isolation
– Virtualization-based Security (VBS), which enables customers to create and isolate a secure region of memory from the normal operating system
