Parallels Desktop 17 is here and ready to run Windows 11 on M1 Macs

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  Parallels Desktop 17 running Windows on a Mac. [credit: Parallels ]

Parallels Desktop 17 has arrived with support for macOS Monterey and Windows 11. Further, the popular virtualization software for Macs is now a universal binary, making deployment a little less complicated for many IT professionals.

Note that you can only run ARM versions of Windows (10 or 11) on Macs with Apple Silicon chips like the M1. Both Windows 10 and 11 for ARM are available as Insider Preview builds. On the other hand, Parallels can run versions of Windows going back as far as XP if you’re running it on an Intel Mac. A number of Linux distros are also supported, though Intel Macs gain access to more of those than M1 Macs do.

If you have access to those Insider Preview builds, you can run most Windows applications on your M1 Mac, Parallels’ developers say, because Windows on ARM can run both 32-bit and, more recently, 64-bit x86 applications. That said, even on machines it’s designed to run on, Windows on ARM can be occasionally fussy about x64 apps. So your mileage will likely vary depending on what you’re trying to do.