There was just one problem: my wife and I are in the process of moving and my MacBook Pro was hidden away in a storage unit while we showed the house to potential buyers. Naturally, I wanted to test how this works and experience Parallels’ simple new onboarding process. But what is new is that Microsoft now officially supports this configuration: previously, Mac users who needed to run a Windows app locally had to make do with a Windows Insider Preview version of Windows 11 on Arm that was not supported by Microsoft and had to be laboriously kept up-to-date as new builds were released. This information isn’t new, and it’s been true ever since Parallels released an Apple Silicon-compatible version of its virtualization platform, despite Qualcomm’s steady progress on the in-house chipsets used in newer PCs like the ThinkPad X13s. But until that happens, there’s only one truly great way to run Windows 11 on Arm. Granted, that could change: Qualcomm should announce its first Nuvia-based Arm chipsets for chipsets later this year, and the first PCs based on these chipsets should arrive in early 2024.

But with Windows 11 on Arm, it might not be a lie: Windows 11 on Arm seems to run better in a Parallels Desktop 18-based virtualized environment than it does on native Arm PC hardware. For years, Mac enthusiasts have spread the lie that the best way to run Windows was on a Mac.

Parallel desktop 16 key