Virtualization on the Mac: What can it do and how does macOS do it? | News

The days when Macs had a niche existence with hardly any software for their operating system are long gone. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to occasionally switch to an alternative OS version: software developers can test their apps for compatibility there. Anyone interested in Linux can try out desktops and distributions without having to partition and restart a Mac. And then there are one or two Windows apps without which some industries simply cannot survive. Apple is aware of this and has been building a virtualizer into the system for twelve years now – albeit without a user interface. However, this can easily be retrofitted to provide different levels of comfort.

Under Apple Silicon, there is a clear limit to what virtualization is capable of: only operating systems that run on the ARM processor architecture are supported. These are, for example, macOS versions from 2020, certain Linux distributions and Windows 11 for ARM-based PCs. Everything that is optimized for Intel, such as Windows from XP to 10, requires processor-intensive emulation.

Easy to get started
Howard Oakley offers a VM app that has been reduced to the extreme with Viable, ViableS and Liviable. The free programs help set up and start virtual machines: Viable(S) is intended for macOS VMs, Liviable is suitable for Linux distributions. The shareware VirtualBuddy by Guilherme Rambo is a little more convenient; The app collects installed VMs in an overview window and allows the VM files to be stored centrally on an external volume.

VirtualBuddy offers installation wizards for many versions of macOS and Linux.

Veteran Parallels only available as a subscription
Many users will be familiar with Parallels from the Intel era: The provider has been offering a solution for virtualizing (among other things) Windows for many years. On Apple Silicon, Parallels is only offered as a subscription; the standard version currently costs 54.99 euros. There are also more expensive Pro, Business and Enterprise subscriptions, which provide more features – including emulation of Intel-based Windows versions.

All-rounder UTM
With the open source program UTM, the boundaries between virtualization and emulation are blurred – the software simply enables both. A gallery on the website makes setting up a new VM easier: pre-configured (free) systems can be installed with one click. For commercial software, instructions appear on how to load, install and activate the respective system. What’s particularly nice: UTM also works on Intel Macs – and on iOS. Anyone who has the alternative app store AltStore installed on their iPhone or iPad can use it to bring UTM to their mobile device.

Hypervisor plus Virtio
In a blog post about the state of virtualization on macOS, Howard Oakley traced the progress of VM support in macOS. Apple laid the foundation twelve years ago with macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) – that’s how long ago the integration of a hypervisor was. For Apple Silicon, Apple then relied on the Virtio standard, which is common under Linux, to give virtual machines high-performance access to the new hardware.

Constant progress in macOS
While VM support rarely receives much time at Apple’s product launch events, a lot has happened in recent years around the advancement of VM integration. Since macOS 15 (Sequoia), for example, you have been able to log in to a VM with an Apple account – and can therefore operate two iCloud accounts in parallel. But there are also limitations: audio support is prone to errors, and the Mac App Store only works to a very limited extent in a macOS VM.