
- #Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies how to#
- #Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies install#
- #Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies windows 10#
- #Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies software#
Those are the words I wanted to hear so I signed up.
#Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies windows 10#
To run Windows 10 for ARM64, it turns out Microsoft allows you a free download if you sign up for a free membership in the Windows Insider Program. Without the Guest Tools, your mouse and keyboard may not work, your WiFi won’t be recognized, perhaps sounds won’t come out of your speakers, and more. You need two things to make an image work properly: an operating system and what are called Guest Tools tailored to your hardware.
#Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies software#
Virtual machine software works by creating an image that is the virtual machine.

I will, however, go through an overview of how this works though so you have context for my discovery in going through his steps.
#Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies how to#
He tells you what to download, how to configure it, and which buttons to push to make it go, all with screenshots to make sure it’s clear what he’s telling you to do.

I’m not going to go through the installation in detail, because Steve Sande does a fabulous job of it. Let’s Do This! UTM Gallery of OS Virtual Machines Of course, that’s all the motivation I needed to proceed. This makes this a fun experiment, possibly a colossal waste of time, and when I’m done I’ll have something I don’t need. As I mentioned before, Windows on ARM isn’t really supported to do this, and even if I succeed, apps would have to be compiled for 64-bit ARM to run on it.
#Installing windows 10 on a mac for dummies install#
I found an article by Steve Sande on the OWC blog where he walks through the steps to configure UTM on an M1 Mac, and install Windows on ARM for free, legitimately. The value that UTM brings to QEMU is that it’s a graphical user interface not requiring a plethora of command line options and flags, so the learning curve is much more gentle. Under the hood of UTM is QEMU, a decades-old, free and open source emulation software that is widely used and actively maintained. Sadly, it requires you to jailbreak your iOS device so I declined that opportunity but running this on macOS Big Sur sounded like good fun.

And then I discovered an open source virtual machine app I hadn’t heard of called UTM which runs on M1 and even on iOS. I did a bit of poking around looking into what virtual machine software runs on the M1s and discovered that VirtualBox from Oracle and the commercial software VMware Fusion do not, but Parallels Desktop does. When I asked him about this limitation of the M1 he said he didn’t see it as an issue (not sure why) but that he hadn’t yet looked into whether the open source virtual machine software VirtualBox would run on the M1, at least to run a Linux distribution (or distro as the cool kids say.) He has touted the Mac as the best platform because he can run macOS, Linux, and Windows all on one piece of hardware. Knightwise’s mantra is “making technology work for you” and the center of that is being a slider who can use the best tool for the job, rather than being fanatically attached to one company’s technology (like some people we know). I was actually surprised that in Knightwise’s recording about how much value he’s getting from his M1 MacBook Air, he never mentioned that as a downside. I talked on the show a while back about how the one downside to an M1 Mac is that you can’t run Windows, or at least not without a lot of faffing about.
