Re: Grumble.. grumble..
The Windows Insider ARM build of Windows 10 that Parallels is advertising support for includes an x86-64 emulator for application code. So in theory you get all of the OS-level stuff running natively on the M1 (modulo virtualisation of the other hardware) and then x86 emulation only for the actual applications — and you get Microsoft's emulation for Windows applications rather than Apple's, which is likely to be better-supported for that task.
So the Parallels release mentioned in the story isn't necessarily a bad choice for running regular old Windows applications on an M1 Mac.
That said, I think I'm going to wait for VMWare. When I last tried Parallels — which was likely more than a decade ago, so apply a pinch of salt — it was heavily invested in the idea of a shared desktop running multiple flavours of application, to the extent of secreting various hidden folders around my Mac full of application stubs so that the Finder would have something to connect file associations to, e.g. so that I could double click a .docx on my desktop and have that cause Parallels to load and launch the Windows Microsoft Office and then open that file in it.
That's something that some people will be a huge fan of, but I want my virtual machines isolated and with a minimal footprint on my Mac. VMWare seems to do a better job of that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
