And, if you have a system that supports it, making the switch from bit to bit Windows is free—even if it does require a bit of work. Mac users can now officially run Windows 10 through an updated version of Apple's Boot Camp dual-boot utility. An Apple support document posted late Wednesday lists the Mac and iMac models that support dual booting with Windows 10 via the release of Boot Camp version 6 and explains how to install Microsoft's new OS for your dual-boot environment.
Boot Camp is designed for Mac users who want or need to run Windows but don't have or wish to purchase a dedicated Windows PC. Through Boot Camp, you can run the Mac OS X and Windows in two separate partitions on the same Mac and then simply choose which operating system you wish to load each time your computer boots up. On the down side, your Mac's performance through Boot Camp can be slow. On the plus side, you can share files between OS X and Windows, so Boot Camp is a good solution for people who want to work with the same documents in both operating systems.
After you run Boot Camp Assistant the first time, the latest drivers for Boot Camp are automatically downloaded. If you're already using Boot Camp, you can check the Mac App Store for updates to see if the latest version 6 drivers are available at this point. Prior to Apple's new Boot Camp support, Windows 10 was already capable of running on a Mac via the utility. You can find the full list of supported Macs on Apple's new support document.
You can set up Windows in a virtual machine inside your Mac OS. There are other added features and quality of life improvements, too. For example, you can now drag and drop content between apps running under macOS and those running in Windows while using Parallels in Coherence mode. There are other improvements to Coherence, too, like Windows shutdown and sign-in screens that are presented in a way that feels more native and natural within macOS.
Also, support for this year's new version of macOS, Monterey, has been added. As is customary with these annual updates, the new version of Parallels Desktop will be able to run on Monterey host machines or run Monterey in virtual machines. The Pro edition includes a Visual Studio debugging plugin that now works on M1 Macs, among other bonuses specific to some professional use cases.
Search for:. 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. Advertisement In any case, Parallels is claiming significantly improved performance on M1 Macs compared to last year's release, which was the first to add support for said Macs. The new version of macOS marks the end of old bit apps whose software code was never refreshed to support bit CPUs.
In June , Apple confirmed the end of bit apps, noting that I am using a mac, with Parallels to access Windows 7 in a virtual machine.
