Using M1 Macs

[cardosocea]

Originally Posted by cam217

I think this needs a bit more than just a no.

As you do ASF, I used some years ago a macbook pro 2016 (had it repaired 3 times for the keyboard mess... ). I also am a bit of an Apple fanboy but to my defence I became one as I used to be a hater of Apple when I never have used any of their computers. The iPhone tempted me to try an Apple computer after having used windows since early 2000s. Then I used linux (tried a whole lot of distribution and ended with Archlinux) for around 10 years. Then tried macOS and ended ditching linux because you don't need tinkering with macOS and it frees time

Now for the subject on hand, I used Parallels and VMWare on that macbook pro 2016. Every virtualisation software that deserves our interest is capable of converting VMs from one to the other. I was using Parallels but my colleagues were using VMWare on Windows machines so I did convert VMs quite a lot and I did not have much issues there.
I should say that I used both softwares licensed and I did run without issues RA RSLogix5000, RA FTView, Siemens TIA Portal, Phoenix Contact PLCNext Engineer, Saia PG5, PCVue, Inductive Automation Ignition, Wonderware System Platform... So it does work quite nicely.

So I'd say Parallels is totally capable of running VMWare VMs if the virtualised OS runs the same architecture (x86/ARM) as the machine itself. You just have to convert it with the software you want to use.
THE drawback is you can not easily share VMs with people who use a different processor.

Btw, thanks ASF for all your explanations here. I was looking for that kind of information as I plan to create my own company and go back to use macbooks for work as I like macOS better and their ARM processors kicks asses

I use Parallels as well (Anything related to windows I need and I even have one VM running Matlab). Before buying it (it's a personal license for me to play with stuff at the house) I tried both Parallels and VMWare demos to see which would be best although my mind was set on VMWare.

In the end, I couldn't get a reasonable result with VMWare. The scaling was always awful (Logix5000 was impossible to use) with mismatched sizes for fonts or images and no matter what settings I tried, they never worked so I gave up.

I'm not a big fan of Parallels because I like my VMs as VMs... something that is self-contained and doesn't spill out into the host OS and Parallels is dreadful at that and actually requires a fair bit of setup to avoid this which is default behavior. But after that it works nicely. My Macbook is the first model that came out with a different type of keyboard (although it's not great, but no issues so far), so 2019 or so.

[ASF]

Thanks for the info you two - I didn't think you could convert VM's between Parallels and VMWare. Knowing that you can is a huge bonus - how do you do it?

Although as you say, you can't convert x64 VM's to ARM VM's, which is a bit of a bummer.


Two of my colleagues use 2016-ish laptops. One of them is almost always based in the office and so his laptop has managed to carry on OK. The other? Well, he's had to replace the keyboard at least once, and we're at the point now of replacing his with a new M1 mac, despite the fact there are two other engineers using older versions, because his is the most pressing need for an upgrade. That era was a real disaster for Apple's reputation, but they seem to have learned from the mistake.

[PreLC]

Has anyone been able to run TwinCAT 3 on M1 Macbooks via Parallels? I installed it, but can't get the service to start.

[ASF]

I've never used TwinCAT but most of my problems with things not running on Parallels have been related to drivers. Windows ARM can emulate x86 or x64 applications but not x86 or x64 drivers.

Sometimes you can solve it by working out which driver it's trying to use and manually downloading and installing an ARM driver. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes there isn't an ARM driver. Sometimes that's not even the problem to start with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good luck!

[PreLC]

Seems like just getting the build environment up would be a project.

Is it possible to install XAE on the Beckhoff CX itself? Then I can RDP into it?

[cam217]

Originally Posted by ASF

Thanks for the info you two - I didn't think you could convert VM's between Parallels and VMWare. Knowing that you can is a huge bonus - how do you do it?

Although as you say, you can't convert x64 VM's to ARM VM's, which is a bit of a bummer.


Two of my colleagues use 2016-ish laptops. One of them is almost always based in the office and so his laptop has managed to carry on OK. The other? Well, he's had to replace the keyboard at least once, and we're at the point now of replacing his with a new M1 mac, despite the fact there are two other engineers using older versions, because his is the most pressing need for an upgrade. That era was a real disaster for Apple's reputation, but they seem to have learned from the mistake.

It is actually to each software developers the burden of converting from other softwares to get people in. Basically, instead of creating a new VM you just add an existing one and it will offer to convert it. Works pretty well most of the time.
For your information, if you use VMware and want to switch to Parallels they offer a discount if you prove to have a valid VMware licence. This is also true the other way around I think. I know I did it

Although you need to pay attention to the fact that the procedure needs special care if your VM has a TPM module to run Windows 11.

As the host CPU uses a different architecture it is not possible to convert from x86 to ARM. Would be nice but won't happen.

[ASF]

Unfortunately, importing parallels VM's is not yet supported on M1 macs. Which I found out after buying a new VMWare license.