One of the coolest power-user Mac features of the Apple Silicon era is Apple’s Virtualization framework. Normally the purview of paid software like Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion, virtualization lets you run multiple operating systems on one Mac at the same time, which is useful for anyone who wants to run Linux on top of macOS, test an app they’re developing in different versions of macOS, or take a look at the latest macOS Ventura beta without risking their main install.
Apple’s documentation and sample projects provide everything you need to get a simple VM up and running with no additional software required. Still, some independent developers have built simple, free apps on top of the Virtualization framework that provides a GUI for customizing settings and juggling multiple guest OSes.
A very useful feature, especially for developers.
I really would like Apple to build this out and create a full virt stack for macOS. (I’d also like macOS jails/zones/containers, but that’s something else.) There are tools which can take advantage of their virt framework, but nothing official. KVM, bhyve, vmm, nvmm being a command away are super handy.
I get that Parallels and VMware probably don’t want that, but I don’t want to install VirtualBox, xhyve, qemu, or one of the other numerous tools which try to fill the gap to get a simple VM.
Given Apple doesn’t seem inclined to do that, I will recommend UTM. For Linux VM’s, it works well. Haven’t tried windows 11 for arm on it though.
Managed to get FreeBSD running fine too
UTM is a gui frontend to qemu. PPC OSX is pretty decent on it even. I still would like to get AmigaOS4 working in it…
Erg, reasons for not getting a mac are getting diminishing by the month. I still have the high price and lack of reparability, but that’s about it, and few manufacturers are much better. But still low ram amounts that you have to decide at time of purchase … Eck. Haven’t gotten over that yet.
There are still quite a few reasons for me not to switch, and they are not always getting better.
The are stealing key travel distance to give the illusion of a faster response. That caused so many issues with the “butterfly”, they had to scale back a bit.
Reducing repairability with each iteration. With the SSD and RAM soldered, any failure is automatically a replacement for the entire motherboard.
No more Thunderbolt eGPU support, even though they still sell one for Intel Macs: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HM8Y2VC/A/blackmagic-egpu
Yes, these are probably not deal breakers for their target audience. They might not be using the keyboard the entire day, not need extra power or storage, and might not care about repairability. I get that, Apple already sells well.
+1 on user repairability & upgradability.
I think the M1/2 ARM CPUs could be a pro assuming it’s well supported by linux, but I’ll be honest none of the current mac products fill out my other requirements. For better or worse I’d have to give up cuda. And the lack of ports doesn’t sit well with me either. I still need to use ethernet and USB-A peripherals & flash drives regularly for work and I hate external dongles. My brother’s model is also missing HDMI, which was probably a bad choice for him in retrospect because he does presentations and has had to borrow computers on more than one occasion. He probably should just carry a dongle around with him to be prepared. Some people don’t need the ports, which is fine for them, but it’s not helpful for those who do need them.