One year later, VMware Fusion was released, offering the same capability, and today, these two apps offer excellent Windows virtualization on Macs if they have Intel processors. Apple released Boot Camp, which allowed users to install Windows in a dedicated partition on a Mac and boot into that operating system when necessary.Īround the same time Parallels Desktop was released offering virtualization the ability to run Windows within macOS, rather than requiring that you choose an operating system at startup. In 2006, when Apple switched to Intel processors, running Windows became simpler. For many years, Virtual PC was the go-to app for running Windows on the Mac, until Apple released hardware with Intel processors. While slow – Windows code had to be translated to work on Macs’ PowerPC processors – it did allow users to run Windows within macOS, and not have to reboot. In 1997, Connectix released Virtual PC, an app that could emulate Windows on a Mac.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, all this ended, and users needed to rely on emulation software. The 1996 Power Mac 4400 also supported Windows, through the use of a PCI PC compatibility card, which contained a Pentium processor.

The Power Macintosh 6100 was available in a version with a PDS (processor direct slot) card which contained an Intel 80486 DX2/66 processor, allowing users to boot into Windows when needed, or even run both operating systems simultaneously if they had two monitors. In 1994, Apple released a Mac that allowed users to run both operating systems on a single computer. Some needed to run specific apps for their business, others wanted to play games that were unavailable on Mac many web designers would even use a Windows PC to ensure that their websites ran correctly on Windows browsers. Apple had a small sliver of PC market share, so many Mac users, especially in professional environments, also needed to use PCs to be able to run certain apps. Options for running Windows on an Apple silicon (M1/M2) Macīack in the 1990s, Apple and Microsoft fought for platform supremacy.Options for running Windows on an Intel Mac.The history of running Windows on a Mac.

In this article, I’ll look at the various options for running Windows on an Intel Mac, then discuss how you can run Windows on a new M1 Mac. Since Windows is designed to run on an Intel processor, you could Windows on your Mac and boot into Windows, or run it in a virtual machine on your Mac.īut with the new M1 Macs, which run on a variant of ARM processors, everything has changed. For a long time, it was easy to run Windows on a Mac. How To How to Run Windows on an Intel or M1 Macįor some people, running Windows on a Mac is the perfect way to use a specific app that is unavailable on Mac, or to play Windows games.

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