Which Virtual Machine Is Best For Mac

Other than a few interesting years in the mid-2000s, Apple’s approach to the enterprise market has been one of benign neglect. The one exception, starting in 2005, has been consistent support for running Windows on Macs. By now, the practice is well-established. But the issue of management still looms large. How can IT deploy Macs that run Windows without multiplying the complexity (and cost) of deployment, maintenance and security by at least a factor of two?

The enterprise question that vendors are now addressing in a variety of interesting ways is, “How can we make Macs running Windows securely maintainable components of the IT infrastructure and ecosystem?” [ Related: ] Windows on Mac works, and can work well. The most relevant question for enterprises is which Windows-on-Mac virtualization options offer: • The best overall integration • The lowest TCO, including maintenance and security • Good usability • End-user satisfaction How we tested running Windows on a Mac Apple test beds in our lab include a variety of Mac desktops and laptops (and even a few Xserve servers), but most cross-product benchmark testing for this review was done using fully upgraded 2012 Mac Pro towers as a reference platform.

Sep 4, 2018 - If you want to run Windows on your Mac, a virtual machine is the most convenient way to do it. Here we round up the best VMs for Mac. Sep 11, 2018 - Even better, you can set up a virtual machine on your system for free. (For Mac users, VirtualBox is a great alternative if you don't want to Boot.

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Though getting a little long in the tooth, they are quite fast, rock-solid and standards-compliant, and unlike more recent Macs, the hardware can be swapped, modified and expanded as needed (CPUs, RAM, storage, standard PCIe graphics and expansion cards, etc.). The primary Windows drives on the test platforms are on mSATA or M.2 SSDs run from a PCIe expansion card to maximize throughput and performance, but we also run baseline tests with virtual machines stored on standard 5,400rpm rotating drives to make sure performance is still acceptable with low-end hardware. Photo special effects software free.

I tested five Windows-on-Mac options in our lab — currently shipping versions of Apple’s Boot Camp, CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac, Oracle VirtualBox, VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop. They vary in cost, complexity and feature sets, and my perceptions of their pros and cons might help you decide which will be best for your circumstances. I will follow up in coming weeks with a deeper look at VMware Fusion’s upcoming version 10 and Parallels’ recently released Desktop 13.

[ To comment on this story, visit. ] Performance isn’t the issue Using a basket of benchmarks covering CPU, graphics and sample workflow measurements, performance was simply not a key differentiator in these tests. All of the products we tested are mature and stable, and aside from the natural differences between Boot Camp and the rest (native hardware support vs. Virtualization or emulation — discussed further below), the average performance difference between products in most circumstances was 10% or less. That is not to say there are not quantifiable performance differences, but rather that all of the products I looked at (sometimes with a little tweaking of virtual machine settings) can do what needs to be done with reasonable and effective speed — as long as what you want to do isn’t to play 4K-resolution twitch games at 60fps, that is.

Virtualization always incurs processing overhead, and it will never be as fast as native, non-virtualized instances — which brings us to the first option, Boot Camp. Apple’s Boot Camp was the first supported option allowing Mac users to run Windows on Macs, and if you need to get the absolute maximum speed out of your Mac hardware while running Windows, Boot Camp is still the way to go. A Mac running Windows via Boot Camp will perform at pretty much the same speed as a dedicated Windows machine with equivalent hardware specs — in fact, Macs have often made great higher-end Windows machines, and compatibility is usually not an issue (as long as Apple supports the version of Windows you need; see below). [ ] A big drawback with Boot Camp, however, is that every switch between Windows and macOS requires a complete reboot, which gets frustrating if you have to do it a lot.

There can also be compatibility issues when accessing files on NTFS-formatted Windows drives from the Mac side — though third-party drivers are available, such as those from, that bridge that gap. And the new APFS drive format used in High Sierra is going to raise similar compatibility issues, at least until Apple or a third party comes up with a fix for reading APFS drives from Windows. Even an individual machine can be difficult to set up with Boot Camp, and of course a large, heterogeneous enterprise deployment will be more so. Adding stand-alone, unmanaged copies of Windows to your environment via Boot Camp may not be advisable from a security or manageability perspective. Apple’s Boot Camp Assistant program, used to install Windows on an individual Mac, is certainly usable and does the job, but it’s not always the easiest program to work with, especially if you have a complicated hardware setup. (To be fair, this can at times have as much to do with how Microsoft’s Windows installers handle things such as multiple drives and drive formatting/partitioning options as it does with Apple’s installation process.) Expert users (and IT staff) should have no problem, but those used to fairly seamless and simple Mac installations may find it far from intuitive.