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Is Paralells stable enough to run Windows on Mac as a daily driver?

P

Peat Moss

Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2009
Messages
631
I just won a Mac in a raffle. I've never owned a Mac before.

I thought if I can use the Mac as a daily driver with Windows on it, I could keep using all my Windows apps, and do some exploring on the Mac side to see how I like it.

I don't game.

Just wanted to get feedback from any Mac owners who use Windows on Parallels if there are any issues I should know about if I want to use it mostly for Windows ?

Will the experience be just like using Windows natively? Or are there potential hiccups to keep in mind?
 
Yeah, it's a new Mac Studio. There were a bunch of different prizes to be won, and this was one of them. It'll be arriving in a couple of weeks. I was actually hoping to win a TV and wasn't even thinking of the Mac. I'm both a little excited, and also a little ambivalent about it, since I've spent the last two years researching PC parts, comparison pricing, and thinking about what I need and want for my first PC build. The skyrocketing prices for RAM and SSDs had delayed my plans. But I was hoping to start buying at least a few other components this year.

Now this win has made me think about what it would be like to possibly use a Mac instead. It means having to learn a whole new OS, and worry about things like compatibility with other hardware and software etc. I need Windows for work, and I exclusively use MS Office apps (I work from home). So I think I would only keep the Mac if I could use it mostly for continuing to work within Windows. I know I would need to install the ARM versions (not x86) of Windows and Office, which shouldn't be a problem since they have been developed over several years now.

But I' have no experience with VMs and not sure how stable VMs are compared to a native OS.
 
No, use should use it under macos. Apples have great cpus however ther are ARM, nor x86. WIndows is pretty bad at using a arm cpu and the added emulation layer will not help your cause.

Just run native apps on macos, it will be easy to use for web browsing and other normal things. Then build a windows gaming computer if you want.

There are some workloads that the Mac is ridiculously fast at. It has very quick unified memory. Can run local llms, and has reasonable support for many apps.

You can emulate the ms office stuff.

Or sell it and build a nice pc?
 
Yeah I would personally use it as an off ramp from windows (JMO). Or run an ARM Linux distribution
 
cdabc123 said:
No, use should use it under macos. Apples have great cpus however ther are ARM, nor x86. WIndows is pretty bad at using a arm cpu and the added emulation layer will not help your cause.

Just run native apps on macos, it will be easy to use for web browsing and other normal things. Then build a windows gaming computer if you want.

There are some workloads that the Mac is ridiculously fast at. It has very quick unified memory. Can run local llms, and has reasonable support for many apps.

You can emulate the ms office stuff.

Or sell it and build a nice pc?
Click to expand...

I've been reading that Windows on ARM is pretty stable now. MS Office has had a native ARM version for a few years. I'm more worried about the VM itself.

But yeah, maybe I'll sell it, or give it to my sister.
 
Yes, the first thing to know is that you run the ARM version of Windows. That also means you run Microsoft's x86 to ARM converter, not Apple's (Rosetta 2). Apple's is very polished and is supposed to have some hardware bits in the CPUs to help it.

I only use Parallels on an Intel Mac so far. It is stable but the 3D env doesn't run everything even if you accept slow speed. For example, Combat Mission Cold War does not run usably.
 
Peat Moss said:
I've been reading that Windows on ARM is pretty stable now. MS Office has had a native ARM version for a few years. I'm more worried about the VM itself.

But yeah, maybe I'll sell it, or give it to my sister.
Click to expand...
Mac Studios are worth a lot of money (especially in the AI era), so you could always sell it and get a MacBook to dip into macOS without ditching your Windows machine. Depending on how much you get, you could even buy systems for both yourself and your sister (say, a MacBook Air and a Neo).
 
cdabc123 said:
No, use should use it under macos. Apples have great cpus however ther are ARM, nor x86. WIndows is pretty bad at using a arm cpu and the added emulation layer will not help your cause.

Just run native apps on macos, it will be easy to use for web browsing and other normal things. Then build a windows gaming computer if you want.

There are some workloads that the Mac is ridiculously fast at. It has very quick unified memory. Can run local llms, and has reasonable support for many apps.

You can emulate the ms office stuff.

Or sell it and build a nice pc?
Click to expand...
Mac Studio won at a raffle? Jealous! :D Congrats!
 
Peat Moss said:
I've been reading that Windows on ARM is pretty stable now. MS Office has had a native ARM version for a few years. I'm more worried about the VM itself.

But yeah, maybe I'll sell it, or give it to my sister.
Click to expand...
If you decide to give it to your sister I say play with it first. If you have Office 365 and a spare device allowance (it allows up to 5 devices per person) you can just slap MS Office for Mac on it and try it out.

If I won a studio in a raffle I'd probably sell it. For gaming reasons I'd rather have my gaming PC as my desktop. I use a MacBook Pro for work and wouldn't mind having a personal Mac, but if I got one it would be a laptop. Probably an Air, but even a Neo would be enough. I don't use my personal laptop much but I keep one around so I have something to take on trips. Playing games on vacation is "emergency gaming." Rainy day on a beach trip or something like that. I just load up whatever the machine can handle.

Specs of the Mac Studio? There's a pretty wide range. They start at $2k and go up to ~$12k on the Apple.com store.
 
I run Windows ARM constantly on my Mac and it's fine and yours is way faster than mine so ... enjoy!
 
zandor said:
If you decide to give it to your sister I say play with it first. If you have Office 365 and a spare device allowance (it allows up to 5 devices per person) you can just slap MS Office for Mac on it and try it out.

If I won a studio in a raffle I'd probably sell it. For gaming reasons I'd rather have my gaming PC as my desktop. I use a MacBook Pro for work and wouldn't mind having a personal Mac, but if I got one it would be a laptop. Probably an Air, but even a Neo would be enough. I don't use my personal laptop much but I keep one around so I have something to take on trips. Playing games on vacation is "emergency gaming." Rainy day on a beach trip or something like that. I just load up whatever the machine can handle.

Specs of the Mac Studio? There's a pretty wide range. They start at $2k and go up to ~$12k on the Apple.com store.
Click to expand...

That's interesting about Office 365. I didn't know a cross-platform device still counted towards 5 devices.

Specs for the Mac Studio are: M4 Max 16-core CPU / 40-core GPU, 2 TB storage and 128 GB memory.
 
Shoganai said:
Brave, OpenCode, and a bunch of disk utilities. It's very stable.
Click to expand...

Do you run any office programs on Windows on Arm? That's what I'd be mainly using it for.

Also, do you ever have any problems with Windows updates?
 
Peat Moss said:
Do you run any office programs on Windows on Arm? That's what I'd be mainly using it for.

Also, do you ever have any problems with Windows updates?
Click to expand...
I've run office on it before just fine. And your Mac is about 9 million times faster than mine. You'll be fine.


Parallels lets you freeze snapshots of the current Windows state and you can take as many snapshots as you like. So you can take a snapshot, update Windows, and if something retarded happens, you can just revert to a previous snapshot. The updates are usually fine, but Microsoft sucks.
 
Peat Moss said:
That's interesting about Office 365. I didn't know a cross-platform device still counted towards 5 devices.

Specs for the Mac Studio are: M4 Max 16-core CPU / 40-core GPU, 2 TB storage and 128 GB memory.
Click to expand...
I just meant the Mac version of MS Office is included in an Office 365 sub if you have one. A Mac counts as a computer towards the 5 device limit, same as a Windows PC.

That's a nice config. Hmm... tried to price it at the Apple store and I can't specify more than 96GB ram, and that requires an M3 Ultra? I looked at them a few days ago when I posted last time and you could spec up to 128GB on the M4 Max and 256GB on the M3 Ultra. I wonder if this model is about to get dropped in favor of an M5 version. You can order a MacBook Pro with an M5 Max & 128GB.

I might actually be tempted to keep a Mac Studio in that config, though I'd have to do some research and see how they do running local AI models. I'd think 128GB would be enough to run models intended for 80GB or 96GB datacenter GPUs. If it was too loaded up or a more base model I'd sell it.
 
zandor said:
I just meant the Mac version of MS Office is included in an Office 365 sub if you have one. A Mac counts as a computer towards the 5 device limit, same as a Windows PC.

That's a nice config. Hmm... tried to price it at the Apple store and I can't specify more than 96GB ram, and that requires an M3 Ultra? I looked at them a few days ago when I posted last time and you could spec up to 128GB on the M4 Max and 256GB on the M3 Ultra. I wonder if this model is about to get dropped in favor of an M5 version. You can order a MacBook Pro with an M5 Max & 128GB.

I might actually be tempted to keep a Mac Studio in that config, though I'd have to do some research and see how they do running local AI models. I'd think 128GB would be enough to run models intended for 80GB or 96GB datacenter GPUs. If it was too loaded up or a more base model I'd sell it.
Click to expand...
Apple is cutting Mac Studio configs because AI developers are snapping up every unit they can, and the company just can’t keep up. They’re wonderful for local LLMs because of the unified memory.
 
Peat Moss said:
Yeah, it's a new Mac Studio. There were a bunch of different prizes to be won, and this was one of them. It'll be arriving in a couple of weeks. I was actually hoping to win a TV and wasn't even thinking of the Mac. I'm both a little excited, and also a little ambivalent about it, since I've spent the last two years researching PC parts, comparison pricing, and thinking about what I need and want for my first PC build. The skyrocketing prices for RAM and SSDs had delayed my plans. But I was hoping to start buying at least a few other components this year.

Now this win has made me think about what it would be like to possibly use a Mac instead. It means having to learn a whole new OS, and worry about things like compatibility with other hardware and software etc. I need Windows for work, and I exclusively use MS Office apps (I work from home). So I think I would only keep the Mac if I could use it mostly for continuing to work within Windows. I know I would need to install the ARM versions (not x86) of Windows and Office, which shouldn't be a problem since they have been developed over several years now.

But I' have no experience with VMs and not sure how stable VMs are compared to a native OS.
Click to expand...
A Studio is a rather powerful and expensive piece of kit - congratulations!

I echo what some others have said - if you can sell it, it might be worth doing so. In your shoes, the reason to keep it would be to have a world class platform for dipping one's feet into AI workloads at home; depending on configuration there may not be a better alternative. The other use case would be if you do any sort of interesting media or video editing or want to get into it - a Studio would simply rip. If these aren't strong use cases for you then it may be better to sell it.

Just saw the specs - that's a powerful box indeed. Either use it to learn new skills with a platform perfectly suited for doing so, or get rid of it.
 
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