Virtualization is great, and VMWare is among the flagships of this industry. There wouldn’t be quality virtualization, though, without actual hardware and native software support, and now VMWare seems to have filled the most noticeable of its recent gaps. The latest update adds support for Apple Silicon CPUs and Windows 11.
 
For users, it means that now they can fully unfold the potential of their recent Macs and Windows 11 devices. As you run a virtual machine on any of them, you use a hypervisor as the mediator between your actual machine and your virtual one. The more efficiently the hypervisor uses the actual hardware resources, the better the virtual machine performs.
 
Now, Fusion (the VMWare hypervisor for macOS) has reached Version 13 which is (finally!) fully able to use the potential of Apple’s ARM-based hardware. Workstation and Player, the hypervisors for x86-based platforms, now get version 17. Both Windows and Apple hypervisors now support a crucial element of the newest platforms – TPM chips. It’s the lack of TPM, for example, that makes some quite mighty CPUs incompatible with Windows 11.
 
The most generic limitations still apply, though: on ARM-based Apple devices, you can only emulate ARM devices and run OSes developed for them. Formally, this includes Windows, but Windows for ARM is so far only being licensed to businesses and organizations, not individuals. On Windows 11, there are fewer limitations, and ARM devices can be emulated on x86 platforms.
 
In the end, it means that you can now run virtual machines on more devices, with more effect. If you use a virtual machine to run another OS, what do you use it for? What are the biggest benefits you have experienced? Share your story with us in the comments!