When Apple migrated the Mac platform from Intel CPUs to its own ARM-based chips in 2020, it spelt the end for the Boot Camp utility. Windows simply couldn’t boot on the new M1 hardware, so the popular dual-booting tool was quietly ditched.
However, if you still want to run Windows applications on your Mac, there is a way. For more than a decade, Microsoft has been working on bringing Windows to the ARM platform, and its latest releases are now more than mature enough for day-to-day use. If you want to try out some cross-platform action on your own Apple Silicon Mac, you can buy an ARM edition of Windows 11 from the Microsoft online store – or you can download the latest Insider Preview release and run it for free. Here’s how.
Expectation management
The great thing about Windows on ARM is that it has a built-in translation layer, which enables it to run existing Intel applications without modification. The ARM version of Windows 10 only works with 32-bit code, but the latest Windows 11 builds support 64-bit software, too, so you can run almost any application on ARM hardware. The main exceptions are programs that try to interface directly with the hardware or install their own system drivers, such as 3D games or third-party security tools – although the built-in Windows Defender is still there to protect you against online attacks.
This translation layer does, however, incur a certain performance penalty. What’s more, since Apple Silicon doesn’t support dual booting, Windows
