I am using a MacBook M2 as my day to day machine and virtualizing Windows on an Apple Mx machine is either costly (license, beta only (virtualbox)) or bloated virtualisation layer.
Sometimes I need to test something on a windows machine and only need a test environment. Now I found a free pretty good solution and funny I never read about it before.
It is easy, free and pretty fast (Qemu+tools), fast enough to be a reasonable Windows machine. No need to worry about the correct Windows ARM ISO file, it will download it for you, either 10 or 11. Obviously you still need a Windows license. Next to Windows, UTM can also virtualise and other ARM64/x64/x86 Windows/Linux flavors Pretty nifty and the whole project is hosted on Github:
Please note that you need to install Spice tools that is not released with every UTM/Qemu release. You can install these after the installation of Windows.
If you want to prepare Windows ISO files on yur Mac in advance then take a look at ChrystalFetch
Now running and writing this post on my Apple M2 / ARM64 Windows 11 Pro
My go to next laptop is Asus zenbook with amd ryzen. If I can run windows to on an arm MacBook safely, I might consider getting a Mac to be my daily driver. Considering they have an almost similar price point. And am starting to get tired of windows for dev.
@oneitonitram I am pretty impressed by my little setup. I have used Windows 11 on a virtual desktop on my Macbook and it works very good. It is not a game PC now, but general admin and general user tasks, it is performing beyond expectation for now.
i game like once a year, or moreā¦ and if i am to game, i think i have other better machines for thatā¦ not the best, but can play pretty heavy games.
I am not a competitive gamer, so other things dont affect me