Virtualbox Mac m1

Or you can use UTM, it's based on Qemu and it can run both ARM en X86 on an Apple Silicon M1.

That Question is best asked to the Developer of this software.

After all it is their Software.

Use wrote " I have searched about it and m1 was not compatible with virtualbox " . It really should be mentioned - virtualbox is not compatible with M1 or M1X CPU equipped Apple Computer.

It is the Developers responsibility to make their Software adhere to Apple Computers , CPU and Operating Systems

Not an exact answer to the question, but anyone looking for an easy way to run VMs on an M1 Mac can use Multipass from Canonical. Either follow these instructions:

https://multipass.run/docs/installing-on-macos

Or TLDR:

$ brew install --cask multipass
$ brew launch 
$ brew shell

You can try Parallels desktop.

You can try Parallels Desktop or UTM.

So tired of being "upgraded" out of a functioning machine.

Apple won't provide OS upgrades for our older x86 iMacs (which still run great) and the replacement iMacs won't run several key applications for development like VirtualBox and Vagrant. I thought "Rosetta" was supposed provide x86 emulation to bridge the gap between x86 apps and Apple Silicon but apparently not. Also they got rid of bootcamp and you can't boot from a USB stick either. So I can't boot into an ARM based Linux Distro either.

We have Parallels on a couple of Macs, but it's soooo bloated that you can't get decent performance while it's running so I don't see it as a viable option.

These new Macs also won't talk to our Apple Server to do network user authentication when Filevault is turned on. So lovely.

Sorry for the rant. Maybe I'm alone in my thinking that when you stop supporting product X and replace it with an improved product Y, one would expect that the new version will still do all the things the previous version did AND MORE.

And it would have been nice for the folks at Apple to have told me about these issues when I asked them BEFORE we decided to purchase 15 of these not-quite-ready-for-prime-time M1 iMacs. But all they could say is "we don't know". So I did a demo and VirtualBox installed on the new M1 and it ran just fine, no grayed out icon with a slash through it, so I thought it would work. I just didn't have a virtual machine to start at the time. It wasn't until we got the first shipment of iMacs that I actually tried to start a VM and got a kernel error that I realized I was hosed.

My bad for not specifically Googling "SoftwareX won't run on Apple Silicon" for each piece of software we use.

Won't happen again.

I’m really sorry. I was very tempted to buy a new top of the line too but held off after researching. Apple really over exaggerated about the capabilities of Rosetta.

Personally I love MacOS, and the Apple hardware but I feel like they’re lost. Touch Bar thing for a few years then throw it aside.

Apple keeps doing these things leaving consumers out of dry.

How can actual developers use MacOS with the newest Apple MacBook Pro’s? Short answer, many can’t.

Want to run Virtualbox? Parallels? VMWare? No, you can’t do any x86 based OS’s virtualized.

How does docker work with x86 OS’s?

What about older versions of python or dotnet core or Haskell or native anything?

Sorry you feel scammed, Apple is scamming us by lying!!!!

I’m really sorry. I was very tempted to buy a new top of the line too but held off after researching. Apple really over exaggerated about the capabilities of Rosetta.

Where did they do that? As with the first Rosetta, Rosetta 2 allows you to run Intel-only Mac apps. Rosetta never let you virtualize a PowerPC OS. You can probably run an intel-only virtual machine app, but that doesn't mean that virtual machine can host an intel OS. If the virtualizer had to translate all of the Intel calls through Rosetta 2, it would just sit there for hours. That's not how a virtual machine works.

Touch Bar thing for a few years then throw it aside.

It isn't particularly useful. I've got one I almost never use. Occasionally I tap the OK button when I enter a PIN because it is right there. It never provided any value for me. That's why it is dead.

TrickyEarlobe wrote:

It's rumoured that ARM based windows will also run under vmWare Fusion for Apple Silicon, but it's doubtful this will be considered legal in the short term.

I don't know why there would be an issue with VMWare given Parallels proudly advertises Windows will run on their product for Mac, either x86 or Apple Silicon, provided you have the appropriate version of Windows, of course:

Parallels: Install Windows on a Mac with Apple M1 chip

@TrickyEarlobe,

Thanks for the info. QEMU looks like an interesting possibility to explore.

I ended up halting half the iMacs that we ordered until we figure out what to do. I too am letting my old Mac with the VMs run remotely in the IT lab for now.

I did send back the Mac Mini That we ordered to act as an MDM server... because the day it arrived, Apple Updated the server app and essentially broke the only function that the Server app still does lol.

I also like something dangoulet1 pointed out in the previous comments:

"Most people use those apps for years and simply forget, their workflows grow and change and they trust Apple to have a solution to a normal problem. "

That's what happened to me. You just get used to Apple's "It Just Works" reputation because they usually have thought of everything before they release. Until I actually tried to spool up a VM, I didn't really think about chipset compatibility because in my initial tests, Virtual Box installed and started just fine. But after I posted my initial rant I was like... "Oh Yeah. Of course the x86 VM won't run on ARM, duh."

I do love the new iMac for coding and all the things I do on the IT side. The displays are super crispy. Can't say enough about how good they are in every other way.

It's probably just a matter of time before someone has some ARM Virtual Machines that will be compatible with Apple Silicon. I am primarily spooling LAMP server VMs so I don't need the VM to be x86, just needs to run a LAMP stack and I have several Raspberry Pi machines setup as LAMP servers on ARM hardware so it should be doable. Until then the old intel Macs will run the VMs remotely in the lab.

For years Apple enthusiasts could run tools like VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels, Bootcamp, docker, on their MacBooks.

This isn’t possible any longer. We’re not talking about incompatibility for a single app. Lol. We’re talking about many apps.

How would developers work on this thing?

Backend developers target x86 and not ARM. Most of their software would never run on ARM. I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed some programming library based on something written in C/C++/Haskell/or whatever and those things don’t run on ARM.

How would a devops engineer build stuff destined for the cloud? They don’t start in the cloud, they start locally.

I upgrade my computer every 3 years and was blown away when I learnt that Rosetta 2 didn’t truly solve the problem. If you look around the internet there are others struggling with this too and these folks are finding out the hard way after purchasing.

How is this not misleading? There’s no headlines stating hey, remember how you used to use VMWare Fusion? How about Virtualbox or docker? Well those won’t work anymore. Instead they talk about how Rosetta 2 solves these issues without directly stating that.

I realize I’ve gone off, and I truly apologize. I’m totally bent about this. Apple is a great company with wonderful products, and the new MBP’s are not one of them anymore.

Also, who needs Apple silicon for graphics? Oh they talk a big game but what company makes the best GPU for machine learning and gaming? It’s not Apple and not AMD. It’s nvidia. Almost all ML libraries work with CUDA.

I’ll shut up now and crawl back into my troll den.

I agree, it was my mistake. Our original iMacs are 2011 models and won't accept an OS X version newer than El Capitan, unfortunately.

The software vendor for our ERP system (which was only compatible with El Capitan or older OS X) gave us a 4 month notice that they were sunsetting the software with no feasible upgrade path (and disabling the ability for it to run past the deadline).

The ERP was integrated with our website and other record keeping systems. So it has been like solving a jigsaw puzzle to find compatible hardware and software that will work together and meet our regulatory and PCI Compliance requirements. Sooo many moving parts to our upgrade. The short time frame and zero support from our previous vendor has had me a bit frustrated and the virtualization issue just got to me the other day.

These new Macs are still the best choice because they do everything else so well.

I've decided to be patient and wait till Virtual Box has an ARM64 virtual environment or perhaps we can transition to Docker. Until then, the old Macs can run VirtualBox in the IT Lab and we can remote into them to control the virtual machines.

Nope, Apple’s done with Intel and is transitioning fully away, the same as once they switched to x86 they never made another PowerPC Mac.

That’s the whole reason they design their own CPUs now - the M processor is where Apple’s future lies.

dangoulet1 wrote:

Have you tried running or building any docker images?

Hi @dangoulet1,

Yes I run a bit of stuff in Docker, but mostly I run VM's (because I write DevOps automation software for configuring VM's).

Here's a rundown of what works and what doesn't

https://docs.docker.com/desktop/mac/apple-silicon/

dangoulet1 wrote:

…How can any serious developer use an M1?

…These new M1’s aren’t even close to capable of supporting most developers needs.

…Apple is famous for creating amazing hardware and software combos, no vendor has come close to this.

…I feel like the lack of x64 architecture is a step too far too quick.

…I realize I’ve been ranting about this for a while now. Sorry. I just haven’t seen a single person agree, unless they purchased one and found all of these shortcomings themselves.

Short answer:

M1 works for me (as a developer)

Apple M1 works just fine for app development for many of us. App development is a diverse and varied market.

Long answer, and longer history (attached):

TL;DR:

Apple is well aware of what transitioning from x86-64 means, and Apple is migrating to Apple silicon and AArch64 SoCs.

Either your dependencies also migrate, or you develop hosted, or you migrate to a different and x86-64 client for your development work. Rock.