As vendors update their platforms to support VMs on the M1, we will work to keep you informed.

For users that have already purchased an M1 MacBook, a VDI is currently the only option for running ArcGIS Pro. The M1 processor is still relatively new ( released November 2020) and VM platforms are certainly aware of the need to support Windows VM environments. For those that currently own an M1 MacBook and need to run ArcGIS Pro locally, this is currently the only option available. Refer to your VDI vendor’s documentation to see what versions are current for installing on M1 MacBooks. For schools or institutions that currently support VDI infrastructure (Citrix, VMWare Horizon, Parallels RAS, Amazon Workspaces, etc.), ArcGIS Pro is supported. Virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI for short, provides the ability to run applications like ArcGIS Pro over the internet and serve them through a browser.

For updates related to x86 Windows support on a M1 VM, or Windows ARM, please refer to the Parallels website for news/updates.

The caveat here is that users would be relying on a VM ‘technical preview’, to load an OS ‘insider preview’ (Windows 10 ARM), to install ArcGIS Pro (not yet supported on Windows 10 ARM), so this isn’t an option yet.

There is currently a ‘tech nical preview’ that has been released to support Windows 10 ARM.Please refer to the VMWare website for the latest news/updates.There is currently no roadmap or technical preview of a VMWare product that will support M1 (as of this writing ).The 2 major vendor details for support are curre ntly as follow s : There is currently no VM client that can be installed locally to support a Windows VM (as of this writing ). When purchasing a laptop, just make sure that you are purchasing the Intel chip option if running Windows in a VM is critical for your work.

Virtual machines are supported on the majority of MacBooks that contain an Intel chip. Users can still purchase MacBooks that contain the latest Intel processors. The impact for users of ArcGIS Pro, is that there are currently no Windows virtual machine (VM) platforms that support this new processor (this is not the case for virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI platforms, which have been released and support M1).īelow is a list of the current recommendations and options that are available to users that need to run ArcGIS Pro on a Mac. If you want to dive into it, y ou can read about the details here ( ). In November of 2020, Apple released a new processor for their computers called the M1. Parallels Desktop 17 was just recently released, which has been 'rebuilt and optimized to natively run on Apple M1 and Intel based Mac devices'

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