Parallels gets a new update, and this time, it arrives with great news for those who desired to run Windows 10 on their own M1-powered Apple computers.

Windows 10 ARM is now compatible with Apple Silicon, thanks to Parallels, and the parent company says users can download the free insider preview builds to give it a try.

"More than 100,000 M1 Mac users tested the Technical Preview of Parallels Desktop 16.5 for M1 Mac and ran Microsoft's Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview, in addition to thousands of different Intel-based Windows applications-including Microsoft Office for Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio, SQL Server, Microsoft PowerBI and MetaTrader," parents company explains.

Performance improvements

Obviously, Parallels used this occasion to highlight some of the performance improvements available on Apple Silicon, explaining that even running Windows 10 on ARM on an M1-powered system is faster than you are on Intel chips.

Parallels claims users can obtain a performance boost as high as 30 % inside a virtual machine.

"Running a virtual machine (VM) of Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview on Parallels Desktop 16.5 on an M1 Mac performs as much as 30 percent better than a Windows 10 VM running on Intel-based MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9 processor," it says after running a series of tests.

Apple Silicon was announced last fall and also, since then, developers happen to be working around the clock to bring their apps to devices run by the M1 chip. So far as Windows 10 is worried, Apple itself said it can operate on Apple Silicon, though it's as much as Microsoft to decide whether or not this wants its operating-system to land MacBooks or not.

Parallels 16.5 for Mac is available today, and people who are already running Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac can update for this era at no extra cost.