April 29, 2026
Copy, paste, and pure chaos
Virtualisation on Apple Silicon Macs is different
Apple’s new Mac virtual machines are blazing fast, but fans are fuming over the weird catches
TLDR: Apple made virtualization on newer Macs fast by building more of it into macOS itself, but that also means Apple controls the rules. Commenters were impressed by the speed yet obsessed with the odd limitations—especially the copy-paste weirdness and missing Apple services.
Apple’s big idea is simple-ish: on its newer Macs, running another operating system inside macOS is no longer a free-for-all handled mostly by outside apps. Apple baked much of the magic into macOS itself, which means virtual machines can be super fast—but also very Apple: controlled, limited, and full of little caveats that sent commenters into detective mode.
And wow, the crowd immediately zoomed past the deep engineering talk and straight into the juicy stuff: copy-paste drama. Multiple readers fixated on the fact that shared clipboard support—the very normal ability to copy on one system and paste into another—still feels weirdly missing or inconsistent in some Apple-on-Apple setups. One commenter basically said, “So that’s what ‘different’ means,” and honestly? That became the thread’s unofficial punchline.
The hottest takes were split between “this is brilliantly fast” and “this is annoyingly restricted.” One popular summary praised near-native speed, quick launch times, and even serverless-style use cases, then slammed readers with the fine print: only two macOS virtual machines at once, no iCloud, no App Store login. That’s the kind of whiplash commenters live for. Others jumped in asking what to use for Windows on Arm, wondering whether UTM is a real speed option or just an emulator, while another tossed in a plug for Tart like they were arriving late to a party yelling, “You’re all forgetting the good one!”
Key Points
- •Apple built virtualization support into macOS for Apple silicon Macs so Arm-based guest operating systems can run with platform-level support.
- •The article distinguishes virtualization from emulation, noting that Intel operating systems on Apple silicon require software emulation rather than Rosetta 2 translation.
- •Apple’s hypervisor support in macOS dates back to OS X 10.10, but Apple silicon required a new approach to device support because its hardware differs from Intel Mac and PC components.
- •Apple addressed device support by implementing Virtio drivers in macOS, allowing virtualizer apps to use the Virtualization framework to configure virtual devices.
- •According to the article, Monterey and later are required for macOS lightweight virtualization, and Apple’s Virtio-based model gives Apple control over supported virtualization features while aiming for strong VM performance.