An update from VMware regarding M1 support for Fusion

 

Fusion + Apple Silicon (source: VMware)

After what very much felt like "hurry up and wait," VMware finally posted a follow up regarding VMware Fusion support for Macs running on Apple's proprietary M1 chip. Unfortunately for those of us in the Mac Admin space, we'll have to keep waiting until Fusion is helpful for macOS testing. While they are hoping to have a technical preview for initial Apple Silicon support this year, it likely won't include support for macOS guests.

macOS VMs are not in scope in the short term. There are challenges there which will require Apple to work with us to resolve.

If Apple is as eager to work with VMware on this as they are making softwareupdate function somewhat adequately, it may be more "hurry up and wait" for us.

The good news is using tmutil snapshot in Recovery still works on an M1 Mac, you'll just have to get used to the changes to the boot sequence to get into Recovery and changes to how wiping the Mac work. This approach also requires physical hardware for testing, which may not be something everyone has. But with the relatively low price point of the base build M1 MacBook Air it may be worth the expense. And with how security and privacy restrictions keep impacting MDM functionality and capabilities, physical testing will likely get you the most honest actualization of your workflows as you're intending to use them.

It's worth noting that Parallels already supports M1 Macs, but I'm admittedly not sure if it supports macOS guests at this time. If you've used Parallels to virtualize macOS on an M1 Mac let me know in the comments.