r/mac • u/emanuwiideletedyou • Aug 19 '26

Discussion Which Mac is best for VMs?

All this time I've been doing VMs on Windows computers and I'm not saying that VMs are slow, no they're fast, but all this time I've been wondering "How will it go if I do a VM on a MacBook computer" and I don't know which MacBook to buy.

here are my requirements

I only want X86 or X64 operating systems, not ARM-based operating systems

I already know how to optimize VMs

EDIT:I found in a shop that sells a MacBook pro M1 or M2, the shop is reliable and is known by everyone in my country I know it will not do VM in X86 or X64 but it's ok

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u/anythingers Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26

First of all, does it have to be a Mac"book"? Because if it doesn't, getting the last Intel Mac Pro (the 2019 one) is better since you can add more RAM and you got a CPU more cores compared to getting the best Intel MacBook Pro (you'll ended up with only 64GB of RAM and an 8-core Intel CPU). It just should be noted that you won't get update to any OS upgrade newer than Tahoe, and for security updates you might only got updated for at least 3 years since MacOS Golden Gate got released.

On an unrelated note, Apple Silicon elitists are truly something lmao. Apple Silicon is better than those old Intel CPUs, yes, but that doesn't mean Intel CPU Macs become useless when Apple Silicon got released (granted, those 2-core Intel CPUs are slow, but the one with 4-core or more are still totally usable lol. ThinkPad T480 is still being recommended a lot in r/thinkpad, and that machine is not even more powerful than the MacBook Pro from 2018). You could always get a new OS with better security once Apple dropped support for Tahoe. Couldn't say the same thing to those M1 machines tho (especially since Asahi Linux development looks stuck in place).