VTT on ARM Macs with Parallels Desktop

Kalapi Gajjar-Bordawekar

I've been using VTT on my old Intel MacBook Pro via Boot Camp. I need to upgrade to a new computer soon and since Boot Camp is no longer available on the new Macs, I won't be able to continue using this setup.

Is anyone using VTT this way successfully or do you use a separate Windows machine/laptop for hinting?

Thomas Phinney

There are ways to run ARM versions of Windows on Apple Silicon Macs, such as with Parallels Desktop. What I don’t know is, will VTT run on an ARM version of Windows?

You can also run Windows in the cloud via the Windows 365 service, but that is at least $31/month (or more).

Marc Foley

You can run VTT on an Apple Silicon Mac using Wine. It's also free.



I explored hinting and VTT a few months back and wrote a few notes, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nc6FpxCu62deXBgUENadQK74mplpEYl6cHWeX-ggU48/edit

Jens Kutilek

I can confirm that the x64 version of VTT runs on Parallels with Windows 11 ARM on Apple Silicon.

Jens Kutilek

I just tried to run VTT with wine, and it seems to work as well, thanks! I remember that it didn't work, possibly because for some time, wine had no 64 bit support on macOS IIRC?

VTT only works there because it bundles its own rasterizer. I remember running FontLab Studio 5 in wine, and TrueType hinting was unusable because wine can’t use the original Windows rasterizer and uses FreeType instead, which is then used also for FLS5’s TrueType hinting preview.

John Hudson

I ran Windows for a couple of years on a Mac in Parallels and then in VMWare’s Fusion. Both were buggy in various ways, as well as being subscriptions. In the end, I canceled and bought myself a PC laptop for less than $800 Canadian. It is much more reliable than any emulator I have tried.

Jens Kutilek

For my Windows needs, I bought a small Lenovo ThinkCentre office PC a couple of years ago. It cost €500, and you can get a refurbished one for less than €100 incl. Windows 11 Pro now. It has an SSD and is quiet, and fast enough for all practical concerns (of course it's not a gaming machine).



I hooked it up to a TV once to set it up, and now it is just connected to my router, and I use Remote Desktop to connect to it when I need it. It's so small I can easily pack it and take it along whenever I work from another place for some time. Works out of the box whenever there's a DHCP server on the network. When I need to connect to the office network, I use the WireGuard VPN client.

Kalapi Gajjar-Bordawekar

Thank you everyone for all the recommendations! I will probably go for a mini Windows PC (either Intel NUC or the ThinkCenter). I have very little desktop space, so that's a major consideration for me. 

c.g.

John Hudson said:

I ran Windows for a couple of years on a Mac in Parallels and then in VMWare’s Fusion. Both were buggy in various ways, as well as being subscriptions. In the end, I canceled and bought myself a PC laptop for less than $800 Canadian. It is much more reliable than any emulator I have tried.

VMWare Fusion, as well as the Windows counterpart VMWare Workstation Pro, is now free for personal use: https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2024/05/fusion-pro-now-available-free-for-personal-use.html

John Hudson

From that site:

Customers who use Fusion and Workstation at/for work require a paid commercial subscription...

The free personal use license doesn’t cover the kinds of uses for which professional font developers would be likely to use the software.