Can Navitas products be used on Apple Mac computers ?

We often get asked if our products are available to be installed on Apple Mac computers such as the MacBook Pro or iMac - find details below.

Microsoft .net Framework

The products and solutions we build are, for the most part, written against the Microsoft .net Framework. The Microsoft .net Framework is currently only fully compatible within a Windows x86 (Intel) environment.  This means that our software can only be installed and run using Windows, and is not able to run on the MacOS natively.

Virtualisation

This doesn't mean you can't use an Apple computer, however it does mean some form of Virtualisation software would need to be installed first, and then a virtual Windows environment installed and configured within that, to be able to run our software.  There are various virtualisation software products available, examples being Parallels and VMWare, so your IT Team can investigate options for your organisation.

Intel vs ARM

Over the last few years, Apple has started supplying their computers with their own processors, referred to as 'Apple Silicon' with names such as the M1, M2 etc.  It should be noted that these processors are no longer Intel based and are based on the ARM architecture instead. 

If your organisation has purchased Apple machines using the ARM based processors, then within any virtualisation environment you would need to install the ARM compatible version of Windows, instead of the 'normal' Intel version. 

Microsoft provides a form of 'internal virtualisation' within the ARM version of Windows which should allow most Intel code to run. This does however mean any Intel based applications, such as those from us, would run within a nested virtualised environment - i.e. once from the Intel to ARM environment, and then again from Windows to Apple environment, so performance may be degraded.  You should also check with your GDS if their software is compatible with ARM processors.

Disclaimer: Navitas Solutions has not tested our products using an ARM based version of Windows so are unable to verify if all functionality is available.