M1 MacBook Air - and parallels

Software
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I want to buy a shared laptop for me and my wife. Obviously I want the MacBook Air , but there is problem.

My wife does backyard astronomy. This is a kind of niche hobby that really needs windows. . I know that boot camp won’t work, but parallels does. Looking into it further it works with a special ? invite version of windows.

Anyone any experience of parallels on m1

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Hello,
You can look into this thread for more information. We just discussed the same topic last week.

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I use it every day and all the software I need (mainly dev and data vis) works perfectly. It’s easy to sign up for Windows insider, then you can download the ARM version.

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Just being curious (sorry off topic), what astronomy software does she like to use? I use Stellarium (sometimes) which works fine on macOS (including M1 under Rosetta)

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The Celestrum software and stellarium… I think the issue is controlling the telescope

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Stellarium is available for macOS, Linux,…

Celestron CFM is Java, works on M1
Celestron Digital Imager is available for Mac…

That said…what exact config is being used that’s “Windows only”? From my M1+Parallels experiments, most stuff works.

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Yes, there are many s/w that astrophotography uses that is Windows only and some like Celestron’s PWI controller. I will check out the thread @mina mentioned. I have a M1 and a new Celestron StarNex 8SE coming soon. To this point I have used a Canon M50 with a Sigma 600mm lens. And some of the citizen scientist s/w requirements by NASA also are Windows only.

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Mac Observatory is a good resource for macOS astronomy software.

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Thanks. Heading over to the site now.