Is Apple Silicon/M1 good for emulation?

[EvanKTC]

I have recently switched to a late 2008 15" MacBook Pro, however the thing is pretty old and the max it will run is 10.11 el capitan, which the browser i am using (firefox) is not being updated anymore. I am considering getting an M1 mac instead of intel since i expect macOS to stop supporting the x86-64 architecture within the next few years. I have heard of a qemu GUI called UTM which emulates pretty much every architecture in existence and should run under apple silicon. Should i get an intel or apple silicon mac for emulation?

[TiberiumBetas]

The problem with Apple Silicon is, mainstream VM software like Parallels won't work with pre-Windows 10 versions of the guest OS, and it'll only work with ARM versions of Windows 10 and 11.

The speed may run decently.

[AlphaBeta]

The problem with Apple Silicon is, mainstream VM software like Parallels won't work with pre-Windows 10 versions of the guest OS, and it'll only work with ARM versions of Windows 10 and 11.

That's not emulation.

[dgsga]

I have an M1 Mac mini and am currently emulating Archlinux, DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows NT4, Mac OS 9 and MacOSX 10.4 using qemu, which now includes support for the hypervisor framework in Big Sur and Monterey. The emulations run at a very useable speed. This is a good place to start for instructions on how to use qemu (the basis of the UTMApp):

https://gist.github.com/akihikodaki/87d ... 07ec5a1bc5