I’ve dreaded the eventual move to Apple Silicon. I am a long-time Dragon NaturallySpeaking user to dictate content into my computer. Many blogs here have been “written” by voice. The dictation software runs on Microsoft Windows powered by Intel architeture. When Apple decided to move to the ARM architecture, Windows applications built for Intel chips would not run, even with virtualization, until now.

The journey for me to Apple Silicon has been fraught with its share of bumps trying to get beta versions of Windows ARM edition running on top of VMware Fusion to virtualize the traditional Windows experience. I had completely given up as I kept running into bugs, challenges, and hard stops.

Since then, I’ve tried several solutions, including Apple voice control, dictation through Google Docs, and dictation through Microsoft Word. I haven’t found a more robust system than Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I need the ability to add custom words, easily correct text with voice, and a system that learns over time. Sure, some of the systems above did a few things, but none did all of them, nor did they get better the more I used them.

Yesterday, my colleague piped up on Slack:

Question, are you using NaturallySpeaking on Parallels?

WAAAAH? Why now? I asked him how he got it working, and he mentioned he ran the installer, created a virtual machine, had Parallels install Windows automatically, and it “just worked.” I was skeptical initially, but to my chagrin – it works. The last application that was my holdout for the Intel-based Mac is now in the rearview mirror. A lot of me is now thinking, do I need to lock this VM down, prevent updates, and freeze it in time so that a new piece of software doesn’t turn off the working bliss I have now!!?

The one big downside is that parallels is a subscription offering. VMware Fusion is a free offering for personal use. Parallels is $120 yearly, which is a bit to get my head around. I prefer perpetual software and upgrading on my cadence. However, it works, and works well. Also, CPU utilization between the virtual machine and the host is quite efficient.

For all of you reading – it works. This blog is fully dictated on an Apple MacBook Pro M1, Parallels 19, and Windows 22631.2861 with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 15.61.