macOS 26.4.1 VMs on Apple silicon run at ~98% single-core CPU speed and are usable with as little as 2 virtual cores and 4 GB RAM.
Key Takeaways
Geekbench 6.7.1 on a Mac mini M4 Pro: VM single-core 3,855 vs host 3,948 (98%), GPU Metal 106,896 vs host 111,970 (95%).
Neural engine is the weak point: VM half-precision CoreML score 8,577 vs host 41,251, quantised 6,877 vs host 56,616.
A VM with 2 virtual cores and 4 GB vRAM used only 3.1 GB at runtime and handled everyday Safari and Settings tasks normally.
Minimum practical VM disk size is ~60 GB for safe updates; APFS sparse files mean a 100 GB VM uses ~54 GB on disk.
The author concludes a MacBook Neo (low-end config) can run a usable macOS VM, though not suitable for local LLM inference.
Hacker News Comment Review
Memory allocation vs. actual usage is contested: idle usage of 3.1 GB does not guarantee headroom is sufficient once real app workloads run inside the VM.
No mention of memory ballooning support in macOS virtualization; without it, the host cannot reclaim unused vRAM pages dynamically, making small allocations riskier under load.
iOS simulator performance on older Intel hardware raised as a related concern, suggesting VM smoothness questions extend beyond Apple silicon to legacy Mac users.
Notable Comments
@nottorp: Questions whether idle 5 GB usage holds once apps demand the full 8 GB allocation.
