In OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks, the Boot Camp Assistant is located in the Utilities folder in Applications. That is when I decided it was time to Boot Camp my Mac Mini. I bought a keyboard/mouse/display splitter, and set things up so I could move back and forth between the two computers with a single button press. Running Boot CampĪ few years back when I bought my first Mac Mini, I set it atop my desk, marveling at its small footprint compared to the hulking Dell PC that whooshed and beeped beneath my desk. I will describe Boot Camp below, but in this article I will focus on a second, and in my opinion better, way to run Windows on a Mac, and that is by creating a virtual machine using a third-party Mac application called VM Fusion. You can 'Boot Camp' your machine, and choose at startup which operating system-OS X or Windows-you wish to run. It is possible to run both OS X and Windows on the same Mac. You could keep your old Windows machine and crowd your desk with two CPUs and keyboards, or two laptops. Or maybe you simply want to spend some time perfecting your Mac skills before you start using it for your job.

You enjoy the OS X experience using VoiceOver, but you still need to use Windows because a critical piece of software does not run on Mac.

If you’re not sure which one you have, a helpful point of reference is that pretty much any Windows machine released from 2015 on runs Windows 10 at minimum.So, you've just purchased a Mac. The following instructions apply to both Windows 11 and Windows 10. Microsoft has very simple instructions for finding out precisely which version of Windows you have on its support website (Opens in a new tab). Another way to find out is to simply look at the bottom of the screen if there’s a start button in the lower left corner, it’s probably Windows, though if you have the newer Windows 11 (Opens in a new tab), it’ll now be in the bottom center.

If the keyboard your desktop or laptop came with has a Windows key on the lower left and an “Enter” key instead of a “Return” key, chances are you’re using Microsoft’s iconic Windows OS. The first step to learning more about the current version of your OS is establishing what your OS is to begin with. Credit: Alex Perry / Mashable / Microsoft

Windows running on mac