FYI -- Parallels 16 now supports BigSur as a VM on older systems

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Sun, 6 Dec 2020 at 22:37, Christopher Nielsen wrote:
> > On 2020-12-06-S, at 16:16, Mark Anderson wrote:
> >
> > Is there a good way to get 10.6 - 10.16 installed in Parallels — I really don't want to download all of them from the app store, if that's even possible.
> >
> > —Mark
>
> In my case, I’ve kept an archive of old MacOS installers, combo updates, etc, so I used those.

I'm currently using VMWare (and I don't mind switching to Parallels in
case they have this covered in a better way), but the question is
similar.

I tried to install a new VM with Big Sur, but:
- the VM version I have on my box doesn't let me select any newer
macOS version than what I have installed (to some extent this is
understandable: they couldn't have known all the caveats of Big Sur
years back)
- the latest VMware Fusion 12 is no longer compatible with my OS (ok,
I would somehow accept that, at some point I do need to upgrade)
- but even if I upgrade to, say, 10.15 or 11 now, VMware Fusion 12 no
longer supports 10.6, for example, which is the single one that I
would *really* like to keep

I know that several developers here have the full collection of VMs
dating back to 10.5 or so. Even after solving the problem of finding a
suitable image (which Apple doesn't really make easy even if you just
want to revert to something that you already had on that same machine)
... what's the best way to keep a variety of VMs working?

Does anyone have a matrix of what VMWare/Parallels versions support
which macOS version as host / guest?

Mojca