mac

Building a Windows on ARM Test Environment on a Mac: VMware Fusion + Windows 11 ARM64

The Japan Patent Office e-filing software is Windows-only, and the Mac build was discontinued — so there is no filing route from a Mac. I built a Windows 11 ARM64 environment on an Apple Silicon Mac with VMware Fusion instead. Fusion has been free (commercial use included) since November 2024, and the Windows 11 ARM64 ISO is available from Microsoft directly. This covers the biggest setup hurdle, getting past the Microsoft account requirement, plus the settings that make it a driver test bench (disabling Secure Boot, USB passthrough, snapshots), on the actual setup in use (Fusion 26.0.0 / M3 Max).