New M4-based Macs are reportedly unable to run virtual machines of older macOS versions prior to macOS Ventura 13.4, according to user reports and developer findings.
According to an in-depth write-up by the Eclectic Light Company’s Howard Oakley, security researcher Csaba Fitzl highlighted the issue, which has been documented in Apple Feedback and affects popular virtualization software including UTM. When attempting to run a virtual machine with an earlier version of macOS on M4 Macs, users encounter a black screen, and the VM fails to boot entirely.
The limitation appears to occur during early kernel boot processes, as indicated by Activity Monitor showing only one active virtual core despite multiple cores being allocated. This suggests the failure happens before the VM kernel can initialize additional cores.
Read more at MacRumors.com