A few weeks ago, I stood at a familiar creative crossroads—the kind where logic wrestles with longing. I was eyeing high-end gaming PCs, contemplating about RTX 5080 or 4090-powered render pipelines and speculative benchmarks. But in the end, I pressed pause. Instead of chasing raw horsepower, I sought a quieter, more strategic upgrade—something that would support my design, development, and music production workflows right now.
Enter the Apple Studio M4 Max (base model, 36GB RAM)—and looking back, it’s a decision I’d make again without hesitation. Not only does it power Harrison Mixbus better than any Linux setup I’ve tried, but it also turned out to be a surprise two-for-one: a powerful main machine and a highly capable virtualization host.
Naturally, I began exploring how to run Linux VMs on macOS. As a longtime user of Virtmanager on Linux, I was curious—maybe a bit skeptical—about the mac-native alternative: UTM. Some reviews I found were lukewarm, warning about performance quirks or feature gaps. But curiosity won, as it often does with me. I downloaded it. Installed it. And within minutes, I was completely sold.
UTM: Exceeding Every Expectation
Calling UTM a pleasant surprise would be an understatement. This app is brilliant. Not only is the user interface intuitive and thoughtfully designed, but performance-wise, it exceeded all expectations. I installed Debian Trixie ARM64 as a test VM, and the results were astonishing: the installation was dramatically faster than on any of my Linux machines. Once installed, Debian ran so smoothly and responsively, I almost forgot I was in a virtual environment at all.
But the real showstopper? How easy it was to get a bridged network working. With Virtmanager, this has always been a fiddly process involving scripts and manual edits. With UTM, it was just a checkbox. One click—and I had a proper bridged interface up and running. That level of thoughtful engineering speaks volumes.
After four weeks of daily use, I can confidently say this: UTM has become my go-to virtualization app, and I consider it a must-have for any Mac-based developer or tinkerer’s toolkit. It’s stable, elegant, and genuinely delightful to use. I even moved my VM to an external SSD, and UTM handled the transition without a hiccup.
Next up? I’ll be putting LMStudio through its paces on the M4 Max and sharing how it performs in a professional macOS creative workflow. Stay tuned—it’s shaping up to be another fascinating ride.