Articulate on new Macbook MAX with M2 Chip

John: Thanks, but I only see the M1 chip mentioned in that article, nothing about M2... I guess those are the hoops I eventually will have to jump through to get Storyline working, but I am disappointed that Articulate is not even considering making it easier for creators who use Mac (of which there are MANY)...

David: I have only just unboxed and installed a few apps on the M2 and I haven't experimented with Storyline yet... I just heard about the hassels and I am very frustrated by it... Having to install (and pay for) a Windows-license just to get one app functioning, is extremely annoying...

Davinci Resolve, the Adobe suite and Blender run smooth as butter on the M2 MAX, the performance actually gives me goosebumps... So it IS possible to update and optimize apps for Apple silicon... 

Feels like this thread could be a long one... 

I have now used Parallells for two weeks and it works well. It is nice to have both Windows and MacOS available at the click of a button and not having to reboot like Boot Camp.

Concerning Storyline, I am pleased with the functionality, everything works the way it should. There is a weird trailing/shadowing effect when moving property windows around the interface, might be because of the 120 FPS Macbook screen, maybe? 

Storyline feels sluggish, though, but the gigantic project I am working on was sluggish on my previous monster PC as well. It improved when I upped the dedicated RAM for Parallells from the default 8 to 32. 

So Parallells is good and it is nice to be able to confirm the gut feeling that Mac is much snappier than Windows. I can now compare things by opt+tabbing between Mac and Windows and the difference is noticable.

Hi Kompetenslaget,

Thanks for asking about this! To use Storyline 360 on a Mac you will have to install a Windows virtual environment. As you've read, there are posts telling of issues getting Storyline to function in that environment. I've been using Storyline 360 with Parallels Desktop and my experience couldn't be better. I've had no issues.

Here's an article with more on using Articulate 360 on a Mac. 

Im curious to know how it goes for you. I know people are virtualizing and running it on an M1 mac, wondering if there is a performance increase with M2.

This program is the only reason I dont use a mac for work... yet...

The ability to run storyline fully depends on the ability for the Mac to emulate windows through parallels. Due to the M1 being an ARM based processor, it struggled a bit to emulate windows well enough to run storyline. People complained that storyline would get a little laggy and slow sometimes.

However, with the added power of the M2, I was wondering if there was a difference.

You can download and run windows in a virtual environment for free without a key, there are just some customization restrictions that are mostly cosmetic.

Someone explained it to me in another thread. Storyline is based on the .NET framework, and though there are newer versions of the .NET framework available for the Mac, the specific version that storyline is based on is not compatible and thus cant be upgraded to the new framework. They would have to completely remake the program.

If the version of the framework ever becomes legacy, they may have to upgrade to a version compatible with Mac, but I dont think that will happen soon.

David: As an update, I have spoken to our IT-guy and he says that there will be no problem to get Storyline working with Parallells, but I have turned grumpy over this since there is a yearly $200 fee for Parallells, and it just irritates the hell out of me... I gladly pay the yearly fee to Articulate, but this is beginning to be very irritating... I don't want to pay yearly for Parallells as well, just to get ONE app working... Have you tried Bootcamp, is that an alternative to Parallells...?

Bootcamp is not an option as the M2 is an ARM based machine and windows needs x86 to run natively. Does windows have an ARM based version? Yes, but it does not have any of the drivers needed to be compatible with apple silicon. Parallels is currently the only option, but is now a supported method by windows, which is a win?

There are open source virtualization programs currently working on developing the drivers needed for apple silicon. They are coming, it will just take time. I believe VM Ware is also working on supporting windows on apple silicon.

David: Thanks for the info...

Steve: Since Bootcamp is not an option, I will bite the bullet and get Parallells next week. Been overloaded with work, but I will write an update here when I have tested it out...

Thanks. Please keep us updated. For what it's worth, I absolutely love using Parallels on the Mac. In 15 years, I've found only two things that won't work on Parallels - Cody Baby (an old avatar program) and games. Other than that, I love it and when I tried to go back to a Windows only machine I couldn't.