Bug prevents M4 Macs virtualizing pre-Ventura macOS releases — user diagnosis difficult due to lack of error codes

A macOS user discovered that the latest M4 Apple silicon does not support visualization of operating systems prior to macOS 13.4 Ventura, which was released in May 2023. When the user tried loading older versions of macOS, the virtual machine failed to load, with the display showing a black screen. They even tried to create the virtual machine (VM) directly on the M4 Mac, which was successful at first, but eventually resulted in the same black screen, according to The Eclectic Light Company. So, if you need to run older macOS versions prior to 13.4 Ventura, the only current solution is to use an older Mac system.

Unfortunately, diagnosing the black screen issue is next to impossible on the client side, as the VM refuses to boot. The host doesn’t show an error either, as it’s unable to load the virtual machine normally. It’s not until the operating system itself tries to boot that it runs into the problem. The Activity Monitor shows only one active core for the VM, despite the system being allocated multiple cores, so The Eclectic suggests that the failure happens “before the VM kernel boots the other cores, an event that occurs early during the kernel boot phase.”

It seems that the error happens before or during the initial kernel boot. So, even if you try other desktop virtualization software like VMWare’s products (which are now free for all users), you’d still end up with the same clueless puzzle. At this point, the only solution is to dig into the kernel of macOS versions older than 13.4 and for Apple to publish fixed IPSWs. However, this isn’t likely, given that only a few users would most probably benefit from such an update. So, if you’re one of those who need to use older macOS versions, the only thing that you can do for now is to keep a prior-generation Mac in your arsenal.

If you’ve already bought a new M4 device, like the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro we recently reviewed, you can still virtualize macOS 13.4 and newer on your device. Alternatively, you can run Windows 11 on M1 Apple Silicon or later.