What Is A Virtual Server & How Does It Work? Best Windows Emulators for Mac However, in the emulation process, no hardware is involved it is all replaced by software.The virtualization tools are able to offer the best possible performance by using the Mac hardware.Both allow you to run applications that aren’t compatible with your Mac hardware but emulator and virtual machine are indeed different. A large memory is needed to store the emulator itself, Windows installation, and the applications you want to run.Īn emulator or a virtual machine is actually needed for running Windows on Mac. A special partition will be created on your drive by the emulators for storing the applications.