Installing Windows OS on Macintosh involves a lot of technicalities. There are options ranging from mild to complex. We have detailed below procedures and methods you are most likely to find convenient.
One is you can use Bootcamp, which is built into macOS. This will set up a partition on your hard drive where you can install Windows, and dual-boot into it. This configuration allows you to run either macOS or Windows, but not both at the same time. After you’ve installed Windows, you switch between them by rebooting your laptop, holding down the Option key while it’s booting, until the boot menu appears, and then selecting which OS you want to run.
Another option is to install a virtual machine on macOS. This allows you to run Windows inside of macOS, in a window (or full screen, if you like). This way, you can be running Mac applications and Windows applications at the same time.
There is the free VM VirtualBox that you can download off the internet. There are also at least a couple commercial VMs you can buy, such as VMWare and Parallels.
VMWare has an option where you can either set up a disk image for running the VM, or you can host a Bootcamp partition inside of the VM. The latter allows more flexibility, where you can either use your Bootcamp partition inside of VMWare (in macOS), or boot into that partition by the method I described in the 2nd paragraph. VMWare also has a feature where you can integrate the two desktops, so that Windows applications can appear to reside inside your macOS desktop, and Windows app. icons show up in the Dock. This way, you can seamlessly use the features of your macOS desktop to switch between the two kinds of apps., just as you would between macOS apps. We tried this feature for a while and didn’t have to switch between the two desktops. Cut, copy, and paste are also integrated between the two, so you can copy text or graphics from a Mac app. and paste it into a Windows app., and vice-versa, just using the normal cut, copy, and paste operations of each OS.
VMs typically have a feature where you can share a file folder on macOS (such as your home directory), so that you can easily share files between the two OSes.
The thing about a VM is that you’ll want to have a lot of memory, because you will literally be running two operating systems at the same time when you’re running the VM. So figure on at least 4 GB of memory just for running macOS and the VM. If you’re not running a lot on either, you might be able to get by with 3 GB, but that’s likely to slow down your system.
Just using Bootcamp uses less memory, because you’re only running one OS at a time.