Power BI is a powerful BI tool, but it sadly doesn't support Mac devices.
- Microsoft Power Bi Desktop Download
- Power Bi Install
- How To Update Power Bi
- Power Bi Version Comparison
A couple of years ago, I was working for a company where 90% of our staff had a MacBook and loved it, but there was no way for our Data Team to work with Power BI to build out reporting. Then we turned into another tool named Holistics, a cloud-based one.
In this post, I will share my experiences implementing Power BI on Mac OS, which I hope is helpful to you if you are looking for a solution.
Disclaimer: I fell in love with Holistics at the previous company, and am now working for Holistics!
Since Power BI can't run on a Mac, here are our recommendations to run Power BI on Macintosh Devices.
- Install and run Power BI on a Virtual Machine, then remote in to that Virtual Machine.
- Install and run Power BI on a PC, then use a remote viewer to control that PC.
- Use an alternative BI solution.
- Install Windows on Mac using Boot Camp
As a regular user of Power BI on Apple device, I chosed to configure a Windows VM with parallels desktop on my machine to get the best of the two worlds: Power BI Online on Mac for reading, editing and sharing dashboard, and Power BI Desktop on my VM for advanced editing and ETL stuffs. Oct 27, 2020 Microsoft Power BI Desktop is built for the analyst. It combines state-of-the-art interactive visualizations, with industry-leading data query and modeling built-in. Create and publish your reports to Power BI. Power BI Desktop helps you empower others with timely critical insights, anytime, anywhere.
Steps to Download and Install Power BI Desktop. The following are the steps involved in download and install Power BI Desktop. Download Power BI Desktop. Power BI Desktop is a Free windows based application. You can use this Desktop to Shape the data in a proper format, and to design reports as per the requirements. Want to run Power BI on a mac? We look at what your options are to get Power BI Desktop running on your mac. You have a few choices. Ideas: Power BI Designer. Ready to put your data to work? MicroStrategy Desktop delivers everything you need to access, visualize, and analyze your data, for free. No license keys. No trial version. Just fast, flexible self-service analytics to help you maximize the impact of your data, while laying the groundwork for a data-driven future.
To give you a little context about Microsoft's plan on supporting Power BI on Mac devices, they are not considering developing Power BI desktop for Mac devices anytime soon.
You can also visit this link to keep track of their upcoming plans.
You can set-up a Windows Virtual Machine on Azure, Google Cloud or AWS.
- Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/virtual-machines/ (starting from $61/month)
- AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/tutorials/launch-windows-vm/
Then you install and run Power BI on that Virtual Machine.
Finally, install Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac on each device to give your team access to that VM.
There are a couple of disadvantages to this approach, however:
- It's difficult to control permission access and version history.
- You can only have one person working on a machine at a time, since Power BI for desktop is not a collaborative tool.
It's a little bit the same with the first method, however, this time, you use a physical machine.
Vectorian giotto mac download windows 10. You set-up a Windows PC, install and run Power BI on that PC.
Install TeamViewer, AnyDesk, or MS Remote Desktop to give people access to that PC and use Power BI from their Macs.
Cons: same with the first method, and you have to maintain a physical PC.
Power BI is powerful — it helps your team consolidate data and build dashboards and reports with a powerful data modeling layer. It's not easy to find a great tool in the market to replace Power BI, but here are two alternative solutions I recommend which is 100% cloud-based, can replicate its functionalities, and in some cases do even more.
1. Holistics
Holistics is a powerful full-stack data platform that allows companies to set up an end-to-end, reusable, and scalable data analytics stack with minimal engineering resources.
It not only gives data analysts a powerful SQL-based data modeling approach, but it also helps them build a data warehouse and automate reporting. Holistics is also designed to empowers non-technical users to get insights with a strong self-service analytics offering.
Holistics vs Power BI: https://www.holistics.io/compare/holistics-vs-powerbi/
2. Looker + StitchData
Looker is a business intelligence and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze and share real-time business analytics easily.
Looker is also a powerful server-based Data Modeling BI tool, however, they don't support Data Transforms and Data Imports, so you will need another tool for that called StitchData. Together, you get all the power of Power BI with none of the Windows lock-in.
Boot Camp is a utility that helps you install Microsoft Windows 10 on your Mac, then switch between macOS and Windows when restarting your Mac.
Microsoft Power Bi Desktop Download
You can learn more about how to use it here
I like Power BI's product, but it is difficult to keep using Power BI given that the tool is built exclusively for the Windows Desktop. Instead of allowing your data team to work collaboratively, your data pipeline will depend on Windows. This is difficult and restrictive if your organization works primarily on Mac.
The upshot here is that if you do not use a Microsoft-stack at your organization, a 100% cloud-based solution would be a better fit for your needs.
Possibly my favourite Macbook ever is the trusty mid 2012 edition model. This portable and powerful unit is still very current, supporting Thunderbolt and USB 3, powerful processors, decent battery life, popular 13 inch size and upgradeable to 16Gb of memory, ideal for running Power BI Desktop…. except Power BI Desktop only runs on Windows… 🙁 . But wait, there’s more…
Microsoft’s beautiful and bold plan for Power BI is to enable this accessible Data tool within the reach of every Business User on the planet, and that means any device… So where is the Mac OS X version ?
Read on…
Power BI Desktop runs in several flavours :
Power BI Desktop – A Windows download that runs on a Windows desktop – 64 bit recommended.
Power BI Cloud – A brilliant zero infrastructure collaboration portal for sharing your concepts with colleagues or external service providers.
Power BI Mobile – Nifty and Pretty user friendly Mobile apps on IOS, Windows 10 Mobile and Android that allow you to roll out your concepts into live operational systems with Alerting and Notifications for easy and turnkey Management By Exception.
Power BI Embedded – a .Net deployed application that features your Power BI Cloud tiles incorporated into your own Application Seamlessly using Power BI backend APIs.
Power BI SharePoint – via some third party SharePoint apps.
Power BI On-Premise – yes, On-Premise, with a pricey Pyramid Analytics server from the company that collaborated with Microsoft to birth Power BI.
Power Bi Install
As for Power BI Desktop, we can run on Mac OS X in two ways :
- Create a virtual machine in Azure, install Power BI desktop there and access your Power BI cloud workstation via Mac OS X Remote Desktop apps like the sweet Remote Desktop app Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac.
- Install Parallels Desktop on your Mac, load up a Windows 10 ISO, install Windows, and load Power BI Desktop on this local virtual machine. Utilise Parallels Desktop to create a seamless Power BI Desktop experience by creating a user friendly shortcut that makes you think you are running Power BI Desktop as a native Mac OS X app.
Parallels has three flavours :
- Standard edition supporting up to 4 processors and 8gb of RAM
- Pro edition capable of more than 4 processors and up to 64Gb of RAM
- Business edition – Pro edition with Centralised Management capability
There are some other awesome features, like being able to spin up an Android or IOS virtual machine from a template, which is brilliant for demo-ing and testing Power BI mobile apps before rollout.
How To Update Power Bi
You can also install Parallels Access Agent allowing you to Remote Control your Mac over the internet.
Power Bi Version Comparison
But bring on the Mac OS X app please Microsoft 🙂