IE is dead and will be gone before Intel Macs are.

I know, that’s why I run it in compatibility mode in a VM. Just because it’s dead, doesn’t mean there aren’t organizations that have built mission critical web apps that only work in IE and those of us who have the burden of dealing with them.

You’ll be able to do that for so long that by then you can emulate the whole OS it runs on in a web browser. It’s obsolete after all.

If it uses the virtualization kit, it shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately only veertu, xhive, and part of parallels do so

Unless it only allows ARM VMs.

They demoed Parallels running an x86 Debian VM

Where did it say x86?

What's the state of using cloud Windows images vs. local for this sort of testing?

Dunno. The free Windows VMs I have saved can be reloaded in VirtualBox and used pretty much forever. They can’t run any serious software very well (on my old MacBook anyway), but I’m just using them to support some legacy web apps.