Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hardware virtualization solution for Mac computers with Intel processors. Developed by Parallels Inc., a privately held software company with offices in 15 countries, Parallels Desktop for Mac (referred to simply as Parallels from here on) allows Mac users to seamlessly switch between macOS and the Windows operating system.
Because of the Youtube Changes People are not finding my channel like before and its making it hard to make any money from my content so as request by a few i made a patreon https://www.patreon. I purchased Parallels to be able to run Quicken 2012 (and beyond) on a Mac. Boot Camp was not an enjoyable option as I have had dual boot machines in the past and prefer to run things simultaneously. OSX 10.8.4/Windows 8/Quicken 2012.
The ability to do so is indispensable when your favorite software isn’t available for Mac. That could be an accounting software package such as TurboCASH, an easy-to-use email client like Mailbird, or, perhaps, Internet Explorer, which is still used by millions, so web developers have to optimize for it.
Because Parallels for Mac uses hypervisor technology to map the host computer’s hardware resources directly to the virtual machine’s resources, the performance of Parallels for Mac virtual machines closely matches the performance of the host operating system. Even graphic- and resource-hungry Windows applications run as they should, including Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, CorelDRAW, ArcGIS, Visio, and many others.
The latest version of Parallels for Mac works best on the latest version of macOS and requires a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core i3, Intel Core i5, Intel Core i7, or Intel Xeon processor.
Best Features of Parallels
Besides its performance, Parallels for Mac stands out with its seamless integration, allowing users to run Mac and Windows applications side-by-side without restarting. Parallels for Mac makes it possible to place Windows applications in the Dock, right next to Mac applications, and launch them with a single click. A piece of text copied from the Windows version of Microsoft Word can be pasted into Safari, which further blurs the line between Windows and Mac software.
Easy to Set Up
Parallels for Mac is so easy to set up that anyone can do it. You can either choose an existing Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, or Boot Camp installation or let Parallels for Mac download Windows 10 for you. Parallels for Mac will even help you optimize your VM settings and performance, allowing you to connect all your USB, Thunderbolt, and FireWire devices with Windows. If you want to, you can even add Windows applications to Touch Bar to instantly access them thanks to a handy tool known as Touch Bar Wizard.
Retina Support
Microsoft is still figuring out the best way how to scale Windows applications on high-resolution displays, but Parallels for Mac already features enhanced Retina support to ensure that all Windows application look just as sharp as their Mac neighbors.
Picture-in-Picture Mode
System administrators, developers, and even some power users sometimes run multiple virtual machines side-by-side, and keeping track of them can be a struggle. Parallels for Mac simplifies the monitoring of multiple virtual machines with its picture-in-picture mode, which conveniently displays all running virtual machines on a single screen, delivering a bird’s-eye view with a click of a button.
Extra Tools
Along these and other core features, Parallels for Mac also comes with over 30 tools to simplify everyday tasks on mac and windows. The tools give you the ability to easily create and customize animated GIFs from videos, prevent your computer from going to sleep and your display from dimming, optimize your home movie or television shows for iPad or iPhone, download your favorite videos from the Internet, record a video of a screen, immediately lock your screen to prevent unauthorized access to your computer, keep your Mac clutter-free and running at max speed, use your computer’s built-in microphone and record audio with a single click, and more.
Data Recovery
Unfortunately, the tools that come with Parallels for Mac free of charge don’t cover data recovery. The good news is that there’s at least one excellent data recovery solution for Mac that you can download for free and use it to recover lost or deleted files even if you don’t consider yourself to be a computer whizz. The name of this data recovery software is Disk Drill.
Just like Parallels for Mac, Disk Drill also comes with free extra tools. The tools that come with Disk Drill all focus on disk and data management, and they nicely complement the tools included with Parallels for Mac. Disk Drill’s Duplicate Finder allows you to easily find and remove duplicate files in multiple locations on your drive, Data Backup creates byte-to-byte disk and partition backups, and Disk Health is a free disk monitoring tool that alerts you to any potential disk issues.
Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery
Parallels For Mac
How Much Does Parallels Cost?
It’s possible to download Parallels for Mac free of charge, but you will be able to use it only for 14 days unless you purchase the full version.
A single Parallels for Mac license for home and student use costs €79.99. Developers, testers, and power users are encouraged to pay €99.99 a year for Parallels Desktop Pro Edition, which comes with many additional features and capabilities, including the support for up to 16 virtual (v)CPUs and 64GB of vRAM, the addition of a Microsoft Visual Studio plug-in, bash completion for Parallels CLI tools, an enhanced network editor that allows you to test different connectivity issues, EFI Secure Boot, port forwarding, and a lot more.
Parallels For Mac Home
There’s also Parallels Desktop Business Edition for use in work settings, which also costs €99.99 a year, and includes the same additional features and capabilities as Parallels Desktop Pro Edition.
If you search online, it’s easy to find various Parallels for Mac free. download full version links, but you should avoid them at all cost. Even if you managed to find one that doesn’t lead to dangerous malware, downloading the full version of Parallels for Mac from the internet is a crime punishable by fees much higher than what it costs to purchase Parallels for Mac.
Parallels Versus Alternatives
Parallels isn’t the only virtualization solution for Mac. Before you click the purchase button and acquire your own copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac, we think it’s worth exploring some alternative options.
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion is a powerful virtualization software solution that can run nearly any operating system on a Mac. While easy enough for home users to quickly learn how to use, VMware Fusion is more than capable enough to satisfy the needs of professionals who develop and test software for multiple operating systems and want to do so without having to constantly rebooting. The ability to run an entire virtual cloud stack on a single Mac gives solution architects the ability to demonstrate their entire software solution in real time. Just like Parallels for Mac, VMware Fusion blends the Windows experience seamlessly with macOS. Its Unity View Mode ides the Windows desktop so you can run Windows apps just like Mac apps, and its hardware accelerated 3D graphics engine allows you to utilize your hardware to its maximum capacity.
VirtualBox
VirtualBox is an open source alternative to Parallels for Mac and VMware Fusion. It was first released in 2007 and acquired by Oracle in 2010. It can be used to load multiple guest operating system under a single host operating system, and it supports both Intel’s VT-x and AMD’s AMD-V hardware virtualization. VirtualBox sometimes doesn’t reach quite the same level of polish as its paid counterparts, but it’s hard to complain considering that it’s free and open source. Apart from macOS, VirtualBox also runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports all recent versions of Windows, Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD. VirtualBox is being developed by the entire open source community as well as Oracle, and anyone is welcome to submit their contributions to the vbox-dev mailing list or to the Developers Corner forum.
Wine
Unlike Parallels for Mac, VMware Fusion, and VirtualBox, Wine isn’t a virtualization software solution but a compatibility layer that makes it possible to install and run Windows applications just like you would in Windows. Running Windows applications using Wine eliminates the performance and memory penalties associated with virtualization. The only downside is the fact that not all Windows applications run flawlessly on Mac using Wine, and some don’t run at all.
Wine uses a rating system that allows you to see which applications work best in Wine. Platinum applications work as well as (or better than) on Windows out of the box, gold applications work as well as (or better than) on Windows with workarounds, silver applications work excellently for normal use but have some problems for which there are no workarounds, bronze applications work but have some problems for normal use, and garbage applications have problems that are severe enough that they cannot be used for their intended purpose.
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with 0 posters participatingStiff competition
It was only a couple months ago that we reviewed Parallels Desktop's main competitor, VMware 2.0, and it's definitely no coincidence that a new version of Parallels Desktop has launched so closely on the heels of its Mac virtualization rival. Competition between VMware and Parallels is fierce, and each of the two programs is very visibly trying to catch up and surpass the other in features and performance. From early on, Parallels has been the leader in desktop integration, and Parallels' Coherence mode—which lets you use Windows applications seamlessly in the OS X interface—makes so much sense that you would have to copy it to compete at usability. So VMware 2.0 did copy coherence mode, and it also managed to open up a lead by adding multi-core CPU and 64-bit client OS support. The new Parallels Desktop 4.0 is clearly designed to close that gap by adding:
- 64-bit guest OS support
- Support for up to 8 GB of RAM for VM client OSes
- Support for up to 8-way SMP for multicore CPUs
The most interesting thing about Parallels' multi-core implementation is that it correctly shows CPU cores as cores in the client OS, whereas VMware shows the cores as individual CPUs. This is significant because non-server distributions of Windows don't allow for more than two CPUs to be used. The result is that a VMware 2.0 virtual machine only accesses more than two CPUs under Windows if it's using an expensive server-grade version of Microsoft's OS. If you have a Mac Pro and you're looking for maximum performance out of your virtualized Windows install, this is an important distinction. But it's not all good news for Parallels users looking to make the jump to the next level.
Even after Parallels released a second build (3540) of Parallels Desktop 4.0 shortly after the launch, a release that was aimed at addressing a number of problems with the 4.0 gold version, the software still has many officially acknowledged issues that need addressing. Are these problems bad enough for you to steer clear of 4.0? Let's take a look.
Pricing
- New: $79.99
- Upgrade: $39.99
System Requirements
- Processor: Intel-based Mac required
- Memory: 1 GB of RAM (2GB recommended to run Windows Vista)
- Storage: 450 MB of hard drive space for Parallels Desktop Installation, plus space to allocate to your virtual machine
- Operating system: Mac OS X 10.411 or later (including Mac OS X Leopard)
Test hardware
- Mobile:
- MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
- 4 GB RAM
- NVIDIA 8600M 256 MB
- OS X 10.5.5
- Desktop:
- Mac Pro Xeon Core 2 Duo (4-core) 2.66 GHz
- 7 GB RAM
- NVIDIA 7300 GT
- OS X 10.5.5
Test software
- Parallels Desktop 4.0 build 3540
- VMware Fusion 2.0.1
- Windows XP Pro 32-bit SP3
- Windows Vista 64-bit SP1
- Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop 64-bit
- Mac OS X Server 10.5.5
Parallel For Mac
Parallels 10 For Mac
Getting Started
Parallels' New Virtual Machine Assistant hasn't changed much in version 4. It still does a great job of guessing what the operating system is by the installer disk, and it handles automated installs as well as it used to. However, it does need more options—there isn't an option to pick how many CPUs or how much RAM you want for the VM at install time. If you want to set those, you have to stop the install assistant after creating the VM file but before launching the OS installer, or you can do it after booting into the VM, which will force a restart. The latter is less convenient, but, given the problems that I saw with the Leopard Server installation, it's more stable than setting it afterward. Maybe that's why it was left out of the assistant.
Another slightly annoying thing about version 4.0 is that it boots into Coherence Mode with desktop mirroring on by default. While seasoned Parallels users will know what's going on when they see this, it will probably be very confusing for new users who may look for a Windows desktop but see only a taskbar at the bottom of their screen. Desktop mirroring causes problems with certain software, in my experience, so that's another good reason for it to be off by default.
VM Updates: cross your fingers, it could be a bumpy ride. If you're a Parallels Desktop 3 user, you have to upgrade your existing VM(s) before you can get up and running with version 4. You might want to create a backup copy of your VM files, since the upgrade process has been a bit of a mess for a lot of people (but less so with the newer build). Stories of unusable or disappearing VMs are not unheard of. Also, prepare yourself for a good wait as VM upgrades are slow; it took about an hour to upgrade my very basic XP VM, and reports of three-hour VM upgrades are common.
Parallels
If you can, I would recommend just doing a fresh install, because new VMs are less prone to virtual barnacles from what I've seen; it makes the setup process faster, to boot (I apologize for that pun).