Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac was released a few months ago, and since then I've been using it to run Windows, Linux, Mac and even Android virtual machines on my 27-inch iMac. Parallels has been making great strides in providing a top virtualization tool since the first days of Intel Macs, and this 13th iteration adds a few features and hones performance.
New Features
Parallels For Macbook Pro
A lot of MacBook Pros with Touch Bar have been sold in the past year or so, and it's not surprising that Parallels decided to add Touch Bar support to Parallels Desktop 13. The Touch Bar support is integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Windows, as well as a handful of browsers including Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. Elements that are pinned in the Windows Task Bar show up in the Touch Bar along with buttons for Cortana, Task View and settings. Other Touch Bar actions can be customized for just about any Windows app running in Parallels Desktop 13.
In an upcoming release of Windows 10, Microsoft will launch the 'People Bar' that allows users to pin contacts to the Task Bar. Parallels Desktop will support that by allowing users to add favorite contacts to the Mac Dock.
Another new feature is Picture-in-Picture view, which makes small windows of active virtual machines that are always visible, even if a Mac app is in Full Screen Mode. This can be very useful if you're using a Windows VM for streaming or running a process that you need to keep an eye on.
A Windows 10 VM along with three other operating systems in PIP mode.
Parallels noted that the Business Edition of Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac now has a Single Application mode in which admins can deliver an 'invisible' Windows VM to a user's Mac Dock that has selected apps pre-installed. The user doesn't even have to know that the Windows app(s) are running in a VM.
As you'd expect, Parallels also improved the performance of Desktop 13. External Thunderbolt SSDs now respond at near native speeds, snapshots of VMs using a lot of memory happen up to 50 percent faster, working with Windows files on a Mac is now up to 47 percent faster, and even USB devices perform up to 40 percent faster. Finally, Parallels Desktop 13 appears to work better with Retina displays in scaled mode, with transitions and the sharpness of text and graphics being much improved over the previous version.
Parallels Desktop 6 is the latest version of the world-renowned and highly successful Mac OS X application Parallels Desktop for Mac.It is made by a software development company called Parallels Inc. And is defined as a software product that can provide hardware virtualization for any and all Mac computers that have Intel processors in them. In other words, if you've got a Mac computer with an. Overall: Parallels Desktop for Mac is the best solution for our support team to assist our clients with both Mac and Windows! Excellent solution for virtualization on macOS Jun 20, 2018.
Hands-On With Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac
Parallels Desktop 11 For Mac
The process of creating a new VM for just about any operating system is getting easier with each successive version of Parallels Desktop. When setting up a Windows 10 VM, you don't even need to have a license; you can purchase one from Microsoft during setup. Of course, it's possible to install Windows from an image file or DVD, or even transfer it from a PC you're replacing to a Mac VM.
The Parallels Desktop 13 control center shown with a large variety of operating systems.
Need to run a specialized app in another OS? Parallels includes a bunch of free systems, including the Windows 10 Development Environment, the Modern.IE Test Environment, your existing macOS installation (which is installed from the Recovery Partition), and Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mint and Debian GNU Linux. As mentioned earlier, Parallels Desktop 13 can even be used to set up an Android VM.
Since the release of macOS High Sierra, I've been running betas of new versions under Desktop 13, and it's stable and fast. One thing I don't personally use that's part of Parallels Desktop 13 is the Toolbox. That's a collection of over 30 utilities for the Mac, and most of them are redundant so I don't even think about installing it.
On today's higher-powered Macs -- especially those with a lot of RAM -- VMs run very quickly, even when you're running graphics-intensive apps. Parallels Desktop 13 can optimize VM settings automatically for the fastest possible virtual environment by selecting either productivity, games, design or development. It tweaks memory, graphics and other settings to make it run at peak performance.
The update to Parallels Desktop 13 from earlier versions 11 and 12 is just $49.99 regardless if you're a 'student' or a full power user. A new license is $79.99 for students and home use, or $99.99 per year for the power users.
The Bottom Line
If you need to run other operating systems on a Mac, Parallels Desktop is still the way to go. It's reasonably-priced, fast, and includes the wonderful Parallels Access remote access capability for remotely controlling a Mac.
Apple World Today Rating (out of 5 stars): ★★★★★
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Desktop 12
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Mac users are fortunate to have not one, but two excellent commercial virtualization software packages to choose from, not to mention less-polished free alternatives like Virtual Box. In what has now become an annual ritual, VMware and Parallels have updated their respective Fusion and Desktop products to coincide with the recent release of macOS Sierra.
Last year, both companies delivered ambitious new versions to capitalize on back-to-back debuts of Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan, but the 2016 editions are somewhat more subdued by comparison. VMware marked the occasion by launching Fusion 8.5, a maintenance update with no new features.
Having celebrated its tenth anniversary for Desktop earlier this year, Parallels encouraged engineers to come up with at least one unique new feature to justify the upgrade to version 12, although the company’s usual relentless innovation produced a mixed bag this time around.
Open the Toolbox
Ironically, the marquee feature of Parallels Desktop 12 ($100 one-year Pro Edition or Business Edition subscription; $80 Standard Edition one-time purchase; $40 Student Edition one-time purchase) isn’t part of the core software at all, but a bundled standalone application called Parallels Toolbox (sold separately for $10) which is installed via Preferences. Toolbox consolidates 20 common, everyday tasks into a single menu bar window, making them easier to find and use.
These tools offer one-click simplicity for downloading or converting video, recording audio, muting the microphone, or performing system tasks such as locking the screen, hiding the desktop, preventing your Mac from going to sleep, and Do Not Disturb, which temporarily pauses notifications and Dock activity. Convenient? Yes, but none of the utilities are particularly special or unique, and power users are likely to have their own alternatives already installed.
Others are grouped into categories, providing functionality for taking screenshots, screen recording, archiving files, or managing time. I found the stopwatch, alarm, timer, and date countdown in the latter group particularly handy, since I typically defer such tasks to my iPhone or Apple Watch. Toolbox strictly works on the host OS—it has nothing to do with enhancing Mac, Windows, or Linux virtual machines.
One unfortunate side effect of Toolbox is that you’ll now have three separate Parallels icons taking up space on the menu bar: one for Toolbox, another for Desktop (when it’s actually running, of course), and a third for Parallels Access, the company’s $20 per year remote access service (included with annual Desktop subscriptions). There’s clearly room for some consolidation here, and the individual tools also add icon clutter to Launchpad, but at least they can be organized into a single folder there.
Always ready
If you spend an equal amount of time in Windows and macOS, Parallels Desktop 12 offers a number of welcome enhancements. Performance has been boosted across the board, with 25 percent faster access to shared folders and snapshots, and noticeably speedier suspend and resume—under five seconds on my 27-inch iMac Retina 5K.
Parallels
VMs can now be configured to launch automatically when your Mac starts up, leaving them paused in the background while idle to avoid consuming valuable CPU time. (Remarkably, this continues to work even after quitting Desktop.) Located under Startup and Shutdown in the Options tab, “always ready in background” is accompanied by a handful of custom settings that determine how VMs behave when launched, closed, or shut down.
One of my biggest Windows 10 pet peeves is the heavy-handed approach to automatic updates. I don’t use Windows daily, so it every time I launch Parallels Desktop, performance is degraded as updates start installing in the background. The new Maintenance option allows such tasks to be blocked until the scheduled time, such as a weekend when my iMac isn’t in use. (VMs must be open at the time.) PD12 includes one year of free online storage (500GB) from Acronis, which can be used to back up your virtual machines.
Desktop 12 also makes using Windows on the Mac more seamless. Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents in Safari can be configured to open in their respective desktop Office 365 applications, and passwords entered in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge can now be saved in your Mac keychain.
Last but not least, Parallels offers independent screen resolutions for multiple displays. In full-screen mode, my iMac runs Retina Display resolution, while the adjacent 27-inch Thunderbolt Display works as an extended 2560 x 1440 desktop, each in their own Space. (Sadly, there are no independent settings for backgrounds.)
There is at least one area where Desktop 12 takes a step back. Contextual menu shortcuts have been inexplicably removed from Control Center, which I always found quite handy for quickly reclaiming storage from my Windows VMs without having to open the Configure window.
Bottom line
If you already have an annual subscription, installing Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac is a no-brainer. Although the new Toolbox utilities aren’t compelling enough on their own to justify $50 for a perpetual license upgrade, the performance improvements and macOS Sierra support certainly are.
Desktop 12
See itPros
- 20 bundled Toolbox utilities for one-click common Mac tasks
- Big performance gains
- Always ready in background option for faster launch times
- Schedule Windows 10 maintenance, software updates
Cons
- Toolbox adds third Parallels menu bar icon
- No more contextual menu in Control Center
- Promised macOS Sierra Storage Optimization support missing