Pros
The Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac is out on its thirteenth version this month and with a whole lot of new features that includes full support for Mac OS High Sierra and the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Parallels Desktop 13 is macOS High Sierra ready and now available for $79.99, with the Pro and Business Editions at $99/year. Parallels Desktop 11 or 12 users can upgrade to Desktop 13 for $49.99. 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.
There are several pricing options. Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac is priced at US$79.99. Upgrades for existing Parallels Desktop 11 and 12 for Mac perpetual license customers are priced at $49.99.
- Coherence turns Windows apps into Mac ones
- Brilliant performance
- Can run some games
Key Specifications
- Review Price: £65.00
- Full Windows 10 support
- Automatic OS installation wizard
- Automatic hibernation saves battery life
- Game support
- 500GB online storage
- Free Parallels Toolbox
- Yearly subscription
What is Parallels Desktop 12?
Parallels Desktop 12 is the annual upgrade to the virtual machine software that lets you run Windows apps directly on OS X as if they were native. It’s this seamless integration, called Coherence, which has won Parallels legions of fans.
Related: Alternative ways to run Windows on your Mac
While Parallels 11 was an essential upgrade for many, bringing Coherence support to Windows 10, Parallels 12 is much more of a modest update. It has some neat new power-management features, a new set of utilities with Parallels Tools, and faster graphics support for gaming. Parallels 12 also has macOS Sierra support, although version 11 also works in Apple’s new OS.
Parallels Desktop 12 – Virtual machine installation
As with previous versions of Parallels, the first job is to install an operating system into a virtual machine. That most likely means Windows, although Ubuntu, Chromium, Android, CentOS, Debian and Fedora are also supported, with Parallels able to download and automatically install these operating systems in the background.
Windows is the obvious use for Parallels, but it supports plenty of other operating systems, too
It’s Windows that you’re likely to want to run, and Parallels gives you two options for that: clone an existing computer or install a fresh version of Windows.
The first option sounds attractive and is easy to do: you install an app on your PC, then let it synchronise your Windows 10 installation to Parallels over your home network. You can even choose to copy your user files from Windows to your Mac.
You can transfer your old Windows 10 PC directly to Parallels, but you may need to change settings to get all your apps working
But there are caveats. Foremost, is that Windows’ licensing prevents you from moving an OEM version of an OS to a new computer, even to a virtual machine. In other words, you can only transfer an old PC if you bought a retail version of Windows.
Related: Best laptops to buy
Secondly, Windows 10 doesn’t particularly like being moved, and Windows apps won’t necessarily run. I got a warning when trying to run some apps, such as Edge, telling me that they ‘can’t be opened using the Built-in Administrator account’.
It’s an issue with new UAC settings, which you have to adjust to get your copy of Windows working properly. Virtualization How To has a guide on how to repair this for Windows 10 Home and Pro users.
UAC settings can stop Windows apps from opening
Installing Windows 10 from scratch automatically fixes all of the permissions you need. Parallels’ Windows installation is one of the best, automatically picking settings for you and installing in the background. In fact, you only need type in your licence key, and then you can leave Parallels to get on with its job.
New to this version of Parallels is that you can have a virtual machine start with your Mac, but drop into hibernation mode instantly. This saves battery and your processor for Mac tasks but lets you start Windows apps almost instantly.
Parallels Desktop 12 – Features and performance
The beauty of Parallels has always been its unparalleled (pardon the pun) integration of the two operating systems. Running under Coherence, Windows apps run and feel exactly like Mac ones. They even have their own Dock icons, and you can place different Windows apps on different virtual Desktops. The only real problem is that Windows’ notification icons get moved to the Mac Menu bar, which makes it rather cluttered.
Coherence turns your Windows apps into Mac ones
Virtual machines can also be run in full-screen mode, giving you the full Windows experience on your Mac. Finally, there’s Modality, which puts your virtual machine into a translucent window so that you can keep an eye on it.
The only issue I had was that Windows would occasionally start in a windowed mode, with the option for Coherence greyed out. The solution was to maximise the window, exit full-screen mode and then enable Cohesion. It’s also slightly annoying that you can’t switch from one more to another. Instead, you have to exit one mode, then enable another.
Performance is excellent, with Windows feeling responsive and snappy. I ran GeekBench 3 on both Mac and the Windows virtual machine and got similar scores: Mac OS scored 5,833 in the multi-core test, and the Windows virtual machine scored 5,057. Running the benchmark simultaneously on both operating systems, it was Windows that took the performance hit. This time around, Mac OS scored 5,003 and Windows scored 3,793.
To make sure that you’re not interrupted, you can set Parallels to allow Windows updates and reboots at specific times only. It’s a neat option and means that your virtual machines are always ready when you need them
Parallels Desktop 12 – Games
Parallels has revamped the graphics engine and has even worked with Blizzard to support first-person shooter Overwatch. The promise here is more games on your Mac, but it’s a claim that I’d treat with caution, as it depends on the spec of your machine. Running on a 2014 Core i5 13-inch MacBook Pro, Overwatch ran, although it averaged out at 22fps, hitting a peak of 28fps, at a resolution of 1,680×1,050 with Low graphics settings.
It was playable, to a degree, but I wouldn’t fancy my chances like this. Running Boot Camp and Windows 10 natively, Overwatch at the same settings ran smoothly, and I saw framerates of at least 50fps, hitting a high of 62fps. Parallels will be useful for older games that aren’t graphically intensive, but Boot Camp’s still the better option for most games.
You can play games on Parallels, but the spec of your Mac will affect performance
Parallels Desktop 12 – Toolbox
Parallels Toolbox is usually £7.99, but ships for free with Desktop 12. It gives you a bunch of handy tools, including a screen recorder, screenshot tool and an online video downloader. If you don’t want these features, you can just remove Toolbox.
Toolbox collects together some handy tools, but it’s not essential
Parallels Desktop 12 – Versions
Parallels Desktop 12 ships in three different versions. There’s the standard edition for home users (£65 new or £35 upgrade). Above that, you can’t buy the software outright, and pricing moves to yearly plans, although these include upgrades to new versions.
The Pro edition (£80 a year) bundles Parallels Access, a remote desktop application, and adds finer control over network usage. At the top is the Business edition (£80 a year per computer), which is for multiple installations and gets you telephone support, too. All editions come with 500GB of free Acronis True Image online backup.
The basic version gets set network profiles to control bandwidth, but the Pro version lets you set more detailed profiles
Should I buy Parallels Desktop 12?
If you’ve got Parallels Desktop 11, the few new features available with version 12 probably aren’t enough to make the upgrade worthwhile. For new users that want to run Windows on Mac, the choice is a little trickier.
Oracle’s VirtualBox is completely free, although its version of Coherence doesn’t work with Windows 10, the set-up is much harder and performance is worse with no games support. Still, if it’s just for a little bit of testing or to run the occasional app, then it’s worth the hassle.
If you want to run Windows applications like they were native Mac applications, Parallels remains the king. Its effortless integration of both operating systems makes it a real winner, and it’s super easy to use.
Its smooth integration with multiple operating systems makes Parallels a winner for anyone who needs specific apps
Verdict
There’s not that much here for upgraders, but for newbies Parallels remains the slickest way to run Windows and Mac OS at the same time.
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Other than a few interesting years in the mid-2000s, Apple’s approach to the enterprise market has been one of benign neglect. The one exception, starting in 2005, has been consistent support for running Windows on Macs.
By now, the practice is well-established. But the issue of management still looms large. How can IT deploy Macs that run Windows without multiplying the complexity (and cost) of deployment, maintenance and security by at least a factor of two? The enterprise question that vendors are now addressing in a variety of interesting ways is, “How can we make Macs running Windows securely maintainable components of the IT infrastructure and ecosystem?”
Windows on Mac works, and can work well. The most relevant question for enterprises is which Windows-on-Mac virtualization options offer:
- The best overall integration
- The lowest TCO, including maintenance and security
- Good usability
- End-user satisfaction
I tested five Windows-on-Mac options in our lab — currently shipping versions of Apple’s Boot Camp, CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac, Oracle VirtualBox, VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop. They vary in cost, complexity and feature sets, and my perceptions of their pros and cons might help you decide which will be best for your circumstances.
I will follow up in coming weeks with a deeper look at VMware Fusion’s upcoming version 10 and Parallels’ recently released Desktop 13.
Performance isn’t the issue
Using a basket of benchmarks covering CPU, graphics and sample workflow measurements, performance was simply not a key differentiator in these tests. All of the products we tested are mature and stable, and aside from the natural differences between Boot Camp and the rest (native hardware support vs. virtualization or emulation — discussed further below), the average performance difference between products in most circumstances was 10% or less. That is not to say there are not quantifiable performance differences, but rather that all of the products I looked at (sometimes with a little tweaking of virtual machine settings) can do what needs to be done with reasonable and effective speed — as long as what you want to do isn’t to play 4K-resolution twitch games at 60fps, that is. Virtualization always incurs processing overhead, and it will never be as fast as native, non-virtualized instances — which brings us to the first option, Boot Camp.
Boot Camp 6.1
Apple’s Boot Camp was the first supported option allowing Mac users to run Windows on Macs, and if you need to get the absolute maximum speed out of your Mac hardware while running Windows, Boot Camp is still the way to go. A Mac running Windows via Boot Camp will perform at pretty much the same speed as a dedicated Windows machine with equivalent hardware specs — in fact, Macs have often made great higher-end Windows machines, and compatibility is usually not an issue (as long as Apple supports the version of Windows you need; see below).
A big drawback with Boot Camp, however, is that every switch between Windows and macOS requires a complete reboot, which gets frustrating if you have to do it a lot. There can also be compatibility issues when accessing files on NTFS-formatted Windows drives from the Mac side — though third-party drivers are available, such as those from Paragon Software Group, that bridge that gap. And the new APFS drive format used in High Sierra is going to raise similar compatibility issues, at least until Apple or a third party comes up with a fix for reading APFS drives from Windows.
Even an individual machine can be difficult to set up with Boot Camp, and of course a large, heterogeneous enterprise deployment will be more so. Adding stand-alone, unmanaged copies of Windows to your environment via Boot Camp may not be advisable from a security or manageability perspective. Apple’s Boot Camp Assistant program, used to install Windows on an individual Mac, is certainly usable and does the job, but it’s not always the easiest program to work with, especially if you have a complicated hardware setup. (To be fair, this can at times have as much to do with how Microsoft’s Windows installers handle things such as multiple drives and drive formatting/partitioning options as it does with Apple’s installation process.) Expert users (and IT staff) should have no problem, but those used to fairly seamless and simple Mac installations may find it far from intuitive.
And there is the fact that the combination of your hardware, the installed operating system version (macOS) and the version of Windows you want to run (especially if it’s an older version) might not be supported. The current version of Boot Camp (6.1) shipping with macOS Sierra (10.12) does not support installation of versions of Windows earlier than 8.1, so the newest Macs are not officially supported to install Windows 7 at all. The cutoff date for Windows 7 support for most Macs is 2014 — most Macs from that date or earlier can use older versions of Apple’s Boot Camp software (version 4 or 5) to install Windows 7, but more recent Macs will officially support Windows 8.1 or 10 only via Boot Camp 6.
Don’t panic, though. If the combination of hardware and operating system you want is not officially supported, there is almost always a fairly simple workaround. For instance, while Boot Camp 6.1, which installs Windows 10, is not supported for my Mac Pro 5,1 (2012) test platform, Windows 10 can still be installed and works without a hitch — just without official support from Apple.
Clearly, one of the advantages of deploying virtualized Windows on Macs as opposed to using Boot Camp is that you don’t have to deal with any of these issues — your virtualization program should handle all of these complexities for you, allowing deployment of any version of Windows you need on whatever Mac hardware you have. Furthermore, a number of the virtualization solutions either include or can be integrated with tools to help with the creation, migration and deployment of standardized VMs, greatly simplifying large-scale implementation and support.
That said, using Boot Camp to run Windows on Macs provides unmatched bare-metal performance and has the additional advantage of being free (not including the cost of the Windows licenses). So for both speed and cost, Boot Camp is the baseline.
CrossOver Mac 16.2.5 (Wine 2.0)
CodeWeavers released the first version of CrossOver Mac in early 2007, providing a Windows compatibility layer based on the Wine open-source project. Basically, CrossOver Mac is a commercial version of Wine with a variety of enhancements and end-user support.
CrossOver Mac (and Wine) runs individual Windows programs directly in macOS, inside a container called a “bottle,” acting as a kind of translator between the Windows API calls and macOS. In short, you can run (some) Windows apps with CrossOver Mac without having to have a copy of Windows installed.
This is an entirely different approach from Boot Camp, which assists in running a full copy of Windows directly on Mac hardware, and from the three other virtualization products in this review, which run an entire “guest operating system” (in this case Windows) within a VM.
The catch (and you knew there had to be one) is that CrossOver Mac does not support all Windows programs, and those it does support are not always supported perfectly. CodeWeavers shoots for supporting as many of the most popular Windows programs as possible, and it currently supports nearly 15,000. It maintains an online inventory of programs that have been tested and either do or do not work (or work with bugs or workarounds), with a five-star system for ranking compatibility. But of course there are a lot more than 15,000 Windows programs. For those programs that do work, however, performance can be very reasonable, especially on faster machines.
Parallels 13 For Mac
This means that if you have a relatively small and defined set of Windows programs that you need to run on Macs, CrossOver Mac might be a good fit, but researching the compatibility database and doing thorough hands-on testing prior to implementation are essential. CodeWeavers conveniently provides a 14-day free trial to allow time for testing before deciding whether to commit to a purchase.
Installation of a single Windows app into a CrossOver Mac bottle is fairly simple and straightforward using the included installer, though perhaps it’s not something a typical business user would casually attempt. Once running, the Windows app appears on the Mac desktop without the surrounding interface (or overhead) of the full Windows operating system. CrossOver Mac Version 16 supports Windows apps going back to Windows 98, and all the way up to 64-bit Windows 10.
Pricing for CrossOver Mac depends on several options: a one-time purchase of the current version is $39.95 per copy. For $59.95 you get the current version, one year of free upgrades, and a single support call (phone support can also be purchased as needed for $19.95). A one-year plan can be renewed at a 50% discount. Finally, there is a lifetime license option (perpetual upgrades, unlimited email and phone support) for $499.95 per seat. The standard one-year subscription is periodically substantially discounted, so watching for discounts (or negotiating for volume licensing) can provide cost savings.
The next version, CrossOver Mac 17, is due to be released this autumn and will be built on Wine 2.8, will be compatible with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and will support Microsoft Office 2016 (which the current version does not).
VirtualBox 5.1.26
Review Parallels Desktop 13 For Mac
VirtualBox is the odd duck in this list, in a way. Having been acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 (which then became part of Oracle in 2010), it’s a commercially supported, open-source project (somewhat like CrossOver Mac), but it’s a well-respected, major virtualization product (like VMware). And it has some of the pros and cons of each.
VirtualBox can do almost anything the commercial products can do, and the price (for the core package) is right. It has an extensive list of supported operating systems and enthusiastic online forums. Developers tend to love VirtualBox, partly because the core product is free and open source, so it’s a good choice for a pilot project, or if you have a bunch of in-house developers who can adopt the project and make it part of their area of expertise.
But compared to the offerings from VMware and Parallels, VirtualBox is less polished and less easy to use. It’s a little clunky, lags a bit in speed and is lacking in some features. From an enterprise perspective, unless you can devote significant resources to it, you may be better off with one of the other options.
Parallels Desktop 13
Parallels may be the most intuitive and easy-to-use Windows-to-Mac virtualization product. It feels the most Mac-like. Parallels has clearly given a great deal of attention to UI/UX issues since first launching in 2006.
Installation of a new VM is easy and quick. Parallels does not support as wide a range of OS versions as VMware Fusion, but it does support Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 (and older versions via ISO files), as well as one-click installs of five Linux distros, Android x86 and various versions of macOS. A nice touch aimed at cross-platform developers is support for Modern.IE test environments. Other developer-focused features include a network simulation module that can model degraded or minimal network connectivity scenarios within a VM.