Parallels For Mac Reviews 2018

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Platform: MacEdition: Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac Verified Purchase Once downloaded and installed it worked well. I was able to review an MRI study that was recorded with a Microsolft program.

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A new version of Mac-based virtualization software Parallels Desktop was released today. Parallels Desktop 14 offers disk space efficiency improvements, faster application-launch speeds, macOS Mojave support, expanded Touch Bar support, better OpenGL graphics performance, and several other improvements.

Most people who use Parallels use it to run Windows within macOS, and the updates focus on that by improving performance and adding new features to make the two operating systems work more seamlessly together.

The key feature the Parallels team is pushing for this release is storage optimization. Virtual machines can take up a lot of space, and that can be a problem when you're working with limited solid-state storage in modern MacBooks. This release claims to free up significant disk space in most (but not all) cases—up to 20GB in some situations. There's also a 'Free Up Disk Space' feature that will, in some cases, make it easier to pinpoint where you can achieve some savings. Some of the general space savings come from more efficient compression for states saved with the Snapshots feature.

Parallels Desktop 14 also brings improved graphics performance in certain Windows applications, using the multi-platform OpenGL graphics API. Of course, Apple announced at its developer conference in June that OpenGL will be deprecated in macOS, with Apple's own Metal graphics API the only supported path going forward. When we asked a Parallels developer about this, he told us that OpenGL still works for the immediately foreseeable future but that the Parallels team is working on future solutions involving Metal.

Last year, Parallels added Touch Bar support for Windows applications. That is greatly expanded in Parallels Desktop 14. New applications are now supported out of the box, including:

Microsoft Visio and OneNote
SketchUp
AutoCAD
Revit
Quicken
QuickBooks
Visual Studio

Parallels includes a tool for creating custom Touch Bar layouts for Windows applications that are not already supported; this release makes that particularly powerful with an XML authoring feature.

Other features include shared camera support for cameras with up to 4K resolution, Microsoft Ink support for Microsoft Office with pressure-sensitivity support in some applications, faster boot times and application launch speeds, faster suspend operations on APFS partitions, significantly improved performance on the iMac Pro with AVX-512, and small UX improvements like progress bars in the dock for Windows applications.

Parallels Desktop 14 is available now with an annual subscription starting at $79.99 or a perpetual license at $99.99. The Pro and Business editions will set you back a bit more, though—$99.99 per year.

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Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac
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Virtualization software like Parallels is usually associated with running Windows on a Mac, but virtualization can be used to also run other versions of macOS. I’ve been able to safely tinker with Apple’s latest developer or public beta by using virtualization to run them right inside the current stable release of macOS. I also keep older operating systems around to occasionally run software like Final Cut Pro 7, which was orphaned with last year’s macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac is now available and is fully optimized for macOS Mojave. Version 14 focuses less on whiz-bang new features and instead wisely focuses on where it counts: Under-the-hood performance improvements. You’ll notice the difference each and every time you launch the application, which is the fastest it’s ever been by as much as 80 percent, according to the company’s marketing claims. In this case, they have good reason to boast—on my Mac, the software launches in under five seconds flat.

Since Mac owners do rely on Parallels Desktop to run one or more flavors of Windows on their preferred OS, a lot of energy this time around has been devoted to enhancements on this front. Windows VMs now start up to 35 percent faster, as do applications that run inside them. The results are quite remarkable; as a longtime Parallels user, this is the closest to running Windows 10 on actual PC hardware I’ve ever seen.

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At least some of this improvement can be attributed to the way Parallels Desktop 14 automatically adjusts video memory usage for best performance. Rather than guess how much you might need or accepting the recommended settings, the software now dynamically balances between what’s available and what’s needed. Sadly, the automatic setting only works with recent flavors of Microsoft’s OS—Windows 10 and 8.1 worked for me, but not Windows 7 or XP, nor any VMs running macOS, Linux, or Android.

Keep it clean

Another step in the right direction with Parallels Desktop 14 is the new Free Up Disk Space feature. While the software has been able to manually reclaim valuable storage space from individual virtual machines (VMs) for some time now, this option has been incorporated into a new window that also consolidate snapshots (which now take up 15 percent less space) and resume/shut down tasks, as well as the ability for Pro Edition subscribers to archive lesser-used VMs for even more savings.

Having everything in one place is not only convenient, it makes a lot of sense for those of us juggling multiple open VMs at any one time. Such users will also be happy to know PD14 introduces a Resource Monitor window, which keeps real-time tabs on CPU and RAM usage for your Mac as well as all running VMs. Now you’ll no longer be left in the dark about which virtual machines are consuming precious system resources.

MacBook owners will appreciate enhanced Touch Bar support for popular Windows apps like OneNote, AutoCAD, and SketchUp, and these and others also benefit from OpenGL improvements that deliver impressive graphics performance. I really love the way PD14 handles multiple monitors in full-screen mode on Windows 10; in true Mac style, there’s no fudging around with settings, it just works. (I just wish this were possible while running macOS virtual machines, too.)

Whether buying Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac for the first time or taking the annual upgrade plunge, I wouldn’t hesitate to install this version. You’re even likely to reclaim a little internal storage space. The application size has been reduced by about 150MB (courtesy of support documentation moving to the web), but automatic disk monitoring could save as much as 20GB for those who have multiple VMs. In my case, I regained a few gigabytes, which I was all too happy to have back.

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