Everything in IT is moving to cross-platform capabilities, because that’s what the so-called “customer experience” dictates. Companies bow to CX dictates at every opportunity, because competition demands it.
Parallels, which built its business by bridging the Apple and Microsoft operating systems, enabling users to cross-pollinate applications, has been ahead of this curve all along. The company's patented platform has enabled valuable productivity gains inside many enterprises for more than a decade.
Jan 02, 2018 Home Forums > Parallels Desktop for Mac > General Questions > Entire Desktop is now black and white. Discussion in ' General Questions ' started by frank11, Oct 30, 2017.
Since those early days, Parallels has continued to develop products for new markets, including a remote application server for PCs and Macs, cross-platform cloud-building tools and software that connects PC and Mac desktops/laptops to various mobile phones and tablets.
The Seattle-based company keeps forging ahead, launching Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac desktop, which also provides support for Windows 10.
Further reading
The most interesting new facet of Parallels Desktop 13, released Aug. 22, is that it makes it easy for MacBook Pro users to add Windows applications to the Touch Bar, and to use Touch Bar withinWindows applications.
This is the first app to bring the upcoming Windows 10 People Bar feature to the Mac–including integration with the Mac Dock and Spotlight, Parallels said.
The new version also features notable performance improvements for completing certain tasks, the company said.
With one mouse click, Parallels can automatically install Windows 10 into a virtual machine, which can be purchased at a later date without losing data or installed applications, making getting started in Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac pretty easy.
It also enables users to purchase and automatically install Windows 10 from Microsoft, add an existing copy of Windows, and simply move their PC to their Mac. There is no easier way to buy Windows, because it’s all automated in Parallels.
From the beginning, users can choose to make Windows look like a PC (Full Screen) or make Windows invisible (Coherence mode), while launching Windows apps from the Mac Dock, Launch Pad or Windows Start Menu, enabling users to tailor the experience to their liking.
Best of Both Worlds
Parallels Desktop 13 provides Mac Touch Bar integration for Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as browsers including Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera.
Additionally, when using the Windows Start Menu or Desktop, Parallels Desktop 13 features Taskbar pinned elements, along with Cortana, Task View and settings in the Touch Bar. Thousands of other Windows applications that run in Parallels Desktop can quickly be customized with popular Touch Bar actions, if the default set of functional keys is not enough.
There are about 30 new features in Parallels 13. Go here for more information and pricing.
- 9.0Outstanding
Pros
- ✓Runs Windows and Linux VMs on Macs
- ✓Tight integration of Windows and Mac features
- ✓Improved performance and battery life
- ✓Supports Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan
Cons
- ✕Requires plenty of memory and processor power
- ✕Poor documentation for newcomers
Updates to the popular Parallels Desktop virtualisation program generally coincide with new versions of the Mac operating system, so it's no surprise to see that Parallels Desktop 11 arrives just a few weeks ahead of Apple's new OS X v10.11 -- a.k.a. El Capitan. But, of course, this year's update also follows the recent arrival of Windows 10, which means that Parallels Desktop 11 is a fairly major update that provides support for both of these new operating systems.
Hey Cortana, where's Siri?
The most impressive aspect of Parallels Desktop 11 is not simply that it allows you to run Windows as a virtual machine (VM) on the Mac (along with various versions of Unix, and even Android and ChromeOS too), but that it continues to integrate the Mac and Windows environments so that features from each operating system become almost interchangeable.
Parallel's For Mac
One of the headline features in Windows 10 is Cortana, the 'personal assistant' that lets you use voice commands to find information on the web, send messages and perform a variety of other tasks. Cortana is often compared to Apple's Siri, but Siri is currently only available on Apple's iOS devices and doesn't run on the Mac. Parallels Desktop 11 therefore pulls off quite a trick by allowing Cortana to not only run within a Windows 10 virtual machine, but also to run with the VM hidden or running in the background while you work in native Mac apps. So, while I'm typing this review in Apple's Pages wordprocessor, I can say 'Hey Cortana - schedule a meeting'. The Cortana window then pops up from the Dock on the Mac desktop and lists options for my meeting.
OS integration
Parallels For Mac Free
Other examples of this OS integration include the Mac's QuickLook option, which now works within Windows too, allowing you to preview documents stored on a Windows virtual machine just by hitting the space bar on your keyboard.