Parallels 13 For Mac Review

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Parallels 13 For Mac Review 4,5/5 2017 votes
  1. Parallels Desktop 13 For Mac Key
  2. Parallels For Mac Reviews
  3. Parallels 13 For Mac
  4. Parallels 11 For Mac Download

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Parallels Access offers fast, optimized remote access to Mac and Windows computers from any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch tailored expressly for mobile devices. Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Parallels Access for Mac 2.5. Mac client for Parallels Access Parallels Access allows you to remotely access Mac and Windows applications on your Windows Phone. This means you can use applications such as Office, iWork, Photoshop and even Internet Explorer on your mobile device. Parallels access for mac review. Aug 25, 2015  Parallels 11 is a polished virtualisation solution that allows Mac users to switch easily between OS X and Windows apps, regardless of which operating system they were written for.

Last year's update to Parallels Desktop introduced a bundled suite of Mac utilities called Parallels Toolbox, and Parallels Desktop 13 now includes a Windows version of Toolbox for your VMs as well.

Picked by Macworld's Editors

  • Features Review of Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac The new Touch bar controls for Windows apps perhaps is one of the coolest new features on this tool. This tool does not only allow Mac users to run their system on Windows apps over a virtual machine, it also comes with regular annual updates that makes it more preferred over its main rivals.
  • Parallels Desktop 13 makes it easy to run macOS, Windows, or Linux virtual machines on your Mac, adding improved performance, picture-in-picture, and enabling support for cross-platform features.

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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.

Parallels Desktop 13 For Mac Key

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.

Parallels 13 For Mac Review

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 For Mac Reviews

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.

Parallels 13 For Mac

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.

Parallels 11 For Mac Download

Review

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.)

Open Parallels on your Mac. Tap Virtual Machine, then Configure. Tap Options at the top, then Tap Backup. Next to SmartGuard select Optimize for Time Machine. It will warn you about snapshot creation. Now you can create a new virtual machine for Mac, including a Windows VM on Mac. Get Windows from Microsoft or install freely available operating systems such as Ubuntu, Fedora, or other Linux systems supported by Parallels Desktop. Parallels Desktop for Mac includes improved integration with Time Machine. When your virtual machine is backed up, only the most recent changes are saved (the latest snapshot), so the backup process takes less time and uses less space on your Time Machine storage device. How to format seagate for mac time machine.

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.

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  • Desktop 12

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    Pros

    • 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