Share this story. Parallels and VMware both announced new versions of their virtualization products for Macs today, with performance improvements and optimizations for the upcoming releases of MacOS and Windows. VMware is also releasing a new version of Workstation, its desktop virtualization software for Windows and Linux PCs. Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac will be. Although VMware 10 for Mac and 14 for Windows and Linux are being announced today, the VMware upgrades will be available for sale sometime in October. Parallels stuck to its yearly paid upgrade schedule, while VMware released to Fusion and Workstation.

This year, both companies are asking customers to pay for upgrades. Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are both adding support for the new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar, though Parallels' Touch Bar implementation is more extensive. Both companies said the new releases will be more user-friendly while adding power features for IT pros and developers. Fusion has friendlier pricing for multiple Macs For people who need to run Windows or Linux on more than one Mac, the VMware pricing is better.

A Parallels Desktop 13 license for one Mac costs $79.99 as a one-time purchase. That gets you the entry-level edition; Parallels' professional edition with extra features is licensed as a subscription costing $99.99 a year for each Mac. Customers upgrading from version 11 or 12 can get a perpetual license for a one-time charge of $49.99 or the subscription for $49.99 a year. VMware Fusion licenses are more budget-friendly to people with multiple Macs. One perpetual license for the standard version of VMware Fusion is good for all the Macs you own, while a Fusion Pro license works on three Macs.

Solved wifi parental controls for mac laptop. A standard VMware Fusion 10 license costs $79.99, or $49.99 if you're upgrading from Fusion 7, 8, or 8.5 (there was no version 9). A Fusion 10 Pro license costs $159.99, or $119.99 for upgraders. Unlike Fusion, Workstation is licensed by device, so you need to buy one license for each Windows or Linux computer you install it on. Each Workstation license also costs more than a Fusion license—although there is still one totally free option. A Workstation 14 Pro license will cost $249.99, or $149.99 if you're upgrading from version 11 or 12 (yes, they skipped version 13).

Workstation 14 Player, the stripped-down version, will cost $149.99, or $79.99 for those upgrading from a recent version. While Player doesn't have all the advanced Workstation features, it does let companies provide restricted virtual machines that comply with company policies to employees. Workstation Player only has to be paid for in commercial environments. So while a business that wants Player for its employees must purchase licenses, Player is free for personal use for those of you using it at home. New Parallels features. Further Reading In Word, for example, the Touch Bar will display formatting options such as bolding, italics, underlining, font sizes, and text alignment. Standard function keys and a few other options will be available in the Touch Bar for other Windows applications.

'Additionally, when you are 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,' Parallels' announcement said. Parallels also developed a new Picture-in-Picture (PiP) view that displays an active virtual machine in a small window that is always visible on top of other applications. It's supposed to be a convenient way to keep track of what's going on in a guest operating system while you're doing other stuff on your Mac. Parallels is also adding support for Microsoft's People Bar, an upcoming Windows 10 feature. This integration makes it possible for Mac users to pin a contact to the Dock and click that dock icon to send the person an e-mail or start a Skype call.

Is Parallels For Mac Safe

Parallels said the new Pro edition will come with these features:. Assign up to 32 cores (vCPU) and 128GB of vRAM per VM, so upcoming iMac Pro users can create super powerful VMs. View Set Resolution menu to immediately switch resolutions for podcast, video tutorial or Web browser testing—including common 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 ratios with resolutions from 1024x768 to 3360x2300. Quick Virtual Machine IP Address Lookup to check and copy IP address from GUI to the clipboard in one click.

A separate business edition will also have a new 'single application mode' that will let IT departments provision a single Windows application to end users. That means employees won't have to be 'distracted by unfamiliar Windows and virtualization elements,' Parallels said. The business edition has the same pricing as the pro edition. VMware boosts security. VMware VMware's Fusion announcement said the new version improves GPU and 3D graphics performance and has a revamped user interface, but the announcement focused mostly on back-end improvements and enterprise capabilities.

For Pro edition users, 'support for REST APIs will offer a new interface for managing virtual machines remotely and programmatically,' VMware said. The new interface will include 'VM inventory management, VM power management, cloning, networking, configuration, and IP and MAC address gathering.' Further Reading There will be security improvements for Windows virtual machines in the form of support for Microsoft's, UEFI Secure Boot, and the. VMware Fusion's Touch Bar Support is more basic than Parallels', giving you some control over virtual machines and the virtual machine library, but no support for actions within individual Windows applications. Workstation is similarly boosting security with support for UEFI Secure Boot and the Trusted Platform Module. Workstation is also improving the ability to test how applications run over poor network conditions.

'Along with the existing network speed and packet loss simulator, a new Network Latency Simulator will further enable developers to run tests and simulate a specific network environment, including distance and network quality, to test application resiliency,' VMware said.

When, Windows switchers as well as Mac users who needed to run the occasional Windows app rejoiced. That’s because the chip switch was soon followed by the release of virtualization software that would let those users run Windows as if it were just another application on their Macs. While those first virtualization apps didn’t support all of Windows’s features and weren’t terrifically fast, they were miles better than the Windows-emulation programs that had previously been available for the PowerPC chip. Since then, however, virtualization apps for the Mac have matured a lot. Four main options are now available: two commercial virtualization apps ( and ), an open source alternative , and another solution that lets you install Windows apps without installing Windows.

Those first two options are the most popular—and, for most users, the most sensible—alternatives. I’ve reviewed many generations of Parallels and Fusion, so I’ve seen them develop.

The advances they’ve made have been amazing. The two developers have pushed each other hard, and their products have leapfrogged each other to introduce new features and improve performance, resulting in two excellent alternatives.

Running the current generations of these two virtualization programs— ( ) and ( )—on one of today’s ultrafast Macs, only the most hardcore Windows users will feel the need to reboot into Boot Camp to run Windows natively. Another result of this competition is that the two programs have evolved into near twins of each other. They offer similar features, similar performance, and at times, even look similar.

There are a few differences, though, and that’s what I focused on in assessing the latest versions of each. Opening and closing The two virtualization apps do differ in speed—not the speed of the virtual OSes themselves or the apps in them, but the speed with which they open, sleep, resume, and shut down those OSes.

How Much Is Parallels For Mac

In some very simple testing, I found that Parallels is notably faster at each of those tasks, but particularly at suspending and resuming. If you need to open and close virtual machines all day, these time savings could add up. Both virtualization apps are relatively stable. I didn’t have any outright crashes in either, but I did experience some minor oddities in both. In Fusion, for example, entering and exiting full-screen mode causes more flicker and redraws than it does in Parallels.

When using Parallels, however, I had some apps fail in Windows (which didn’t happen in Fusion), and there were times where I simply couldn’t type my password at the Linux login prompt. Virtualizing Windows While both Fusion and Parallels support literally hundreds of guest operating systems, most users will be employing them to run one or more flavors of Windows. Overall, both do an excellent job. In earlier reviews, I found that both and do well running earlier versions of Windows, so this time I focused on the upcoming Windows 8.

What Is Parallels For Mac

For testing purposes, I used the final Windows 8 Developer Preview (which should be identical to the consumer version due out soon). Both handle it well, for the most part.

(Note: What used to be called the Metro interface in Win 8 is now usually just Start or, occasionally, the Windows 8 UI.) For the traditional Windows interface (the Desktop button in Start), both apps run Windows as well as their predecessors. Office applications run without delay, and I never felt as if anything was lagging in either program.

The Windows interface itself was fast and fluid, Web browsing was trouble-free, and the two email apps I tried worked fine. Windows 8, running inside VMware Fusion 5. Start apps—the shiny new full-screen apps for Windows 8—also ran fine, as long as I was using them while I had Windows running in each virtualization program’s “windowed” mode (meaning that Windows itself, rather than each Windows app individually, got its own OS X window).

Trying to use Start apps while in Coherence (Parallels) or Unity (Fusion) modes (which give each Windows app its own OS X window) had its challenges. It can be done in Fusion, but only if you run one Start application at a time. If you launch another, it replaces the currently running app.