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.
Mar 7, 2018 - Parallels Desktop is the best option for running Windows on macOS because. Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are very similar options.
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. 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. 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.
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This fundamental difference in audience is why we support two communities,. If you'd like to view their content together, click. This subreddit is not endorsed or sponsored by Apple Inc. I've worked with both of them and they are both great products targeted toward a specific users. On Mac you have three options for creating a virtual machine:. ($50): VmWare is half-owned by EMC and their product is more designed for business/enterprise users. So when you create a virtual machine in VmWare, you can run the same VM on Windows/Linux or even VmWare's cloud service (vSphere or ESX servers).
For compatibility, you have to pay the price, so it is a bit slower than Parallels. Also VmWare's code is bug-free and very very stable. People will use their software in banks and government servers. ($80): Parallel is a smaller company than Oracle or EMC and their costumer base is also smaller and they only have one specific product: Parallels! So in this market, they are kind of an underdog so in order to sell at a higher price (they are the most expensive one) they have to be faster than their competition. Their general user base is the Mac users who want to run intensive applications on their Mac without rebooting to bootcamp every time (like Games).
(FREE): The sole purpose of this product is to eat other people's pie! It is from Oracle, it is stable and bug-free.
It doesn't provide the necessary infrastructure support to be used in enterprise business, neither it is as fast as Parallel but it is just good enough to be used in 99% of daily workloads. Best of all, it is free. What else do you want? So, this is my general suggestion: If you are a business/enterprise user and you need to manage VMs or you need inter-platform compatibility, go with VmWare, on the other hand, if you need to have the fastest VMs on your Mac for Media or Gaming, Parallels. Otherwise if you only want to run non-intensive applications for work, VirtualBox is your best bet. I currently use Parallels 7, but plan to switch to VMware Fusion. I have no idea if VMware Fusion is better from a performance/stability perspective, but I refuse to give any additional money to the Parallels company due to shady business practices (showing ads even after I have explicitly opted-out, phoning home to see if it should display new ads, bugging me to install their 3rd party partners' software, etc).
They also sold the e-mail address I registered with them to a third party advertiser (I use a unique e-mail address for every company I deal with, to see who sells it). Depends on what you plan on using it for. With VMware you can set the resources the VM has access to. My mid 2009 MBP has 8GB but I limit the VM (I just run XP) to 2GB. That's more then enough for the programs I use on the VM and my Mac still runs pretty smooth as well.
With a newer version of windows 2GB might not cut it, but if you don't need to run win7 then why bother? If you notice the VM or Mac is bogged down after you set it up, you may look into upgrading the RAM - which is fairly cheap, I bumped mine up to the 8GB with some Crucial memory for $100 last year, it should costs less by now.
I use Parallels on my mid 2012 MBPr with 8 GB. I don't play games on it but run my start-up application stack: Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server with a host of supporting applications (mongo, traffic sniffer, logging console, etc.). Never had any problems at all with it and actually prefer it to my desktop as I can do iPhone development against my local stack and it's super fast (and I can monitor unsecured traffic). With that said, VMWare seems to be the de-facto standard but I tried out parallels and it did what I need. I e-mailed them for a discount as a crap shoot and they gave me the upgrade price which I think is the same as VMWare.