There are some instances in which programs I run in Parallels virtual machines on my Macs feel snappier than they do on my Dell gaming laptop. Over time it has become more powerful and friendlier to use.

I’ve been using Parallels since the late 2000s, and featured it in a book I wrote in 2008 about how to run Windows on a Mac. The two can’t run concurrently, as they can with a VM.) At startup, you choose whether to run Windows or macOS. That’s in contrast to Boot Camp, which keeps a version of Windows in a separate part of an Intel Mac’s drive. Users install a variety of operating systems and run them in the VM. (Some background: Virtualization apps such as Parallels or its top competitor, VMWare Fusion, create a software-based computer, essentially a PC-within-a-PC known as a virtual machine or VM. On Intel-based Macs, version 18 is a minor iteration, but still worth the upgrade.

It’s the second version of Parallels to work on the newer Macs, and it’s well-refined. MORE FROM DWIGHT SILVERMAN: Apple’s Mac Studio shows the power of its M1 chips, but isn’t priced for mere mortalsīut as good as Parallels 18 is, it still falls short of the capabilities of Boot Camp on Apple Silicon computers, largely because those processors aren’t Intel-compatible. The best product for doing this has long been Parallels Desktop for Mac, and Corel - which now owns Parallels - has released a new version that makes doing so even easier. With the advent of the M1- and newer M2-based Macs, Boot Camp is now dead, leaving virtualization software as your only option for running Windows on a Mac. They include software developers who write apps for both programs office workers who own Macs but also need to use Windows software for their jobs and of course gamers, who want to blast demons or guide a cat through a ruined city with titles unavailable for the Mac. While that strategy has since been deprecated, there remain users for whom dual operating systems are important. That feature, called Boot Camp, was an important part of the Mac’s strategy after Apple moved to Intel processors it served as a kind of training wheels for those who were macOS-curious but still wanted a Windows safety net.

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