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Parallels kicked off an early Black Friday promotion today, bundling Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac with Fantastical Premium (one year) for free. This sale runs from today through November 18 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, and is available only to new Fantastical customers.

parallels-desktop-16.jpg
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

This promotion is available to both new and current customers of Parallels Desktop. New customers can head to Parallels.com and choose a "new license" for $79.99, and the Fantastical app will be added automatically to the cart.



The $79.99 tier is specifically aimed at home and student use, and is a one year subscription to Parallels Desktop at $6.66 per month (billed annually at $79.99). You can choose to switch to a one-time purchase option at $99.99 as well.

Likewise, current Parallels customers can choose the "upgrade" option for $49.99 to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 16, and also get Fantastical for free. This is specifically for a one year subscription to Fantastical Premium, representing savings of $39.99.

Keep up with all of this week's best discounts on Apple products and related accessories in our dedicated Apple Deals roundup.

Article Link: Deals: Purchase Parallels Desktop for Mac and Get One Year of Fantastical Premium for Free
 

Wowfunhappy

macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2019
1,745
2,087
With VMWare Fusion now free for non-commercial use, I'm really not sure why you'd buy Parallels, unless you really like the seamless integration features, which do work a little better in Parallels than VMWare (although I find them annoying overall). Performance between the two is more-or-less the same.

(If you're still using Virtualbox though, stop that. You're seriously missing out...)
 
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theluggage

macrumors 604
Jul 29, 2011
7,978
8,390
Reminder: How useful is Parallels on Apple Silicon?

More to the point: is an upgrade to "Parallels for Apple Silicon" going to be free if you buy Parallels 16 today?

Otherwise, Apple have shown it running Linux on ASi, and it is more than likely that Microsoft, Apple and/or Parallels will thrash out some licensing agreement to make Windows 10 for ARM available via virtualisation (unless there is some hitherto unpublicised technical barrier to that).
 

brdeveloper

macrumors 68030
Apr 21, 2010
2,630
313
Brasil
Is Fantastical so fantastical to make this deal worth being disclosed? Parallels seems to be offered at the same old price (expensive, IMHO... with exchange rate of 5.3:1 in Brazil, I'm better with Virtualbox).
 

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,627
9,914
I'm a rolling stone.
With VMWare Fusion now free for non-commercial use, I'm really not sure why you'd purchase Parallels, unless you really like the seamless integration features, which do work a little better in Parallels than VMWare (although I find them annoying). Performance between the two is more-or-less the same.

(If you're still using Virtualbox though, stop that. You're seriously missing out...)

VMWare has an awful website, I tried to download the free version, nope, can't get it to work.
Had an ancient email adres registered with them, can't register with a new one.
Just tried again, it's horrible/laughable/incredibly stupid.
I just created this new one, WTF.

Screenshot 2020-11-09 at 17.26.56.png

Fantastical rips you off for 40 USD per year
Parallels is worse, most of the time the versions work for a year, it then fails to run decently or not at all on the new OS, so, cost you money again to Update.
 
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locovaca

macrumors 6502
May 14, 2002
445
1,364
Iowa
(If you're still using Virtualbox though, stop that. You're seriously missing out...)

I am still using Virtualbox for some very lightweight items (mainly converting Word docs to PDF that need to have formatting preserved). What am I missing out on?
 

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,627
9,914
I'm a rolling stone.
VMWare has an awful website, I tried to download the free version, nope, can't get it to work.
Had an ancient email adres registered with them, can't register with a new one.
Just tried again, it's horrible/laughable/incredibly stupid.
I just created this new one, WTF.

View attachment 1580301

Parallels is worse, most of the time the versions work for a year, it then fails to run decently or not at all on the new OS, so, cost you money again to Update.
I just registered again with a new email address, there's no free player option, they say you can get a free licence after registering but all I can find is the paid version.
Can someone please link the page for the free version.
Much appreciated.
 

Marx55

macrumors 68000
Jan 1, 2005
1,943
775
It is good to have choices, but the problem with Parallels Desktop is that it fails when used to control external machines (using Windows applications) via USB. VMware Fusion works great for that.
 

Deliro

macrumors 65816
Sep 20, 2011
1,143
1,337
I couldn't see anything major that Fantastical does that the built-in Calendar from MacOS doesn't already do.

I do like how fantastical puts reminders on your calendar/day view. Why apple removed that? No idea. The UI presentation is nicer. But yah other than that it doesn’t bring much more. I’d think about purchasing it if it were a under 10 dollar one time purchase. Right now it’s extremely overpriced.
 

Wowfunhappy

macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2019
1,745
2,087
VMWare has an awful website, I tried to download the free version, nope, can't get it to work.
Had an ancient email adres registered with them, can't register with a new one.
Just tried again, it's horrible/laughable/incredibly stupid.
I just created this new one, WTF.
Yes, their website is super bad! Once you get through, the actual software is much better!

You should be able to go to https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/fusion-evaluation.html and register for a personal use license.

I am still using Virtualbox for some very lightweight items (mainly converting Word docs to PDF that need to have formatting preserved). What am I missing out on?
You're missing out on a virtual machine that isn't frustratingly slow. Even if you're only working in office and other lightweight applications, everything just feels a lot smoother and more responsive in Parallels and VMWare. I find it to be a lot more pleasant to use.

That said, if you're only using Virtualbox on rare occasions for very simple tasks, and you already have it set up, I can see how it might make sense to just stick with what you know.
 
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ibran

macrumors member
Jan 17, 2006
39
239
Minneapolis
I'm pretty happy with Parallels on my Hackintosh. Best part is the ability to run Windows 10 (on a separate SSD) within macOS as a VM for easy access, or booted natively for better performance. I've also got a Windows XP VM for old games, and I was also able to get Windows 98 working with sound, too (although that took a hell of a lot of trial-and-error). Performance on these Windows VMs is great, especially Win10 — wish their Mac VMs would perform as well though.

I likely won't be upgrading to Big Sur – at least not right away — and since I do use these x86 VMs almost every day, I doubt I'll be moving to Apple Silicon anytime soon. So, the "forced" yearly upgrade for Parallels isn't really a concern for me, and I'd imagine anybody else running a handful of VMs is probably the kind of person staying on Mojave or Catalina too.
 

urgs

macrumors member
Jun 27, 2019
99
245
I am still using Virtualbox for some very lightweight items (mainly converting Word docs to PDF that need to have formatting preserved). What am I missing out on?
VBox performs awefull on newer Core-i processors.
I had a handfull of Windows 10 machines for testing purposes running on my 2013 iMac (4-Core i5, 3,4 GHz, 32 GB DDR-3 RAM) very smooth with no issues. As i upgraded to a 2019 iMac (6-Core i5, 3,8GHz, 64GB DDR-4 RAM, much faster SSD) each machine was nearly unusable. Lots of input lags, the system hangs for many seconds several times, ...
I didn't run very power hungry applications. It's mostly for testing scripts and small applets in different software environments.

There are uncountable threads in their forum, were people complain about these issues but they are unable to fix this. It's more like it's getting worse with each new version.
On top of that, they refused to use Apples notarization process for beta versions, so you are unable to test pre-releases for compatibility issues without deactivating elemental security features of your Mac.

I switched to bootcamp, to have at least one testing machine.
Now, for a couple of weeks i'm using VMWare Fusion and i'm very fine with it. Great performance, free to use.

On the downside, as some mentioned before, the registration- and download process on the VMWare website is terribly bad. It took me an hour ore more, to successfully get the free license code. It's stupidly complicated.
 

locovaca

macrumors 6502
May 14, 2002
445
1,364
Iowa
A virtual machine that isn't frustratingly slow. Even if you're only working in office and other lightweight applications, everything just feels a lot smoother and more responsive in Parallels and VMWare. I find it to be a lot more pleasent to use.

That said, if you're only using it on rare occasions for very simple tasks, I can see how it may be easier to stick with that.

VBox performs awefull on newer Core-i processors.
I had a handfull of Windows 10 machines for testing purposes running on my 2013 iMac (4-Core i5, 3,4 GHz, 32 GB DDR-3 RAM) very smooth with no issues. As i upgraded to a 2019 iMac (6-Core i5, 3,8GHz, 64GB DDR-4 RAM, much faster SSD) each machine was nearly unusable. Lots of input lags, the system hangs for many seconds several times, ...
I didn't run very power hungry applications. It's mostly for testing scripts and small applets in different software environments.

There are uncountable threads in their forum, were people complain about these issues but they are unable to fix this. It's more like it's getting worse with each new version.
On top of that, they refused to use Apples notarization process for beta versions, so you are unable to test pre-releases for compatibility issues without deactivating elemental security features of your Mac.

I switched to bootcamp, to have at least one testing machine.
Now, for a couple of weeks i'm using VMWare Fusion and i'm very fine with it. Great performance, free to use.

On the downside, as some mentioned before, the registration- and download process on the VMWare website is terribly bad. It took me an hour ore more, to successfully get the free license code. It's stupidly complicated.

I don’t really want to do bootcamp, so maybe I”ll give VMWare a try. I haven’t been _unhappy_ with Virtual Box other than I just moved to a new 2018 Mini and can’t get the installer to complete, by the time I go to unblock the extensions it’s already failed. Thanks for the info!
 

Derek Knight

macrumors newbie
Jan 29, 2020
19
78
No way I will ever patronize Flexibits again, no matter how sweet the deal. When you screw over your customers (take away paid software), the bridge is burned. They could give it away for free, I won't use it. I've moved on from Fantastical.
 
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