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Parallels 17 Brings Windows 11 and macOS Monterey Virtualization Support, Improved Graphics, M1 Optimizations, and More
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Well, colour me impressed for the first time in ages with a new Parallels release, the new graphics driver they're using is WAY better (about time though)! On my Intel 16" Macbook Pro the Windows GUI is far smoother and now syncs to my external monitor's refresh rate at 144hz. Buttery smooth animations and dragging windows around and with way less FPS drops or stuttering. Chrome and Edge are also way smoother, UFO Test shows them running at 144FPS at 144hz. Firefox is still a bit laggy though, can't seem to maintain the same FPS or refresh rate as Chromium based browsers.
Also with macOS Monterey coming out with adaptive sync soon I only expect it to get better and smoother!
EDIT: Turns out Firefox had hardware acceleration disabled in the settings, I must have flicked it off at some point due to some issues on the previous Parallels. Turned it on and it's just as fast and buttery smooth as Chromium browsers now, UFO Test is 144FPS/hz too!
Also with macOS Monterey coming out with adaptive sync soon I only expect it to get better and smoother!
EDIT: Turns out Firefox had hardware acceleration disabled in the settings, I must have flicked it off at some point due to some issues on the previous Parallels. Turned it on and it's just as fast and buttery smooth as Chromium browsers now, UFO Test is 144FPS/hz too!
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I've also been very impressed with the graphics performance, and coherence mode is fixed!
There's no more weird borders around the edges of windows and the Start menu, and they've finally fixed retina scaling in coherence mode! Before you had to choose between running in native retina resolution and risking some apps UIs being rendered useless by absolutely tiny icons, or your "displayed" resolution that made everything look like it was running on a bad TFT panel from the early 2000s.
Edit: Found an app that still has tiny icons, although they look slightly larger than before (could just be me imagining it). Although I guess it's down to the individual developer themselves to update their app to support UI scaling rather than something that's down to Parallels.
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Crossover (based on Wine) works under Rosetta 2. It doesn't look like there is much of a chance that it will ever be ported to Apple Silicon (M1).
The VirtualBox developers have said that they have no interest in supporting Apple Silicon or Arm. They said that they are dedicated to only creating x86-64 VMs. So there is very little chance that VirtualBox will support Apple Silicon unless some very ambitious developers decide to fork the project (I think it is GPL).
Edit: BTW, if you want to understand how adamantly opposed the VirtualBox devs are to porting to Apple Silicon, just read this thread. https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=98742.
To say that they aren't interested would be an understatement. They want nothing to do with anything that doesn't virtualize x86-64 hardware. To the point of misrepresenting how an Arm virtual machine would even work. Pretty sad actually.
Re: ARM Macs: Will Virtualbox be ported ?
by mpack » 18. Nov 2020, 11:47
Sorry, but even if VirtualBox was ported to ARM, not even an ARM OS could run on it (and it is quite certain that no modern x86 OS could).
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Wait...
So, if you want to run and old copy of Windows XP / 7 (for legacy games or so), in the form of "upgrading" to new Parallels, necessary if you now own an M1 Mac, Parallels 17 won't work..?
> i.e. you cannot upgrade the current Parallels-VM you're using, coming from and Intel Mac...?
But Parallels 16 will work (or what I am misunderstanding)..?
So, if you want to run and old copy of Windows XP / 7 (for legacy games or so), in the form of "upgrading" to new Parallels, necessary if you now own an M1 Mac, Parallels 17 won't work..?
> i.e. you cannot upgrade the current Parallels-VM you're using, coming from and Intel Mac...?
But Parallels 16 will work (or what I am misunderstanding)..?
This page has the full lists of supported guest OSes for Parallels 17, with M1 Macs (short list) and Intel Macs (long list).
If you have an Intel Mac you can run XP and 7 in Parallels 17, (just as you could in PD16)
If you have an M1 Mac you cannot run XP and 7 in Parallels 17, (and nor could you in PD16).
Ah, thanks!
That helps
I was under the false impression that Parallels 16 could run XP / 7.
You're not wrong, but I think VMWare are a long way behind Parallels at the moment. Which is disappointing for me, whose a VMWare fan and heavy user.
Parallels is not an emulator. If you want to run an x86 OS on an ARM Mac, you need an emulator.
I can see no evidence of a price increase. UK pricing has been maintained and the article is wrong about it being subscription only.
It's for enterprises right now, not for home users. I'll probably get one myself as a backup when it becomes available to individuals, but latency and speed are killers for internet only access.
That said, I wont be upgrading Parallels on my M1 Mac until I can actually buy a license for WoA. (I have a subscription on my Intel Mac, so i already paid for the upgrade)
If you visit the link in the post you're replying to you'll see they were referring to Windows 365 - which is a cloud instance of Win OS, not O365 (Office 365).
Quite amusing that the best Windows on Arm experience will probably be on a Mac. By quite a long margin.
Parallels Desktop 17 was released today, bringing native support for Windows 11 and macOS Monterey to both Intel and Apple silicon Macs, as well as a range of performance and compatibility improvements.
It's worth noting from the off that the versions of Windows that Parallels 17 can run on an M1 Mac are currently limited to the Insider Previews for Windows 10 and Windows 11, due to their compatibility with ARM-based hardware. However, Parallels has promised that when Windows 11 is officially released to the public, the virtualization software will be able to run it.
With that caveat, for both M1 and Intel systems, Parallels 17 resumes Windows and Linux up to 38% faster compared to the previous version, and benefits from a sixfold increase in OpenGL graphics processing and up to a 25% improvement in 2D graphics performance, according to the company.
If you're running it on an Apple silicon machine, expect 33% faster Windows startup times, up to 20% better disk performance on Windows 10 Insider Preview, and up to 28% faster DirectX 11 performance.
Elsewhere, Parallels has improved its Coherence mode, which lets you run a windows app without launching the full virtual machine. Coherence will now window shutdowns, updates, and sign-in screens, while drag-and-drop between Windows and Mac apps has been enhanced, with support for dragging text and images between windows, including support for Quick Notes in Monterey.
M1 users can also now use BitLocker and Secure Boot thanks to a virtualized TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip. Windows 10 will also recognize macOS battery status and turn on battery saving mode when your Mac runs low on battery.
Parallels Desktop 17 has moved entirely to a subscription model, which means the standard edition costs $79.99 per year, while Pro and Business Editions are available for $99.99 per year. Users who purchased a perpetual license for an earlier version of Parallels Desktop can upgrade to Parallels Desktop 17 for $49.99. A free trial is available to download from the Parallels website.
Article Link: Parallels 17 Brings Windows 11 and macOS Monterey Virtualization Support, Improved Graphics, M1 Optimizations, and More
M1 is the worst thing for virtualization. At least on Intel, I can get a license for Windows, run many different distributions of Linux or even Solaris, and have 128 GB of RAM.
With a 2019 Mac Pro you can have 1.5 TB of RAM.
The M1 isn’t terrible for virtualization if you want to virtualize an Arm OS. I think Parallels lists at least 4 Linux distributions that work. How many do you need?
Windows 11 Preview up and running on my M1 MBA.
Performance actually isn't bad at all, though haven't really tried any x86/x64 apps. So far just the core OS, Chrome and Office 365, though don't need it for much else at the moment. Using it mostly to verify my PointPoint files created on my Mac are formatted correctly when transferred to Windows.
Performance actually isn't bad at all, though haven't really tried any x86/x64 apps. So far just the core OS, Chrome and Office 365, though don't need it for much else at the moment. Using it mostly to verify my PointPoint files created on my Mac are formatted correctly when transferred to Windows.
It wouldn’t help if Parallels went all out subscription only, the edge Parallels over Windows as a service his running your VMs independent of the Internet indefinitely.
im going to have to check out if you can still purchase a perpetual license for later versions of Parallel because this sounds like it will put a major damper on my M2X MBP buying decision or have a look and hope Fusion is actually doing something with their virtualization.
Why don’t the just continue to have both purchase options available?
I like to buy and “own” my software, instead of paying every year indefinitely, if Parallels is so hard for cash just increase the cost of a perpetual license, I’d gladly pay a lot more upfront and not worry about paying again - sans a new version for MacOS versions.
Parallels wouldn’t be pointless since you can also run other VMs and not just Windows, the other one advantage, that I feel Parallels mithat screw up, is a perpetual license of ‘once of payment‘ and internet independent to function over cloud based Windows.
The reason I pay for a subscription rather than a perpetual license is that in this particular case, it actually makes sense. Due to the constantly evolving virtualisation landscape on Mac and the yearly MacOS releases, things usually keep breaking with the current version and then you need upgrades/updates to fix them.
In this scenario, if I had bought a full license to v16, my Win11 VM would forever be really slow and awkward to use. v17 makes it run super smooth and fast, but I would have had to pony up another $50 to get this improvement.
I like free software and also software that has a one time fee, but there's no point to software with a one time fee if you cannot use it reliably for even a year. In that scenario, a subscription makes sense (for those of us that need it).
In this scenario, if I had bought a full license to v16, my Win11 VM would forever be really slow and awkward to use. v17 makes it run super smooth and fast, but I would have had to pony up another $50 to get this improvement.
I like free software and also software that has a one time fee, but there's no point to software with a one time fee if you cannot use it reliably for even a year. In that scenario, a subscription makes sense (for those of us that need it).
I don't like their model, but if the market is stable or even shrinking the perpetual license revenue will dry out eventually.
It would only work, if perpetual license owners buy a new one from time to time to be up-to-date - but then it is effectively not that far from a subscription revenue flow anyhow.
There are good free alternatives anyhow - for this subscription I am fine to pay for the convenience and I *hate* subscriptions.
But use cases are all different.
I use parallels purely to run two standalone apps under Win-7 (disconnected from the internet for security).
I purchased V10 many years ago and it still works fine under Catalina.
There is no way I would accept to pay a subscription for my use. It would be much cheaper to buy a small ad cheap PC to run alongside my Mac, using the same screen, keyboard and mouse.
This is how I got Windows 11 to install on my MBA M1 - (3) Install Windows 11 on M1 (Apple Silicon + Parallels) | Windows 11 ARM bypass TPM - YouTube