Parallels Desktop 15 Switches to Apple's Metal Graphics API, Gains Sidecar, Keychain, and Drag and Drop Support

Yes you’re forced to upgrade each time a new MACOS version comes out, it doesn’t matter if it can run on the new OS version. It’s programmed to stop opening and ask you to pay to keep it working.

 

No you’re not. I’ll show you a screen shot of Catalina running PD14 when I move to that.

 

If I can pay one year sub fee and stop paying for sub to keep using pro version, I would be fine with it.

 

The article says Parallels is cross platform software. That is not true; it’s only for macOS.

I understand why they would say that, but it’s wrong.

 

If you don't mind rebooting, I'd simply install the older OS onto a USB3 or TB external disk and boot from that. I just did this to install Mavericks so that I could run iDVD (I know!). It's one of those applications that will not run in a VM either

 

I am really interested to know if these makes runnings games smooth and less taxing on the CPU, if anyone tries it out please give me back feedback

 

You can if you only choose to update about once every three years, which isn’t great I agree.
I’ll be getting this for sure. I have two computers with PD14, one I’ll be moving to VMWare just to see what life is like there.

 

Will PD stops working if I stop paying for subscription?

 

surely you cant, otherwise the sub wouldn't be cheaper for a year than a one off purchase. I was assuming from that that if you pay €79 for sub rather than €99 just to buy, that if you cancel before the next year it will stop working, is that wrong?

 

I don’t need PD right now, but if I cannot do that to use pro version indefinitely, I am forced to use alternatives. Go for subscription all they want, they certainly don’t need my money anyway.

 

Many thanks. No do not mind rebooting.

I did not realize it was that easy.

One more question is your Mac running Mojave?

 

I'd be curious to see some benchmarks of VMware / Parallels. I've pretty much given up on VirtualBox as it is slow and CrossOver / Wine is spotty in what works or doesn't work so it's either Fusion or Parallels for me. I have used both in the past and currently use Parallels as I've found it to be more stable and quicker. I upgrade other release in general so it works out to about $25/year.

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Mine nagged me once or twice and then stopped nagging, in any case it still worked fine; I can't remember if there is a Do Not Show This... checkbox or if it is I open Windows directly from its icon.

As for usability my experience is it works at least for 2 or 3 years worth of MacOS upgrades.

 

If it helps anyone, I installed the trial and a fresh copy of Windows 7, and Fallout 4... and it runs like garbage. I have a i7-4790k processor, 32GB RAM, and an AMD RX 580 (with 8GB VRAM).

I can only assign 4 cores to the VM unless I upgrade to Pro, and I can only assign 2GB of VRAM to the VM as well. I have 16GB of RAM allotted. It runs - better than I expected - but even with all settings set to low the game has huge frame rate drops and is just jerky as heck. It’s not totally unplayable, but when the game runs 60fps under a proper windows install on the same machine, I don’t really see this as a viable option.

I should add that neither the GPU nor CPU seem overly taxed by this. The GPU shows 100% usage but the temps stay around 62°C so I know it’s probably not actually being used 100% (or else it’d be hitting around 86° and the fans would be kicking on). I may fiddle with settings more but I just don’t see this being useful for full 3D games. Simpler games I’m sure will be fine, but I find it odd they specifically named Fallout. I’m wondering if I need to install the AMD drivers in Windows? Parallels does say that certain features will require Catalina; maybe it’ll improve my issues.

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Running Fallout 4, and the CPU is surprisingly not being used much at all - it remains to run lightly, but it’s jerky as heck. I haven’t tested any lighter or older games yet.

 

I must say I find it surprising the number of people in this thread who report much better performance with Parallels compared to Fusion 11. Fusion 11 introduced native Metal support with DX 10.1 support in Windows VMs last year, so I would have expected that Fusion 11 would have at least had better graphical performance than last year's Parallels (which did not support Metal IIRC).

As someone else mentioned, there hasn't been a public Fusion Technical Preview this year, which in recent years has preceded the introduction of a new version of Fusion in the late Summer / early Fall timeframe. Will be interesting to see whether VMware chooses to stand pat with Fusion 11 until next year, or whether they surprise us with a new version despite no public testing.

 

You sure about that? According to their KB page as well as their v15 User Guide it says that it can run on Sierra (10.12) or later. I can understand if Metal features aren't supported in anything less than 10.14, but it looks like the software itself has a wider macOS support base.

Since I'm going to be stuck on 10.13 for a while longer this is sort of important to clarify. I'm also awaiting confirmation with Parallels support...

 

I got off that wagon 6 versions ago.
At work they have a VDI solution and I just use the free Microsoft Remote Desktop App on my Mac. I work extremely well for all the windows things I need to do. I use DOSVox for Linux VMs.
Parallels got greedy, we were only allowed 3 copies at education pricing for the whole university, after than it became a yearly rental costing far more over the life of the Mac, so off we went to a better solution, and we will not be going back.

Apple is probably going to get turfed at some point too, you can not visualise their stuff except on expensive apple hardware which is far more limited than the VDI solutions we have at our disposal for Windows and Linux.

 

Yep I had high expectations with Fusion after the switch to metal, but unfortunately it's much slower. Videos lag badly on Fusion for example but play buttery smooth on Parallels. I'm running it on my iMac in my sig so shouldn't be a resource issue.

I brought up the Fusion Tech Preview absence, which makes me think that there may not be a Fusion launch this year, however VMWorld is the end of this month, so perhaps they will surprise us.

Given my allegiance with VMWare with everything else, I'd like to use it in preference to Parallels, but at the moment, I can't.

 

VMware works well for running 10.6. You can run 10.5 server, it's a bit tricky to get the non-server version to work.

It's really handy to be able to run FileMaker Pro 6 sometimes. And it's so much prettier than 10.14, you forget how ugly the flat look is until you see how things used to look.

Parallels is really more Windoze-focused.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Oh how I remember the days of running Parallels with a full install of Windows, just to run one or two Windows apps. They are not fond memories!

WinOnX now does the job for me… runs what I need beautifully without any of the bloat. I'm amazed more people don't know about it.

 

I don't know what you're talking about with this. It's quite simple to run a macOS guest in Parallels, it'll even run setup in the VM from the recovery partition on your Mac if you want the same version.

I've been using it to run a macOS guest for years, to host Billings Pro server (because their setup system was woefully unreliable and would reliably fail the first time it's installed on any new install).


However as I type this, I've just discovered that Parallels v15 is showing me another obscure error, basically failing to run.

 

I upgraded to Parallels Pro 15 but there are a few problems:
3D is not OK at this moment. Passmark Performance test 9.0 reports:
Failed to launch OpenCL Test, OpenCL.dill not found. Your card may not support OpenCL or the graphics driver may be out of date. Total Benchmark score was in Parallels 15 33% lower.
Unigine Heaven Extreme gives only 2.4 FPS instead of 42 FPS in a previous version of Parallels.

 

Just looked up WinOnX on the Mac App Store and from the reviews it looks to be terrible! Just another front-end for Wine.

 

Yes it is. I used this method to create the installation...

You'll need to format your USB target drive first (where secondary OS will be installed to). Don't use APFS, use MacOS Extended (Journaled)

https://www.lifewire.com/create-bootable-usb-flash-drive-os-x-mavericks-2260351
Good luck

 

I recommend trying PortingKit. It is also Wine front end but regularly updated.
And if you want to pay for Wine better invest in CroossOver to directly support Wine development.