Just a heads-up – Parallels Desktop Lite in the Mac App Store has just received a major update. I have always been really enticed by it, because it offers a huge chunk of Parallels speed and convenience but it’s completely sandboxed, adhering to all the Mac App Store rules, so it does not install all kinds of kexts and other invasive hooks into the system. Those always put me off from using Parallels.
It used to be free to run macOS or Linux, with a subscription required to run Windows. I used to use the free version alongside VirtualBox. After the update, running any VM requires a subscription. It is $80 per year, which is IIRC on par with the “full” version of Parallels. Technically, it offers fewer features but I’d rather pay extra for having this sandboxed version of the software without all the bloat. Oh, and the best part is that the first year is free! I don’t know if this applies to new users too, because after updating it told me that I get the first year free as an existing user, so your mileage may vary.
Although charging for running non-Windows machines is actually a user-hostile move on the surface, I’m for one glad it led me to bite the bullet, migrate my Windows VMs and uninstall VirtualBox. Nothing against it, but recently it has been pretty unstable and slow for me, and you really get what you pay for. Parallels Lite uses exclusively Apple frameworks and even though they may be technically slower than the custom Parallels ones in the standalone edition, it is still plenty faster for me than VirtualBox.
I am not in any way affiliated with Parallels, I just feel that this version of Parallels is rather underappreciated, but I think it’s the best virtualization solution for Mac, so I’d encourage people to check it out. And even if you don’t end up liking it or if you don’t feel like paying subscription fees, you can use it completely free of charge for a year, and that’s actually pretty generous, especially considering it’s Parallels we’re talking about and we all know their business practices.
It used to be free to run macOS or Linux, with a subscription required to run Windows. I used to use the free version alongside VirtualBox. After the update, running any VM requires a subscription. It is $80 per year, which is IIRC on par with the “full” version of Parallels. Technically, it offers fewer features but I’d rather pay extra for having this sandboxed version of the software without all the bloat. Oh, and the best part is that the first year is free! I don’t know if this applies to new users too, because after updating it told me that I get the first year free as an existing user, so your mileage may vary.
Although charging for running non-Windows machines is actually a user-hostile move on the surface, I’m for one glad it led me to bite the bullet, migrate my Windows VMs and uninstall VirtualBox. Nothing against it, but recently it has been pretty unstable and slow for me, and you really get what you pay for. Parallels Lite uses exclusively Apple frameworks and even though they may be technically slower than the custom Parallels ones in the standalone edition, it is still plenty faster for me than VirtualBox.
I am not in any way affiliated with Parallels, I just feel that this version of Parallels is rather underappreciated, but I think it’s the best virtualization solution for Mac, so I’d encourage people to check it out. And even if you don’t end up liking it or if you don’t feel like paying subscription fees, you can use it completely free of charge for a year, and that’s actually pretty generous, especially considering it’s Parallels we’re talking about and we all know their business practices.
