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Parallels on M1: One-time purchase vs subscription?

I

izzy0242mr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 24, 2009
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What are people's experiences with Parallels and their payment models? I have Windows 11 running on UTM on my MBP 14" but I don't think it'll be a good experience for gaming so far.

Parallels seems like a much better option, but I'm not sure if I wanna go the subscription route or one-time-fee option. I hate the idea of subscription software but I am not sure how long the current version of Parallels has before getting abandoned and necessitating an update. If it's right around the corner, I could also just wait a few months.

Thoughts?
 
lostPod said:
Have you looked at vmware ?
Click to expand...
VMware only has a beta of Fusion that runs on Apple Silicon, and it doesn't support Windows, although some people may have gotten it to work to some degree.
 
chrfr said:
VMware only has a beta of Fusion that runs on Apple Silicon, and it doesn't support Windows, although some people may have gotten it to work to some degree.
Click to expand...
lostPod said:
Have you looked at vmware ?
Click to expand...
Yeah I've looked at both and I thought the current consensus was that Parallels is best for running Windows on Apple Silicon.
 
Get a subscription if you know you'll have a Mac for years and years and you'll needs windows too, pay a one time if you're not sure about that, or you just want to play. I have 2 Mac's here, my Intel Mac Mini has the subscription, my Studio has a subscription only.

As for UTM, only if you're a masochist.
 
bobcomer said:
I have VMWare on my intel Mac Mini, and I like it a lot as it has much better support of multiple OS's. I also run VMWare on my Windows PC's.
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As I posted earlier in the thread, though, VMware doesn't have a complete product for Apple Silicon. It doesn't support Windows, doesn't support macOS VMs, and can't boot the current kernel in many Linux distributions due to a bug in the Linux kernel. As such, it's pretty completely useless at the moment.
 
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I don't know if I can recommend Parallels anymore. Recently Windows absolutely does not work as fluidly as it used to in Parallels. Normally when I used to install Windows it would go through the whole process of installing without any assistance. I have to manually click the boot options for installing Windows now and go through the whole Microsoft set up process to get Windows installed. And Parallels Tools is nowhere near as fluid as it used to be. I don't know if this is Microsoft's doing or Parallels', but it's making it very frustrating to use Windows on my M1 Mac now.
 
Cognizant. said:
I don't know if I can recommend Parallels anymore. Recently Windows absolutely does not work as fluidly as it used to in Parallels. Normally when I used to install Windows it would go through the whole process of installing without any assistance. I have to manually click the boot options for installing Windows now and go through the whole Microsoft set up process to get Windows installed. And Parallels Tools is nowhere near as fluid as it used to be. I don't know if this is Microsoft's doing or Parallels', but it's making it very frustrating to use Windows on my M1 Mac now.
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Yeah. And seeing the limited gaming support, I may honestly just settle for UTM. The experience isn't amazing, but it is free, and for non gaming stuff it works fine.

I may just hold out hope that eventually the Microsoft-Qualcomm exclusivity deal expires and Apple updates Boot Camp to officially allow Windows on Arm to be dual booted. And I'm optimistic about that given their support for Linux so far.
 
pastrychef said:
Have you looked in to CrossOver?
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Yeah, I haven't heard super great things about it honestly. Maybe your experience has been different but I've only ever been able to use it successfully on ancient games and some of the newer games I'm wanting don't seem to support it well.
 
izzy0242mr said:
What are people's experiences with Parallels and their payment models? I have Windows 11 running on UTM on my MBP 14" but I don't think it'll be a good experience for gaming so far.

Parallels seems like a much better option, but I'm not sure if I wanna go the subscription route or one-time-fee option. I hate the idea of subscription software but I am not sure how long the current version of Parallels has before getting abandoned and necessitating an update. If it's right around the corner, I could also just wait a few months.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

As a long time user of Parallels, the one time buy is the better option. You can usually get two years out of Parallels before macOS "breaks" something. Just pay the upgrade and keep going until it breaks again.
 
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izzy0242mr said:
Yeah, I haven't heard super great things about it honestly. Maybe your experience has been different but I've only ever been able to use it successfully on ancient games and some of the newer games I'm wanting don't seem to support it well.
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Crossover is the better solution for games right now. What newer games are you trying? If it’s anything using DX12 then it won’t work with any solution currently out there. A native Windows system is your only chance then.
 
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GrumpyCoder said:
Crossover is the better solution for games right now. What newer games are you trying? If it’s anything using DX12 then it won’t work with any solution currently out there. A native Windows system is your only chance then.
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Was wanting to try Jedi Fallen Order Star Wars.
 
I’m in the same boat with you tight now. Fusion player seems like able to install Windows 11 now with some homebrew and cli magic. And its free. Parally UX seems superior, snd on black froday sales i can purchase it for a hundred bucks. Do i am torn s bit. What dod you choose?
 
chrfr said:
As I posted earlier in the thread, though, VMware doesn't have a complete product for Apple Silicon. It doesn't support Windows, doesn't support macOS VMs, and can't boot the current kernel in many Linux distributions due to a bug in the Linux kernel. As such, it's pretty completely useless at the moment.
Click to expand...
I pretty much agree with all that, though it depends on what you mean by current kernel. It's not really a complete product yet. I'm running Ubuntu 22.10 and it works okay, but not much else...
 
bobcomer said:
I pretty much agree with all that, though it depends on what you mean by current kernel. It's not really a complete product yet. I'm running Ubuntu 22.10 and it works okay, but not much else...
Click to expand...
My comments were about the Fusion tech preview, which unfortunately doesn't actually feel all that different than what got released as V13.
Other distributions have long since incorporated the necessary changes that allow Fusion to work with them but Ubuntu seems to be lagging. You can, though download a daily build image that'll work in Fusion 13 without any special efforts.
 
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