Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac Launches with Mojave Support

Parallels today announced Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac, bringing significant performance and storage savings improvements. It’s also natively compatible with macOS Mojave, which Apple plans to release in September.

“Millions of Parallels Desktop customers highly value performance and efficiency,” Parallels president Jack Zubarev says in a prepared statement. “With Parallels Desktop 14, we’ve taken those to the next level by focusing on graphics and storage, allowing customers to save as much as 20 GB of disk space while enjoying the best-ever performance. Personal productivity enhancements include more Windows features available on Mac devices.”

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I spoke with Parallels last week about the new version and will be reviewing it soon. But as you may recall, I’ve long preferred Parallels Desktop over competing Mac virtualization solutions. And for the past three years, at least, I’ve found that the performance and utility of this solution, not to mention the ways in which you can integrate Windows applications on the Mac, make it preferable to alternatives like Boot Camp.

For version 14, Parallels is further refining the product, in particular, its Windows/Mac integration capabilities. You can now use Windows Ink in Windows applications like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Edge, CorelDRAW, Fresh Paint, Leonardo, openCanvas, and Photoshop, with pressure sensitivity, using a Wacom-style tablet or even the Mac’s touchpad. Parallels has also added Touch Bar support for many more Windows applications and it provides a wizard so customers can make their own.

And in a fun twist, Parallels Desktop 14 supports the new Dark Mode in macOS Mojave. So when you make the Mac desktop dark, your Windows applications will behave in kind (assuming they support Windows 10’s dark mode). The firm also added Windows quick actions when you examine a file with Quick Look.

At a lower level, Parallels Desktop 14 also amps up the efficiency. After upgrading, customers can use a new Free Up Disk Space tool to realize storage savings of up to 20 GB per virtual machine. Windows virtual machines boot about 10 percent faster, and Windows applications launch up to 80 percent faster.

As with previous versions, Parallels Desktop 14 costs $80 for an annual subscription or $100 for a perpetual license. If you own version 12 or 13, you can upgrade for $50. Parallels also sells Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition and Business Edition to new customers for $100 per year.

I will be writing more about Parallels Desktop for Mac, and related tools like Parallels Toolbox and Parallels Access, soon. In the meantime, check out the Parallels website for more information.

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Conversation 9 comments

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    21 August, 2018 - 9:41 am

    <p>What made you decide on Parallels over VMWare Fusion? I used to use the former on my old iMac, having used trial copies of both first VMWare, at that time (2008/9) felt like the better product and allowed more desktop integration than Parallels at that time.</p><p>What has changed in the meantime? Just curious, although I don't currently have a working Mac.</p>

    • ivarh

      Premium Member
      21 August, 2018 - 10:02 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#303217">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>Parallels is just faster for windows. Graphics is a lot smoother than fusion and it also supports headless vm's that can autostart on boot of the machine. This is something that fusion also does not do.</p><p><br></p><p> The bad thing with parallels is their licensing in that you cannot install it on more than one mac. With fusion you can install it on all the mac's you own. Parallels uses activation to prevent you form doing this.</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        21 August, 2018 - 2:37 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#303224">In reply to ivarh:</a></em></blockquote><p>Thanks for the info.</p><p>Interesting. At work we use VMWare Esx and Workstation. At home I use Hyper-V.</p><p>On a normal PC,I find Hyper-V better as VMWare Workstation. But ESX and vCenter is nice on big iron.</p>

        • SvenJ

          21 August, 2018 - 7:47 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#303320"><em>In reply to wright_is:</em></a><em> </em>Another feature I don't believe any normal VM solution provides, like VMWare, is the ability to run Windows apps on the Mac desktop. Parallels has this interesting mode, where if you only need that one or two Windows applications, say Visio or Project, that have no Mac equivalent, you can run them as if they were Mac apps on the Mac desktop. The Windows interface is underneath but hidden. You don't need to launch a VM and run the apps in it. You do of course have to supply a full copy of Windows, but you don't have to actually see it. ;)</blockquote><p><br></p>

          • wright_is

            Premium Member
            22 August, 2018 - 12:11 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#303393">In reply to SvenJ:</a></em></blockquote><p>That was one of the things that Fusion did do, back in the early days, so I would assume it can still do it.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      21 August, 2018 - 10:26 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#303217">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>It was so long ago I can't even recall. I think I just found that it was faster.</p>

    • Trickyd

      22 August, 2018 - 8:14 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#303217">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><em>I had the same experience 10 years ago Parallels was great then it got really buggy and slow and I switched to Fusion which was fine until I moved back to Windows software and hardware 6 years ago – prompted by Apple not supporting new OSX releases on a 2008 Macbook – it was like they just wanted to ethnically cleanse out the white plastic machines! as there was no hardware issue – that machine happily runs Windows 10 to this day.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        23 August, 2018 - 12:21 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#303457">In reply to Trickyd:</a></em></blockquote><p>Same here, my iMac 24" 2007 is still getting Windows updates, but no OS X (yes, OS X, it never got a macOS release) updates for several years, (I think Lion was the last version that was supported).</p>

  • curtisspendlove

    21 August, 2018 - 2:11 pm

    <p>I far prefer adding a Boot Camp partition and then activating the “boot camp” loader option for my Windows Parallels VM. This allows Parallels to actually manage the Boot Camp partion on on disk and treat it like a regular VM. This way if you ever want to boot directly into Boot Camp if you want the additional raw speed (perhaps you want a few more FPS in a game or whatever), it will be the same as the VM. </p><p><br></p><p>But yout still get the flexibility of being able to bring it up under macOS. (This way both OSs can do maintenance,updates, etc during idle time.)</p>

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