Apple Mac
Run almost any operating system as a guest on an Intel Mac.
We’re now at peak virtualisation. Whichever operating system you want on your Mac, this is the easiest time to go virtual, and version 16 of Parallels Desktop should prove an excellent platform for almost any Intel Mac.
Parallels has long been a convenient way of running Windows on your Mac without having to resort to Boot Camp, although if you have that already installed, Parallels can also run it as a guest operating system or virtual machine (VM). If you haven’t got a copy of Windows 10 to hand, Parallels can download and install it for you, and other methods are demonstrated at bit. ly/MAC357parwin10.
Version 16 brings mostly incremental improvements for Windows users. It’s now compatible with more than 200,000 Windows apps, including specialist apps for lighting design and molecular modelling, as well as a great many games. One important advance is that you can opt to have your Windows or macOS VM automatically compacted when it’s shut down. When Windows requires temporary additional storage space, that isn’t normally returned, causing the VM to grow. This helps keep its size to a minimum, although the process of compaction can take several minutes.
Host Mac host printer features are shared better with Windows guests, making them fully accessible to apps running in a VM. Version 16 further improves performance in DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3 graphics, and there’s support for multi-touch gestures in Windows apps too. If you’re virtualising on a laptop, Windows Travel Mode is now more efficient in battery usage.
In the past, running macOS as a guest operating system on a Mac has been more unusual, unless you’re a software developer or security researcher. Virtualisation has come into its own as the best
way to be able to upgrade to Catalina or Big Sur while retaining access to apps which are incompatible with those newer versions of macOS, notably any software which isn’t available in 64-bit form.
If you’re stuck on a Mac running Mojave or earlier because you can’t afford to lose access to essential tools, then Parallels Desktop 16 offers the best way forward since it lets you continue running 32-bit apps and software dependent on older kernel extensions that macOS 11 Big Sur won’t tolerate. This is particularly beneficial if you’re still using an older version of macOS to support macOS Server.
Even running a Big Sur guest on a Big Sur host Mac has its attractions, with added support for 3D graphics in Metal. Performance is generally close to that of the host hardware: on a Mac with an Intel Core i9 processor, most apps should run at a speed similar to a Core i7 or better, and the more expensive Pro and Business editions let you improve on that by virtualising on more than two cores when you wish.
General improvements in version 16 include faster launching of guest operating systems, and for those running Linux VMs ‘git status’ on a repository is much quicker than previously. The essential companion tools in
Parallels Toolbox for both Windows and Mac also have several minor additions and enhancements.
From here on, though, virtualisation becomes more limited. Because guest operating systems must run native on the processor type in your Mac, what’s available is confined to Intel Macs. Virtualisation on an Apple silicon Mac can’t therefore run an Intel version of Windows, or – most importantly for many upgrading to Big Sur – an Intel-only release of macOS, and that means anything before macOS 11.
Big Sur’s bundled Rosetta 2 doesn’t virtualise, but translates code from Intel to ARM instructions so it can then be run on Apple silicon hardware, something that’s most unlikely to work for an entire operating system like Mojave. For an Apple silicon Mac to run older versions of macOS or Intel Windows, it’s going to require emulation, in which its ARM cores simulate Intel processors. If you want to run Windows apps or older Mac apps which can’t run on Apple silicon, you’re going to need an Intel Mac with virtualisation. Parallels Desktop 16 is an ideal way to do that.
HOWARD OAKLEY
Easy to set up and use, the first choice for running another OS.