I bought Parallels 13 last year about two weeks before 14 came out. It wasn’t long before I got the ‘Upgrade now!’ messages constantly. But it didn’t seem to have much extra for me to justify it. I got student discount so couldn’t really complain, but now I see 15 is out and offers a list of new features that might make it a worthy upgrade. Faster Office launches and I suppose better optimisation by the passing of time and refining by Parallels software writers should be noticeable.
I use a MacBook 12" 2017 model now, about a month old. Parallels 13 on it handles remarkably well, it’s smooth and exceeded any expectation for using MS Excel on a machine this ‘weak’. I’m thinking of using this machine next to my work workstation as a personal Outlook reminders / notepad (I must make a post in workflow section about that). But could I really feel the benefit, especially on this machine, of under the hood optimisation?
I also upgraded via my business subscription. If I didn’t have the subscription, I probably wouldn’t upgrade. The main features in v15, Sidecar support and improved gaming, do not matter to me. Features like “80% faster Microsoft Office application startup” are vapor.
All in all, I’ve used Parallels since v3 and been very satisfied.
This is the main reason why I have stopped using Paralells on all off my client machines. Their constant flow of paid upgrades. VMware Fusion isn’t doing this.
I don’t recall any recent upgrades I had to pay for. For sure its less aggressive then Paralells
who also tries to sign up up for some subscription remote service that non of us wants but they sneak it in all the time if you don’t pay close attention…
For me VMware fusion has been very good on about 40 machines and rarely needs attention.
Depends on the use case. If you need to run a Windows app that requires DirectX 11, right now Parallels Desktop 15 is the only game in town, after years when all hands had proclaimed it couldn’t be done in emulation. I’d love to see VMWare catch up for precisely the rea$on$ @MacExpert and others have mentioned — but, as someone else pointed out here recently, that company has been unusually quiet of late about what’s in the works for VMWare Fusion, which may not be a good sign.
I’ve used Parallels since it was first released (frankly the Intel-based Macs and Parallels were what made it possible for me to switch from PC to Mac).
Every version of Parallels has made fantastic performance improvement claims that taken together would have the new version 15 turn ones Mac into the fastest computer on Earth! I had found that even though they came out with a new version every year the version would be good for two macOS versions before it would stop working, so I only had to upgrade every other year. That said, I’m still using Parallels 11 (from 2015) on Mojave and it works fine.
For Linux VMs, I use VirtualBox as I was never happy with Parallels for them.
Must say, as the various Office products over on the Mac have increasingly reached ‘close-to’ parity with the PC versions, I have had less and less reason to switch on my VMs…
That said, the current VM is still running Win7 – so will no doubt have to take the plunge in updating it at some point in any event. Fortunately have access to Office365 through work, but pretty sure that doesn’t include the OS itself.
I too have found Parallels to be quite annoying in terms of update reminders – almost to the point of my not wanting to support them going forward. Regardless though, it’s what I am most familiar with, so if I take the plunge, will probably be through them again.
With all the update notifications I found it easier and cheaper to buy a cheap Windows laptop to run the few programs that require it. As time has gone on there are very few programs we have to run on Windows. Haven’t missed it.
I use my VM less and less as office becomes more and more useful on the Mac and we leave more legacy technologies behind. I still need it occasionally but I care less and less about performance and features. Basically the only thing that makes me update is to maintain compatibility with the latest macOS. I only do it when it stops working. When I get a new Mac every three years my IT department usually issue it with the latest version of parallels. We used to use VMware. I have no opinion as to which I prefer.
Before Catalina arrives I’m thinking about visualizing an old Mac install, to keep access to a few 32-bit programs. Does anyone offhand know if, e.g., Aperture runs in an emulated environment? Initial web searches weren’t conclusive.
My only issue with Parallels is their scare tactics to trick you into upgrading when you don’t need to.
I’m currently running Parallels 11 on Mojave without issue, although Parallels regularly told me in the run up to Mojave dropping that I needed to upgrade as it would stop working.
At some point it will actually stop working, and I’ll upgrade to the latest version then - but my use case for VM software is very minimal - I have a WinXP instance to run MS Money, and a Win7 instance to run some very lightweight Win only software for a hobby - so I don’t notice any of the performance improvements nor need any of the new features that the updates bring.
