Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac released with macOS Sierra support, Toolbox app

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in Mac Software edited October 2019
Virtualization software Parallels on Thursday issued its latest release, Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac, with a host of new features including support for Apple's upcoming macOS Sierra, a standalone Toolbox app and performance improvements.
Parallels Toolbox is touted as a highlight of this year's Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac version, offering users 20 tools to streamline commonly executed tasks. The toolbox resides in the menu bar as a drop down option, with one-click access to handy tools grouped into four sections: take screenshots, record screen, time and archiver. Alongside everyday tasks like capturing screenshots, Toolbox tools can initiate area, window and screen recording, download and convert videos, manage stopwatches, alarms, timers and date countdown utilities and archive files. Additional tools include record audio, mute microphone and hide desktop, the latter being useful for screen recording and presentations. For those just getting started with Microsoft Windows, Parallels 12 adds the ability to purchase and install the operating system directly from the Parallels Desktop Wizard. In addition, a Scheduled Windows Maintenance option enables update downloads at times convenient to the user. Developers also worked with gaming studio Blizzard Entertainment to optimize Parallels 12 for Mac to support Overwatch, popular multiplayer FPS available on PC and Xbox. Parallels' gaming chops also extend to the Windows 10 Xbox app, meaning users can stream Xbox games on Mac. Other new features include the ability to control storage space used by virtual machines from the Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra, port Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer passwords in Mac's Keychain, manually cancel VM actions and assign special behaviors to Windows apps. Parallels Desktop 12 also improved support for resizing Windows VMs on Macs equipped with Retina displays. As for backend improvements, Parallels Desktop 12 offers up to 90 percent faster Snapshot creation, 60 percent faster suspend of VMs and 23 percent faster Shared Folders performance. Finally, users can expect an up to 10 percent battery life improvement from previous iterations.
Existing users running Parallels Desktop 10 and 11 can upgrade to Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac, Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition and Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition can upgrade today. Upgrade pricing comes in at $49.99 or $49.99 per year for the Pro Edition. New customer pricing for Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac is $79.99, while the Pro Edition and Business Edition both cost $99.99 per year. Availability begins on Aug. 23. Finally, Parallels Toolbox for Mac, which comes with all versions of Parallels Desktop 12, will also be available as a standalone product for $9.99 per year. A 14-day trial can be downloaded from the Parallels website starting Aug. 23.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    GrimzahnGrimzahn Posts: 64member
    The same procedure as every year. Basically they force u to upgrade since they wont support newer macOS versions. Lack of 3d support in macOS makes the VMs slow and useless. We dropped Parallells for VMWare where we keep old customer projects that require specific OS and XCode version till they finally pay for an update.
    mobiusHerbivore2
  • Reply 2 of 12
    rajeshkhaterrajeshkhater Posts: 17member
    Grimzahn said:
    The same procedure as every year. Basically they force u to upgrade since they wont support newer macOS versions. Lack of 3d support in macOS makes the VMs slow and useless. We dropped Parallells for VMWare where we keep old customer projects that require specific OS and XCode version till they finally pay for an update.
    Totally agree with you! We switched to VMWare because of their forced upgrade tactics.
    mobiusHerbivore2
  • Reply 3 of 12
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,808member
    Its not free for them to make updates. Typically software companies do not give software away. You're not forced to upgrade. There are people using Parallels 11 on macOS Sierra right now and it works fine.

    Totally disagree with VM's being slow. Windows 10 boots instantly for me as does Windows 7 Enterprise. I've tried VMWare and it blows. 
    edited August 2016 AnichabigTurboPGT
  • Reply 4 of 12
    appexappex Posts: 687member
    Parallel Desktop fails miserably to control external USB devices via Windows on Mac. VMware Fusion does it fine.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    Grimzahn said:
    The same procedure as every year. Basically they force u to upgrade since they wont support newer macOS versions. Lack of 3d support in macOS makes the VMs slow and useless. We dropped Parallells for VMWare where we keep old customer projects that require specific OS and XCode version till they finally pay for an update.
    Parallels 11 is working just fine in macOS Sierra developer version for me.  That said I mainly use it to make external bootable disks of Windows as I prefer to boot directly into Window from my Mac Pro so as to get full GPU performance.  Parallels is simply a means to an end for me, to run the free utilities (WintoUSB and MiniTools) to create the external boot disk so I am not testing it beyond that.  
    edited August 2016
  • Reply 6 of 12
    aankopenaankopen Posts: 10member
    I updated, it is faster BUT multiple display is  broken! I use 3 displays in Full Screen and this worked fine in 11. in 12 you can only see 1 display at a time, the other two are black. Cmnd-Tab then acts as a toggle to display another screen and it hides the others, so you switch to a visible display one by one instead of seeing them as an extended desktop like before.
    Bad!
  • Reply 7 of 12
    TurboPGTTurboPGT Posts: 355member
    I'm unable to find any way to upgrade my license from 11 to 12. It only shows 11 as available.
  • Reply 8 of 12
    djames4242djames4242 Posts: 651member
    macxpress said:
    Its not free for them to make updates. Typically software companies do not give software away. You're not forced to upgrade. There are people using Parallels 11 on macOS Sierra right now and it works fine.

    Totally disagree with VM's being slow. Windows 10 boots instantly for me as does Windows 7 Enterprise. I've tried VMWare and it blows. 
    I had the same experience. I switched to VMWare 7 a year ago and found it buggy, and its support for dual monitors was awful. Parallels allows you to have each of your monitors switch between host and guest OSes independently, while VMWare automatically switches all of your displays over to the guest OS. I Googled and Googled and poured over every option I could find and there didn't seem to be any way to fix this obnoxious behavior. VMWare was noticeably slower than Parallels as well.

    It's a shame, because I have multiple Macs and VMWare offers a much better licensing scheme where one license covers up to three Macs meaning I was only paying $50/year for upgrades. I've recently switched to Parallels Pro and am now paying $50/year for each of my machines.
  • Reply 9 of 12
    djames4242djames4242 Posts: 651member

    TurboPGT said:
    I'm unable to find any way to upgrade my license from 11 to 12. It only shows 11 as available.
    I had to click a number of links before I finally found this one. I'm hesitant to upgrade yet until I hear if all the bugs have been worked out, especially with Parallels Tools.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    boboliciousbobolicious Posts: 1,146member
    Rosetta was my best experience ever with legacy VM... I run Snow Server in Parallels but it isn't as good. W7pro seems to offer XP mode, but died in boot camp, only in Parallels? Is legacy workflow one area Apple seems to miss sales in ? Could that be an easy fertile field for growth? The 85% of (pc?) users that simply want a newer, faster computer that works with existing investments? No plug & pray hoping every year if they buy new hardware there last years hardware will still work or they will have drivers ??
  • Reply 11 of 12
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,361member
    Curious what they really mean by "support for Sierra" for the new release of Parallels. With VMWare Fusion I can still use the older version of Fusion with the newest version of MacOS and it does everything Fusion did when it was installed on the OS X that the version of Fusion was optimized for.

    New and improved features present in the latest version of Fusion are obviously missing but Fusion never stopped working. Since it still does everything I need and the new features are incremental niceties but non essential I found no reason to update Fusion. If older versions of Fusion quit working with the latest MacOS I'd be very disappointed. 

    Makers of these MacOS add-ons should come clean about whether upgrading to their latest version that's aligned with a specific MacOS version is required or optional. 
  • Reply 12 of 12
    fairwweatherfairwweather Posts: 29member
    I am very upset with Parallels over the "separate spaces" issue. They gave this issue a pass and released the upgrade knowing full well that it would cause a problem. The only way to see your Mac screen is to go to Mission Control and enable separate spaces, the log out and log back in. I cannot use separate spaces because of certain issues and to have a minor app such as Desktop force me to change the way I work with my major apps is, to put it kindly, presumptuous as hell.
    This demonstrates a serious lack of regard for the customer and the fact that they did not mention this issue, even in a positively spun marketing blurb, but just took our money and then said, "Oh, by the way...." That was deceitful and unethical. I am going to be very unhappy with Desktop for a long time.
    To take it one step further, I am seriously considering requesting a NFR copy in order to write a review that specifically mentions this intentional gotcha. In the past, if I ever reviewed an app that had a serious flaw, I always gave the developer the benefit of the doubt, knowing that most developers would be working on the problem and that the issue would be fixed as quickly as possible. As such I would cancel the review rather than hammer the developer before they had a chance to make things right. With Parallels 12, however, their deceitful approach simply begs for a bad review. I am very upset with these guys and they deserve a serious hammering.
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