Parallels Desktop 16.5 released with native Apple Silicon support
Parallels has released version 16.5 of its virtualization software with full native support for Apple's M1 chip.
Credit: Parallels
The company says that Parallels Desktop 16.5 will run much faster and more efficiently on Apple Silicon machines. Parallels says the platform uses up to 250% less energy, sports up to 30% better virtual machine performance for Windows and up to 60% better DirectX 11 performance.
The company says that many of its best features have been reengineered for the M1, including Coherence Mode, Shared Profiles, Touch Bar controls, and Mac keyboard layouts.
There is a caveat -- users can only run a virtual machine with an ARM-based operating system. While there are plenty of ARM-based Linux distributions, there currently isn't a retail ARM version of Windows. Instead, users will need to get the Windows 10 ARM Insider preview.
The release of Parallels Desktop 16.5 on Wednesday comes after a testing period in which the company released a pair of Technical Preview versions of the update. Parallels says that 100,000 Mac users tested the previews.
"Apple's M1 chip is a significant breakthrough for Mac users. The transition has been smooth for most Mac applications, thanks to Rosetta technology. However, virtual machines are an exception and thus Parallels engineers implemented native virtualization support for the Mac with M1 chip. This enables our users to enjoy the best Windows-on-Mac experience available," said Parallels SVP Nick Dobrovolskiy.
Parallels Desktop 16.5 is available in a subscription and perpetual license version. A new subscription costs $79.99 per year while a license runs $99.99.
Credit: Parallels
The company says that Parallels Desktop 16.5 will run much faster and more efficiently on Apple Silicon machines. Parallels says the platform uses up to 250% less energy, sports up to 30% better virtual machine performance for Windows and up to 60% better DirectX 11 performance.
The company says that many of its best features have been reengineered for the M1, including Coherence Mode, Shared Profiles, Touch Bar controls, and Mac keyboard layouts.
There is a caveat -- users can only run a virtual machine with an ARM-based operating system. While there are plenty of ARM-based Linux distributions, there currently isn't a retail ARM version of Windows. Instead, users will need to get the Windows 10 ARM Insider preview.
The release of Parallels Desktop 16.5 on Wednesday comes after a testing period in which the company released a pair of Technical Preview versions of the update. Parallels says that 100,000 Mac users tested the previews.
"Apple's M1 chip is a significant breakthrough for Mac users. The transition has been smooth for most Mac applications, thanks to Rosetta technology. However, virtual machines are an exception and thus Parallels engineers implemented native virtualization support for the Mac with M1 chip. This enables our users to enjoy the best Windows-on-Mac experience available," said Parallels SVP Nick Dobrovolskiy.
Parallels Desktop 16.5 is available in a subscription and perpetual license version. A new subscription costs $79.99 per year while a license runs $99.99.
Comments
I used an M1 MBA for a day here at the office and the performance just floored me. It made my new 10-Core i9 feel sluggish in some areas.
Parallels provides hooks from the applications and virtualized OS to the Mac OS. It doesn't translate the instruction set.
Windows and Linux distributions will work if they have been compiled for ARM. In the case of the Windows for ARM preview it has a Rosetta 2-like translation for X86 instructions.
That means, you won't be able to use the VM for older Mac OSes, other versions of Windows, etc.
Rehash MY user case; which is probably a significant number of user cases. Why did I buy Parallels? Why pay $$ for this program?
So, I can have the CAPABILITY to boot, and run WindowsXP, Windows 7 and Windows10 disk images, and either run programs on my Mac that are not available outside of the Windows environment, so I can play old games I purchased before I switched to the Apple ecosystem, and so I can play more games (emulation mode, which is surprisingly good) on my Mac, and play online with my friends who use PC games. Open Parallels, run any version of Windows I chose, launch Steam and play online games with my friends (games that are not available on the Mac.
For work, Excel on Windows has the capability to allow me to write scripts in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA); for reasons I don not understand, these advanced libraries are simply not available for the Mac community. So, while my Excel workbooks have ~60,000 lines of VBA to allow it to link into the corporate database and dateline quality assessment info, I cannot do the same thing with my MSFT Office license for Mac. So, I have 2 different licenses.
Now, I have no choice but have multiple computers at home. Because programs that USED TO work flawlessly, no longer function at all.
To be fair, this mess is not Parallels fault. They have done what they can. Now it is up to Microsoft to fully support ARM including the special instructions Apple built into Apple Silicon that speed performance of x86 emulation which are used in Rosetta. Microsoft is not moving fast enough to develop Windows ARM. There have been only a few updates in the past six months and none of them made any noticeable difference in the performance. Hopefully Microsoft wakes up soon and realizes that they will lose the game if they don't fully support ARM.
Most of your x86 and x86-64 software should work on Window on Arm through Microsoft’s compatibility software. It works like Rosetta 2 does on the M1. The biggest problems are that you can only get WoA through Microsoft’s early access program right now. No one knows if that will change and Microsoft isn’t saying much of anything. Also, x86-64 compatibility is currently only through the fast-track updates.
Until Microsoft allows sales of WoA, I wouldn’t buy an M1 to run Windows software in Parallels. It’s nice that Parallels for the M1 exists though.