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Maybe it was the best-in-class build quality, or the pleasant MacOS user experience, but one way or another you decided to invest in a Mac.
As enjoyable as MacOS is, a day will come when you might need to open up a Windows exclusive application. When that day comes, you’ll be faced with a decision. Do you partition your drive, fire up Boot Camp, and install a full-fledged version of Windows? Or do you just buy Parallels 13?
There are other solutions, but these two rise to the top of any Windows-on-Mac discussion. During our Parallels 13 review, we saw firsthand why that is — and why Parallels might be the best option for most people.
The divide between Windows and MacOS isn’t as stark as it used to be. Outside of gaming, you can find an analogous version of most Windows software nestled in the warm embrace of the MacOS App Store, or elsewhere online. All the major productivity suites are on MacOS and Windows — Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, and of course Google’s G Suite.
There’s still cases where you’ll need a regular install of Windows, though. A number of specialized software tools only support one platform or another, and software developers often need access to a Windows environment for testing. That’s where Parallels comes in.
Installation is quick and painless, and it doesn’t require any messing around with hard drive partitions or boot loaders. You install it like any other MacOS application — after you pay the entry fee of $80, or $100 per year, for the Pro version. Click through a few menus, and that’s it. The rest of the installation goes on auto-pilot, downloads Windows 10, and breezes right through all the setup.
Parallels is great at doing heavy lifting in the background, out of sight.
Installing a Twitter client requires more interaction than installing Parallels 13, and that’s a good thing. Parallels is great at doing heavy lifting in the background, out of sight.
Contrast the installation process to Boot Camp, and it’s easy to see why Parallels 13 is the more attractive — if expensive — option for some. To install Boot Camp, you’ll need partition your hard drive, reboot your Mac a few times, and then deal with installing Mac-specific drivers on your Windows install. Even then, the trackpad never feels quite right.
Once it’s installed, Parallels 13 offers the full functionality of Windows 10 in parallel with MacOS. You can fire up Parallels from your applications menu, or you can just click your new Windows folder from the dock, and jump right into any Windows app, as if it were just a part of your MacOS experience.
The seamless transition between Windows and MacOS has long been the draw of Parallels, and the latest version upholds that storied tradition. Windows 10 is never more than a click away, and your Windows apps even live in your dock, just like your MacOS apps.
On top of that, Parallels 13 goes one step further. With the “Coherence” mode, Parallels actually does a decent job of merging with MacOS proper. The Windows 10 panel goes away, and your Windows taskbar icons jump up on your MacOS menu bar. Your Windows apps even live inside your MacOS desktop environment, just like your regular MacOS apps.
Parallels and its Coherence mode are very cool, but they require a substantial amount of system resources. We did our testing on a 2016 MacBook Pro 15 — with an Intel Core i7-6820HQ and 16GB of RAM — and Coherence mode caused significant slowdown over time. Sites had trouble loading, while Excel and Word started to cry for mercy, exhibiting substantial input delay.
If you do need it, you’ll find Parallels 13 is nearly perfect solution.
That said, slowdown was the only real issue we encountered during our testing, and Parallels does an admirable job of managing system resources when you’re not actively running Windows apps. When you tab out of a Windows app, Parallels puts it on the back burner. Your Mac won’t be quite as slow, but there’s still a bit of input lag.
Other than that, Parallels ran every Windows 10 application flawlessly during our tests. Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and even Steam ran without any issues. In fact, when we had Photoshop open in MacOS and Windows 10 with Coherence mode active, it was hard to tell which one was which.
It’s important to point out that running Windows 10 through Parallels is a bit more limited than running Windows 10 through a Boot Camp install. Parallels is a virtual machine — an emulation of a Windows machine — and Boot Camp just installs a regular version of Windows 10 on your MacBook or iMac hardware.
The Boot Camp version of Windows 10 can interface directly with your hardware, so it’s always going to be a quicker, more robust option and the best option for gaming on a Mac or MacBook. Gaming through Parallels is… ill-advised.
Advanced, graphics-heavy games like Overwatch — if you can get them to run at all — will be unplayable. That’s not what Parallels is meant for, so remember that if you were hoping Parallels might offer an easy path to gaming on your Mac.
Overall, Parallels 13 does an excellent job of integrating Windows 10 into MacOS. It’s seamless, fast — usually — and reliable. If you need access to a Windows 10 environment for software testing, or just one or two applications, Parallels is an excellent choice.
With that said, for most users, the price of entry will be too high for what you get. Parallels 13 is an excellent piece of software, but the utility of the software for most users is debatable. Parallels targets a set of power users that need frequent access to both operating systems.
For most people, Parallels is an answer in search of a question – but if you do need it, you’ll find Parallels 13 is nearly perfect solution.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.