Parallels Desktop is a popular virtualization software for Mac computers. It enables Mac owners to run Windows, Linux, and other operating systems on their PCs instead of the built-in macOS. 

Parallels Desktop uses hypervisor technology that maps the host computer's hardware resources to that of a virtual machine. Hence, users can create virtual machines on their Macs with other operating systems and switch between the host and virtual machines anytime.

This August, Parallels released an updated version of its software, the Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac. This update brought several new features, such as compatibility with the upcoming macOS Sonoma 14 upgrade. We’ll examine these new features and other core features of Parallels Desktop to see if its still one of the best virtual machine software platforms out there.

Parallels Desktop: Plans and pricing

Parallels has a convoluted pricing structure. It offers different pricing tiers for individuals, businesses, students, and educators, alongside special offers for military, government, and nonprofit personnel.

Individuals can choose between the Standard or Pro edition. The former costs $100 annually for a subscription or $130 for a one-time purchase. The latter costs $120 annually for a subscription; there’s no one-time purchase option. 

The Standard edition is limited to 8 GB vRAM for a virtual machine, while the Pro edition allows up to 128 GB vRAM for a single machine.  The Standard edition supports a maximum of 4 virtual machines on a single Mac PC, while Pro supports 32.

The Business edition is built for enterprises, as the name suggests. It costs $150 annually for each user. The perk of this edition is that businesses don’t need to pay for further upgrades, while Standard or Pro edition users must pay for upgrades.

Parallels offers discounts for the Standard and Pro editions for verified students and educators. You can use your school's email address to acquire the Standard edition for $50 annually or the Pro edition for $60, representing a 50% discount on the usual price.

Parallels also run special offers for verified military, government, and nonprofit staff, bringing the Standard edition's price down to $75 annually and the Pro edition to $90 annually, representing 25% discounts on the usual price.

Every Parallels purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can get a refund within this period if you aren’t satisfied with your purchase.  

Parallels Desktop: Features

The Parallels Desktop 19 update added several new features, including

macOS Sonoma compatibility

macOS Sonoma is an upcoming major release of macOS that Apple announced in June 2023. It is the successor to macOS Ventura. The beta developer version was unveiled in July 2023 ahead of a full release in September.

The Parallels Desktop 19 update added compatibility with macOS Sonoma, creating workarounds to several technical limitations that would have occurred with the update. 

For instance, in macOS Sonoma, Apple removed the CGPSConverter module that converts PostScript files; this module allows Windows virtual machines hosted on a Mac to print documents. Hence, Parallels' engineers rebuilt the Shared Printing feature to use the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), enabling Windows virtual machines hosted on a Mac to continue printing documents as usual.

Password-less sign-in powered by Touch ID

Parallels integrated Apple’s Touch ID with the latest update of its virtual machine tool. You can now sign into your Windows virtual machines using your fingerprint. You can create different fingerprint passwords for different virtual machines on the same Mac. 

Touch ID uses sensors to scan, read, and recognize fingerprints. If multiple people share the same Mac computer, they can protect their respective virtual machines with fingerprint authentication.

This feature is helpful for organizations where multiple staff may share virtual machines on a single iMac.

Design update

Parallels updated the design of its software to keep up with Apple’s high standards. Firstly, you'll notice a new app icon that looks better than the previous one. Parallels also addressed a mysterious hole in the app’s left corner that users often wondered about. This left hole now spots a rectangle with a dot representing a container, the window holding your apps regardless of what operating systems you access it from.

OpenGL improvements

OpenGL is a popular API for rendering 2D and 3D graphics. Many graphics apps and CAD tools use OpenGL to render designs for users. The latest Parallels Desktop update comes with improved OpenGL support up to version 4.1. 

This improved support allows CAD software previously incompatible with Parallels' Windows virtual machines to become compatible. You can now comfortably run the likes of VariCAD, Deswik.CAD, Vectorworks Vision 2023, etc., on your Mac.

The latest update also significantly improved performance for ArcGIS Pro, a popular geographic information system software.

x86 docker containers

With the latest update, Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition now offers a built-in Ubuntu Linux Arm virtual machine configured to run x86 Docker containers. Parallels has made it much easier for developers to build software for the x86 platform by offering a built-in Ubuntu Linux virtual machine.

You can download this new virtual machine from the Free Systems section of Parallels Desktop’s Installation Assistant.

Microsoft Intune update

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint management service that allows companies to manage corporate devices and employees to connect to corporate apps and resources easily.

In previous versions of Parallels Desktop, IT administrators could only use an external mass deployment tool to install Microsoft Intune on Mac PCs.  However, with the latest update, IT administrators can install Intune directly from the Parallels My Account web app.

The new update makes it easy for businesses to use Intune to manage virtual machines hosted on Parallels Desktop. 

Improved controls for Apple Silicon users

In 2020, Apple began producing Mac computers with its own chip, Apple Silicon, and stopped depending on Intel processors. The Parallels Desktop 19 update added some improvements to utilize Apple’s powerful processor. 

You can now install a macOS virtual machine via an IPSW file. You can also now use two-finger Trackpad gestures to scroll and zoom in a virtual machine. 

With the upcoming macOS Sonoma update, display resolutions will automatically adjust when you resize a virtual machine window. 

To run Parallels Desktop, your Mac must have an Intel Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, Intel Core M or Xeon processor, on any Apple Silicon chip. You also need at least 4GB of RAM and 16 GB of free space for each virtual machine. Your operating system must be macOS Mojave 10.14.6 or newer.

Mac users primarily use Parallels Desktop to create Windows virtual machines. It currently supports Windows 10, 11 (Pro and Enterprise versions included), and Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2922. It also supports non-Windows operating systems, including Ubuntu Linux.

Parallels Desktop: Interface

Parallels Desktop is famous for being user-friendly and easy to navigate. However, the initial setup is the tricky part. You may get overwhelmed by the volume of options and settings required to install a new virtual machine. But, the good news is that Parallels provides a comprehensive Knowledge Base on its website to help users facing any issues.  

Parallels Desktop: Support

Parallels offers customers 24/7 support via telephone, live chat, and email. Every subscription package unlocks access to 24/7 phone, chat, and email support as long as the subscription is valid.

In contrast, lifetime licenses come with only 30 days of phone and chat support and 2 years of email support. 

You can also seek support from the official Parallels community forum. This forum has thousands of users who often exchange solutions to each other’s problems. 

Parallels Desktop: The competition

VMware Fusion is one of the most formidable competitors to Parallels Desktop. It allows you to install and run Windows and Linux virtual machines on a Mac like its competitor. 

VMware offers a free version of Fusion for personal use but charges money for the enterprise versions. The paid plans are more expensive than Parallels Desktop’s, starting from $199 annually. Yet, Parallels Desktop is easier to use and offers better speed and performance for Windows virtual machines.

Parallels Desktop: Final verdict

Parallels Desktop is one of the best virtualization tools every Mac user can choose, especially if you want to run Windows 10 or 11 virtual machines. The personal plan is costly, and Parallels requires payments to upgrade your software. Yet, it is the most user-friendly, performance-optimized virtualization software for Mac computers. 

We've featured the best Business Macs.

For over 20 years, Swiss technology company Acronis has been developing top-notch security software. In October 2021, Acronis partnered with Addigy, provider of the cloud-based Apple device management platform, for its latest integration of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud.

Amongst many other inventions, Acronis' home country is famous for its exceptional timepieces. Despite the rather unwieldy name Acronis claims that its Cyber Protect Cloud works along similar lines, incorporating many moving parts like anti-malware, antivirus, and endpoint management in one solution.

The question then, is whether Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is one of the best endpoint protection software platforms? Let's find out.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: Plans and pricing

The more basic product, Acronis Cyber Protect itself comes in 3 main pricing tiers. The 'standard' version costs $85 and is designed for 'small to medium' environments. The 'Advanced' version is for 'large IT environments and costs $129. The 'Backup Advanced' tier costs $109. Each tier comes with 50GB of Acronis cloud storage though if you opt for any of these, you'll need to set up your own management server.

Alternatively you can sign up for Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, whereby the management server is located at one of the company's own data centers. There is a detailed pricing page  for Cyber Protect Cloud but if you're looking for a rough estimate you'll be disappointed. 

In broad terms there are two main ways to pay for Cyber Protect Cloud. One is 'per workload'. In other words you pay per number of devices or workloads protected. This includes obvious appliances like laptops as well as virtual machines and servers. Acronis claims this pricing model is best for clients who have a smaller number of devices with larger amounts of data on each one (servers come to mind). You can also choose to store backup data in one of Acronis’ 52+ global data centers, which is charged separately per GB.

While we're on the subject of Gigabytes, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud services can also be purchased based on the volume of data being protected. The company claims this pricing model is best for organizations that have more workloads to protect with smaller amounts of data on each one - an office with individual workstations for instance. You can also save money by storing data in a client-side location rather than with Acronis' own data centers. Volume discounts are also available. 

There's a minimum monthly fee depending on where clients are based and the currency in which they. Acronis encourages interested visitors to their site to use its price calculator. 

Acronis also offer a free 30-day trial of Cyber Protect, without requiring any payment information upfront. 

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: Features

We particularly enjoyed the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud overview video, which, despite the tinny audio, neatly sums up the product's main features. 

As we'd expect from an endpoint security platform, Acronis has AI-based detection routines and analysis tools to detect and prevent malware and ransomware, brought together in 'Acronis Active Protection'.

Back in 2019, the platform even came 2nd place in a competition for which endpoint security products could best detect cryptojacking - the unauthorized use of someone else's computer to mine cryptocurrency. 

Unlike many platforms we've reviewed, there's a clear emphasis on helping organizations to recover lost data. Cyber Protect can actually perform backups of an entire endpoint to the cloud via its agent software. The platform also supports a range of backup sources including  NAS and network shares. 

Perhaps the most lucrative feature of the platform however is the fact that it can be extended further with "advanced packs". These are add-ons which extend Cyber Protect's security further, such as "Advanced Email Security", which includes anti-phishing and anti-spoofing engines, as well as better protection against zero day exploits. These "packs" are available for purchase separately. The Acronis product page gives full details of each one's function and you can request a quote for these add-ons via the pricing calculator we mentioned earlier.  

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: Setup

In order to download the free trial, we filled in a registration form and were quickly sent an activation link. This automatically led us to the Acronis Cyber Protect cloud console, which immediately displayed a button to 'Add Devices'. 

This was impressive as other platforms we've reviewed make users hunt around for the correct link to deploy agent software.  We noted that agent software is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS though deployment on multiple devices is supported on Windows only. Linux servers are also supported, though sadly there's no Linux client for endpoints.

After downloading the miniature installer, the necessary files were downloaded from Acronis in less than 2 minutes. We then had to click to "Register Workload" and confirm the registration code in order for the device to be enrolled by the cloud console. It's not clear what security benefit comes from this. We also noticed the device took around 5 minutes to provision, which is a relatively long time compared to other endpoint security platforms we've reviewed.

Once the agent was up and running we ignored its suggestion to apply the 'default protection plan' and chose to customize our own instead. This led us to the cloud console, where we applied the 'Cyber Protect Essentials'. True to its name, this includes features like real time threat detection.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: Interface

The Acronis agent has a very threadbare interface. Clicking on the system tray icon will display notifications such as the fact that real-time antivirus has been enabled. Clicking into the 'settings' area by default only contains options to encrypt backups and configure a proxy server. 

The Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud console, on the other hand, is well laid out with just the right amount of data to provide helpful information without overcrowding the screen.

Navigation between sections is managed via the left-hand pane. The 'Monitoring' section, for instance, has an 'Overview' option which gives a rundown of all essential endpoint data. This includes the protection status of your endpoints, active alerts summary, patch installation status, and disk health status. This is also a good area to view the 'CyberFit' score Acronis' awards to each machine based on its perceived level of security. 

If you click into the "Devices" section and select an appliance, a right hand pane appears offering links to helpful functions like recovering data and viewing the aforementioned CyberFit score. Our only small criticism of this pane is that it overlaps the 'Status' message for devices, so you need to hover your mouse over it to view the overall message.

The 'Protection' section also deserves special mention, as it has a dedicated 'Quarantine' area where you can view suspicious files isolated by the platform. 

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: Performance

Earlier we mentioned that we activated the 'Cyber Protect Essentials' plan using the Acronis Cyber Protect Console. This was because although there's also an 'Acronis Antivirus' plan, activating it didn't seem to install any new software.

Our first test for endpoint security platforms involves trying to download a fake computer virus provided by the good people of EICAR. We downloaded the file in compressed (ZIP) format using the Microsoft Edge browser on our Windows 11 test machine. Our first test after activating the 'Acronis Antivirus' plan didn't seem to have any effect but when we switched to 'Cyber Protect Essentials' (which includes real time protection), the file was immediately detected and quarantined.

Our next test involved using a new, real computer virus that we'd caught in the wild. We do this to check that an endpoint security platform can detect malware based on its features and behavior instead of just comparing files against a database of signatures. This time Acronis Cyber Protect passed our test with flying colors, immediately quarantining the file and correctly recognizing it as a 'trojan' virus.

Our final test was to log into the Cyber Protect cloud console to see which alerts had been generated. The 'Overview' section provided a quick summary of the malware files, while the previously mentioned 'Quarantine' area of the 'Protection' section gave a full rundown. From here it's also possible to delete infected files or restore legitimate files that have been incorrectly classed as malware. 

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: Final verdict

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud may be difficult to price up but there's much to love about the platform. In the first instance, setup can be done in moments: you can even set your password when you fill in the registration form, so can log into the cloud console right away.

Although the agent software doesn't come with many configuration options, we were also delighted at how easy it was to deploy, as the console immediately took us to the download link on first login.

In our tests threat detection was a little off at first but we put that down to our decision not to deploy the default basic protection settings, which would have stopped the malware in its tracks. We were also impressed to see clear detection alerts in the main cloud console, not to mention an email a short while later that mentioned the infected files as part of the 'Daily Status Report'.

The overall interface is very clear and doesn't overwhelm users with options, though as we said Acronis may want to rethink placing panes on both sides of the screen in the 'Devices' section. 

Although there's no custom firewall or e-mail scanning, this can be added via the "packs" we mentioned earlier. We're also impressed that the agent software is supported on a number of endpoint devices, with Linux being the only exception. 

Given that there's a free, no-obligation 30-day trial, there's no reason not to take Acronis Cyber Protect for a test drive yourself to see if it meets your organization's needs. 

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