Name: Parallels Desktop
Price: 79.99 $
Rating: 3.6977 (1182 reviews)

15 October 2018

If you're wondering, Parallels Desktop 13.3.2 works fine in Mojave. You don't need to pay for an upgrade at this time if you don't want to. Both Parallels and VMWare Fusion are constantly bugging us for an upgrade even when the current version works OK.

Version 14.0.1

11 answer(s)

Macinman

17 October 2018

I can't speak for Parallels Desktop, but, depending on the version of Fusion, and the new release of macOS / OS X, there were compatibility issues. The other thing to consider is, have you tried installing Mojave as a guest in both previous versions of the software (PD , Fusion?), that's usually where the new version makes a difference. Official support for the latest version of macOS.. I know people have been able to continue using the previous version in such cases, but it's not true for everyone.. With that said, I've upgraded to Fusion 11, mainly for the latest features, but more importantly bug fixes and security patches.

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

17 October 2018

You're probably right. I haven't tried installing Mojave as a guest OS in Parallels—or Fusion, which I've also used from time to time. I'm running Mojave on an external drive as a test platform. One complication I can think of is that the Mojave installer reformats a hard drive or SSD in APSF format, without asking permission first. Inside Parallels or Fusion you would have fewer options to revert to HFS+. APSF doesn't work well on an HDD. So, for testing purposes, I cloned it to another partition in HFS+ format on an external drive. I'm not sure how you would manage that in a VM.

Macinman

17 October 2018

I haven't had any issues with my Fusion Drive being converted to APFS as of Mojave upgrade.. High Sierra also formats a VM's drive to APFS. There again, haven't noticed any issues. FYI, my Plex Media is on an external 6TB drive connected by USB 3, and Have been running it as APFS since High Sierra, no problems at all. Granted, it's not running an operating system from that drive, but still adding media and playing back media has been flawless, and the drive is still in good standing without any filesystem corruption.

Just some thoughts.

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

18 October 2018

Professional testing shows that APFS degrades performance on mechanical hard drives and SSDs: https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/apfs-performance-lags-hfs/. That doesn't mean it won't work, but that it doesn't work as well. As this article demonstrates, APFS is slower on an SSD than on an SSD formatted as HFS+. That said, APSF offers many improvements over HFS+ and is clearly the future for Apple. Security is one of those improvements, but performance is not. And APFS is not yet compatible with Fusion Drives, like those on many new iMacs, not to mention my late 2013 iMac. If you spend the extra money for an iMac with an SSD, you're golden—in more ways then one. ;-)

Macinman

18 October 2018

The Fusion drive incompatibility was only applicable for High Sierra. Mojave has changed that. My Fusion in my late 2015 iMac was HFS+ until I upgraded to Mojave. Mojave converted it to APFS upon install. Has been working since release day of Mojave without issues.

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

18 October 2018

I called Apple tech support on this one. I was told that APSF was not compatible with Fusion Drives. During the beta program a Fusion Drive could support APFS, but the release version has removed that capability. In my reading on the subject I found that some people could get it to work on a FD, but most had nothing but trouble.

Macinman

18 October 2018

Did apple support reference Mojave? This was the case for High Sierra. Craig, even confirmed at WWDC that APFS was working on Fusion drives in Mojave. It is possible The support documentation being referenced was still from High Sierra, and not updated yet. Apple is a large company.

You are correct about the beta and it being removed on the final release, but that was High Sierra. I have talked to people who keep up with Apple and the person said that Mojave requires that it's install be on APFS to work at all. I will double checking the information provided, but I think you are going by outdated information here.

Macinman

18 October 2018

Here are some articles regarding Mojave, and Fusion drives, and APFS:
https://eclecticlight.co/2018/06/04/apfs-will-finally-be-supported-on-fusion-drives-in-macos-10-14-mojave/
https://www.imore.com/macos-mojave-faq

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

18 October 2018

That leaves me wondering whose information is out-of-date. Because I cloned the APSF install of Mojave to an HFS+ partition and it works just fine. Nor can all the reports of APSF not working on Fusion drives be wrong. I grant I may have confused the status of APSF on High Sierra and Mojave, but Apple has done nothing to clarify the situation. The tech support person I talked with this morning took some time to research the issue so he wasn't just talking off the top of his head. Though he said he hadn't heard the question before, if that adds any clarity.

As for those articles about Mojave, they say that APFS will be supported on Fusion Drives, not that it is. Apple is well known for changing their mind at the last minute. I could find nothing current on the question on the web, or on Apple's web site, which is why I called tech support. So out-of-date information may be all there is. Few of us know any Apple insiders to consult, by the way. No disrespect intended, but secondhand information isn't much to go on. So, caveat emptor. If it works for you, then great. I'm not willing to go there yet.

As for installing Mojave in Parallels (of Fusion), a clean install wouldn't tell me much. My test platform uses a clone of my main system and my internal drive doesn't have room for a VM that large—which is why I use an external drive for testing purposes.

Macinman

18 October 2018

I agree with what you are saying, and as far as PD and Fusion, that's a different issue. I just wanted to close this conversation in saying, that according to Google search, there was no direct information to be found on the subject, that's what I was going for. As far as the iMoore article, there are people who work there, who also do MacBreaWeekly which is a TwitTV show which is a reputable source, so that was the best source I was able to find in the circumstances. As far as Apple insiders, I'm not a paying developer, but I did do the public beta program for Mojave. Anyway, for now what I offered the best I could to help. Hopefully official documentation will show up soon, just for clarification. Have a great day / evening!

B-Jefferson-Le-Blanc

19 October 2018

@ Macinman: in a roundabout way, then, we arrived at more or less the same place. Since it works on your Fusion Drive, Mojave may be compatible; however, Apple has had nothing definitive to say on the subject. I also searched for an answer and came up with nothing current. Which leads me to suspect your successful install of Mojave was fortuitous rather than indicative. I also tested the Mojave beta with dubious results. The APSF version was a slug on my HDD partition. On an HFS+ partition it worked somewhat better. The release version is better still but there are certain software incompatibilities holding me back. Frankly I've been cautious about macOS upgrades since OS X 10.10 Yosemite. It was a mess and I never did get it to work on my iMac. I had to go directly from Mavericks to El Capitan, which was fine. Sierra works OK too. But I have software issues with High Sierra as well, so I'm sticking with 10.12.6 for the time being.

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Really useful and powerful app. I just bought the upgrade license with the blackfriday discount. I tested ( once again ) VMware Fusion and parallels: For me, parallels is really better. More customization options of sharing between OS'es, and it performs better. Although, it's quite expensive for a home usage. I try to upgrade only every 2-3y when it's possible.

Version 15.1.2

Naoh

21 March 2019

Parallels 14.1.3 is available.

Version 14.1.2

Derekcurrie

07 February 2019

A comment of annoyance: If you check out the release notes for WINE v4.0 you'll find:
"What's new in Wine 4.0. . . . Initial support for Direct3D 12 is implemented. Direct3D 12 support requires the vkd3d library, and a Vulkan-capable graphics card."

Meanwhile, we've been making requests to Parallels, VMWare and Oracle for YEARS to implement DirectX 11 and 12 capability, with no likelihood of it ever happening. And yet, the WINE project figured out how to do it. Explain that to me. ?

Like (2)

Version 14.1.1

stevend

04 January 2019

Strange to list 14.1.0 as a new update, because it is an update from months ago!

Like (1)

Version 14.1.0

Mcr

20 December 2018

Guys, The following article sheds light on why Virtualization systems have not been able to solve the Direct X 11 and higher problem. https://www.parallels.com/blogs/directx-and-parallels-desktop-13/ Now Apple has made no secret that it is deprecating support for OpenGL, that Metal is the future. But Metal would seem NOT to have the necessary APIs or mapping to solve the problem either, as Metal 1.0 has been around since 2014 and Metal 2.0 since mid-2017, plenty of time for Fusion, Parallels, etc, to figure out Direct X 11+ support, ASSUMING Metal 2.0 was capable of solving the issues. So, it would seem Metal 2.0 is still lacking something. I'm not a graphics expert, but my understanding is that Vulkan is possibly the answer to a lot of these cross platform graphics support issues. Metal and DX sitting on top of Vulkan would provide a bridge, across multiple OS platforms; the graphics version of the 'write once, run anywhere' idea.

Parallels Desktop v14.0.1 is now available. It is compatible with macOS 10.14 Mojave and adds several new features.

Version 13.3.2

[this review is for version 14]: switching back to Parallels 14 after moving to Fusion 8, 10 post Parallels 12.
This version is a big winner (vs. Fusion, including the current 2018 Tech preview). Coherence integration is so much superior to the shaky Fusion Unity view, it's not even funny. The entire experience is a lot smoother (on 2018 i9 MBP with 32GB RAM), more responsive, and has more integration options.
Network performance to local/Mac host folders is 100x faster, no delays (unlike Fusion).
Massive thumbs up for Parallels.
Only downside: More expensive for the Pro version on the annual subscription, and doesn't cover two machines like Fusion (but worth it).

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