Parallels desktop for mac

Hey, knowledge workers—ever feel like you’re walking a tightrope between productivity and security? You are not alone. You all have a challenging task in the current workplace environment. You’re probably being asked to achieve more, and work faster while also needing to be more vigilant than ever about cybersecurity concerns. Learn how Parallels Desktop can help.

Ransomware and phishing scams are rampant, and it only takes one risky click to cause major problems for your data, your device, and even your company. Yikes. No pressure, right?

There is some good news. (Okay, it’s great news.) Parallels Desktop can help you balance productivity and security like an absolute pro. Parallels Desktop is a favorite among knowledge workers who want to use their preferred applications and devices to tackle their to-do lists—without worrying that they’ll be vulnerable to extra risk.

The Magic of Parallels Desktop

With Parallels Desktop, you can power up your Mac to run Windows on a virtual desktop. It’s like having two computers in one so you can work, develop, study, test, and play with security and ease. Take Hillary Moralez, an IT Helpdesk Manager at Alludo who prefers to use a MacBook but needs access to Windows-based applications to do her job. Hillary uses Parallels Desktop to access Active Directory so she can easily manage headcount and security for her hybrid team, right from her MacBook. Hillary also uses Parallels Desktop to troubleshoot IT problems—even if the device that needs support is located on the other side of the world. Hillary spins up a Virtual Machine (VM) that replicates the troubled device so she can investigate and resolve problems as though the device were physically in front of her. (Honestly, it’s kind of magical.)

Venture out there—Parallels has your back

Hillary isn’t the only one flexing wizardry skills with Parallels Desktop.  Alludo Project Manager Ekaterina Zelenskaya is an intrepid tech explorer who loves running tests and trying new apps. She knows that this often means getting into apps from unreliable sources, and she has zero interest in threatening the security of her device or data. When she’s in exploration mode, Ekaterina hops into a VM, knowing that her native OS remains secure. It’s like having a safety net for tech experiments. Ekaterina can dive in, test, tinker, and make a virtual mess—and with Parallels Desktop, the reset button is just a click away.

This remarkable tool has become a game-changer for countless professionals, empowering them to navigate the complex world of cybersecurity with unparalleled confidence.

Alludo’s Director of Corporate Communications, Beatrice Vogel, shares Ekaterina’s penchant for bold tech exploration. She regularly tries and tests new apps and programs. She loves that she can build a VM for each one and then eliminate those that don’t suit her needs, without cluttering up her original machine or exposing it to unnecessary risk. Bea once downloaded an app with questionable security, but thanks to Parallels Desktop, she was within a VM as usual. She activated the highest security settings within that virtual machine, so her Mac remained untouchable. It’s like having a virtual bouncer, ensuring only safe and trusted entities get past the velvet rope.

Security features for work and play

To recap, Parallels Desktop offers a fantastic suite of security features that help you work, experiment, and explore confidently.

Virtual Machine Snapshots: Capture your virtual machine’s exact state, providing a quick and easy way to revert to a previous configuration should anything go awry.

Isolated Environments: Keep your native OS and data separate from your virtual machine, ensuring a secure barrier between the two.

Encrypted Virtual Machines: Protect sensitive data with robust encryption, ensuring it remains safe from prying eyes.

Parallels Desktop offers extensive procedures and mechanisms that protect a VM and host computer data from unintended or unauthorized access, use, disclosure, modification, or disruption. Parallels Desktop ensures safe virtualization through a variety of mechanisms. It provides safe VM use and guarantees the protection of transferred data, helping to ensure error-free operations every step of the way.

These Alludo team members can attest that Parallels Desktop isn’t just for developers. It enables anyone in any profession to venture boldly into new apps, helping them find the tools and resources that let them do their best work and balance productivity and security. Elevate your security, embrace the virtual world, and let your Mac roam free without fear.

Psst: This post is part of our #MyParallelsStory series. We’ve been highlighting the different ways people have found to work better and live better using Parallels. We’d love to hear your #MyParallelsStory and learn how using Parallels Desktop to balance productivity and security makes your life easier.  Share your experience on social media today, using #MyParallelsStory.   Or try Parallels Desktop for free today.

Every organization encounters a moment when rapid growth becomes a necessity – a pivot towards achieving business objectives that demands the swift onboarding of experienced talents. For us, this meant scaling our engineering team quickly and efficiently.  

Last year presented us with a unique and exciting challenge: to rejuvenate and expand our engineering team.  Our reasons for this accelerated expansion were diverse: 

• Rejuvenating our team 
• Transitioning a proof-of-concept or minimum viable product to a production-ready state 
• Growing our product naturally and, incorporating new features and integrations 
• Expediting cross-functional initiatives 

Over the course of six months, we hired 50 inspired talents and integrated them into our team. We did this by creating a new center of excellence, establishing a distributed team management approach and implementing processes to monitor progress and identify opportunities for growth.  

Center of excellence 

Our aim was clear: to identify new talent and seamlessly integrate them into our existing processes. Coupled with our strategic need for greater diversity and diversification, establishing a new center of excellence in a different location became an attractive solution. 

Thus, the first part of this year was an intense period for our engineering team. Our current roadmap and long-term plans triggered the search for talent in a new location: India. Preliminary research indicated promising prospects for fulfilling all our hiring needs in this region. 

Building efficient interview pipeline 

The first step of this journey was building an efficient interview pipeline. We realized that our standard interview workflow was not sufficient in this new, competitive market. To successfully scale our engineering team, maintain the interest of highly experienced talent, and speed up the hiring process, we implemented changes in our workflow: 

• Shorten our interview cycle, combining technical and managerial interviews 
• Centralize daily slots for scheduling interviews 
• Adapt tasks for a quick overview of technical expertise 
• Minimize language miscommunication, by providing written forms of questions and tasks 
• Create a special introduction to our team and company, emphasizing why we are the best choice for the candidate 
• Rewrite job descriptions for certain positions to meet the local talent pool 
• Hire a set of senior talent to help accelerate the next level of hires.  

In addition, we found that having engineering leaders visit the new location to be extremely helpful. As a remote-first company, we understand how important (particularly at the very beginning) it is to provide efficient collaboration with the new team, meet each person who joined us, and get valuable feedback from personal communication. All of this lays a solid foundation for long-term cooperation, integrating our corporate values and inspiring joint product development to our growing team. 

Once we had clear JDs in place and enlisted the support of a strong recruiting partner, we moved onto the next challenge: determining the best type of team management approach.   

Distributed team management 

Different approaches can be adopted when building and scaling an engineering team in a new location, each with its unique advantages and challenges. Each is dependent on the type of tasks and the necessary depth of teams’ integration for your product support. One approach is to build a separate team that can operate in an outsource-like way to be responsible for separate components/subprojects only.  

Another approach is for when you have highly innovative products with specific areas of experience, like application, cross operating system integration and virtualization levels for our Parallels Desktop for Mac. For this type of experience, that requires deep integration knowledge exchange between team members, inheritance of best practices of research and problem investigation, you can stick to a strongly integrated approach, where newcomers would be integrated into the existing organizational chart, reporting to existing engineering leaders. 

Historically (having M&A in our background) our teams were located by projects, with parts of the teams in other locations. We already had several centers of excellence for RnD, mostly in Europe, Mauritius and North America. 

From the start of this growth journey, our engineering managers have been supportive and interested in the strongly integrated approach to keeping teams united. Here are some talking points we used to discuss the advantages and challenges of a distributed team, with our engineering leads:

Advantages:  

• Diversification 
• Diversity – new culture – new vision – new ideas 
• New time zone: extended coverage for high quality product support. This brings extra hours in communication with the support team and customers from different time zones for deep problem investigations. 
• Duty infrastructure maintenance 

Challenges:  

• Organizing your workday to manage a team in different time zones (code review process, regular stand ups and design meetings) 
• Managing cultural differences 

• Training: If you have a corporate learning platform, (in our case) you can assign special trainings (or using external resources) that will help to solve challenges, such as Principles of Distributed team management, Scrum of Scrums, Asynchronous communication skills.   
• Cultural differences: To cover the cultural difference challenge and simplify the integration, we revised some of our initial roles and brought in additional local managers from India with distributed team management and international business experience. The goal was for them to help existing managers build an efficient and adaptive environment. This approach brought existing culture to newcomers, while maintaining local culture to the united team without stress. 

Onboarding and mentoring 

Each of our engineering teams strive to have formal documentation, design documents and onboarding instructions readily available. However, with this new influx in hiring, we needed to review, renew and recreate some of our onboarding materials. Here are the steps we took to do so:  

• Communicate with other divisions for help. In our case we have a rich product training base for our support team.  This allowed us to adapt some of the materials and include them in the onboarding program. A good understanding of the product and the possibility to try customer roles are essential for further successful product development. We also asked our product team to help with product training. This helped improve cross-functional collaboration within the teams.  

• Assign a tech buddy from the existing team for each newcomer. Determine areas of deep expertise/areas for improvement for each newcomer. This will also help with effective mapping of areas of responsibility. It is particularly important when you have several similar positions, such as two to three OS Integration Software Developer positions.  Because the depth of experience in Windows, macOS, Linux for newcomers is different, the efficient mapping will allow you to emphasize advantages from previous experience. Organizing a tech buddy program is also a good opportunity to identify team members who are interested in mentoring/management as an intermediate step to further engineering manager roles and to provide them with growth opportunities. 
   
• Setup sync meetings to track team integration progress and gain feedback from internal and external people for the RnD division. 

• Apply the CFR (Conversation Feedback Recognition) technique on a regular basis. 

Personally, it was my first visit in India, and it’s firmly remained an important milestone in the development of our engineering team! It’s an amazing feeling when you realize that several months ago there were just thoughts to have a new center of excellence, but today you can see many new professionals around who are really interested in making your product better, suggesting new ideas and getting energized. 

Scaling your engineering team is a powerful opportunity to revitalize processes and bring fresh perspectives to the table. We look forward to the adventures and success this new chapter will bring. 

Get your gaming face on. Discover one of the easiest ways to play PC games on a Mac – it’s the best thing since getting unlimited lives or finally beating that level you’ve been working on since the dawn of time. 

Ah, the classic Mac vs. PC debate: it’s the ultimate showdown of tech titans, each with their own superpowers. But what if we said you could have the best of both worlds? Yep, you heard it right. Using Parallels Desktop for gaming, you can wield your Mac’s sleek sophistication and unleash the whole empire of PC games.

Why pick sides when you can have it all?

Listen up, Mac enthusiasts—we get it. You love the elegance of your Mac, the smooth interface, and maybe that feeling of belonging to an exclusive club. But let’s be real—PC gaming is on another level, with many exclusive games that are super popular for a good reason.

So, what’s a die-hard Mac lover to do? The answer: choose both.

Enter Parallels Desktop: The ultimate game changer

Picture this: you’ve finished work for the day, and you’re seriously hankering for some gaming. (We’ve been there!) Maybe it’s the call of an epic RPG, the adrenaline rush of a fast-paced head-to-head battle, or the allure of a strategy game. Your friends just told you about the newest game they love. But hold on—like so many other great games, this one is only available on PC. Cue the dramatic music.

Before you start splurging on a separate PC just for gaming (that’s like getting a whole new apartment for your shoe collection—a bit much), let us introduce you to Parallels Desktop—your new gaming BFF. Using Parallels Desktop for gaming, you can run Windows and Mac applications side by side, like the ultimate multitasking wizard you were always meant to be.

Get ready to game like never before

Here’s the scoop on how this magical tech potion works. Parallels Desktop creates a virtual Windows machine right on your Mac. This means you can install and run Windows applications, including games, on your Mac as if you were using a Windows PC.

It’s like having a secret door to the PC gaming realm; all you need to do is knock (well, click) to enter. No need for a separate machine. You don’t even need to reboot your system to switch from Mac to Windows and back again.

Alludo Engineering Manager Ivan Moroz says, “I like gaming, and after moving to another country with nothing but my Mac, I realized I could still use it to play games with my friends thanks to Parallels Desktop.” That’s what we like to hear, Ivan.

1-2-3 go!

Setting up Parallels Desktop is smoother than butter on a hot pancake. Once you’re inside your virtual Windows realm, you won’t even notice the borders. Parallels Desktop integrates Windows applications seamlessly into your Mac environment. Drag, drop, copy, paste—it’s even easier than beating the intro level.

Using Parallels Desktop for gaming is so intuitive that a child can use it. Seriously. When we started gathering stories for the #MyParallelsStory series, we heard from a parent whose 9-year-old son loves the challenge and excitement of PC games. Certain games are a great fit for him as a neurodivergent individual, and he thrives when he plays them. They’re a total Mac family, but that’s not a problem. With Parallels Desktop, this precocious kiddo can play his favorite PC games on the family Mac computer without a hitch.

Bonus: Parallels Desktop is so efficient that it’s designed to run Windows smoothly and efficiently on your Mac without negatively impacting performance. (Nobody wants their game to buffer when you’re at a critical moment!) The software uses advanced virtualization technology to optimize resource usage and ensure the Mac and Windows operating systems run seamlessly together.

Consider your gaming FOMO vanquished. Product Manager Dmitry Geynisman says, “With Parallels Desktop, I can play my favorite Windows games on my Mac. Half-Life, GTA V, Age of Empires II, Rocket League, and more!” Pure wizardry.

Gaming is just the beginning

Parallels Desktop has totally changed the game—and not just for gaming. It’s your all-access pass to a world of Windows (and Linux) applications, whether you need them for work, creativity, or just exploring new horizons.

💼 Need to run a Windows-only business app? Done.

🎨 Want to use that specialized design software? Easy peasy.

📚 Curious about what your PC-loving friends are raving about? Jump right in.

The wrap-up: your quest awaits

So, there you have it, fellow Mac fans and aspiring PC gamers.  One of the best ways to play PC games on a Mac is with Parallels Desktop. It’s like, well, a parallel universe where you don’t need to choose sides. Enjoy the elegance of your Mac, sprinkle in the magic of PC gaming, and conquer new realms of productivity and creativity, all within the comfort of your preferred machine.

Are you still reading this? Go try it out!

And if you’re already loving Parallels Desktop, we’d love to hear your story. Share your experience today using #MyParallelsStory on social media.

Game on, my friends!

Calling all Mac fans and fellow tech explorers! We bet you’ve noticed a bit of a rivalry between Mac and Windows. Remember those “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads from the mid-2000s?” We’ve settled the rivalry once and for all. 

Today, we’re venturing into a world where the two operating systems coexist in perfect harmony, and you can run Windows applications on your Mac. Picture this: Your Mac becomes a portal to endless possibilities, where you seamlessly switch between work and play, and from one OS to another, with just a few clicks. And no rebooting. Yep, you guessed it—we’re talking about the wondrous wizardry of Parallels Desktop. 

Work hard, Mac hard 

Let’s kick things off in the business realm. Let’s say you’re a Mac enthusiast, but your work requires you to dabble in the Windows world. No sweat! With Parallels Desktop, you can run Windows applications right on your Mac without breaking a sweat (or a Mac). No need for two computers. Whip up a Windows-native application faster than you can whip up an at-home latte for that coffee break you just earned with all the time you saved. 

Need to use industry-specific software that’s only available on Windows? Parallels Desktop to the rescue. Want to test your web design masterpiece across different browsers? Parallels Desktop has you covered. You won’t need to switch devices or boot up another computer just for that one app. 

“It’s so easy and fast to set up a Windows VM,” says Alludo Solutions Architect Carlos Lapao. “It just takes pressing a button, and in a few minutes, you have a fresh VM to use and play with.” 

It’s all about working smarter, not harder. The new world of work (we call it Work3) is about outcomes, not inputs. So, take that coffee break. Or two. Solutions like Parallels Desktop let you work where, when, and how you want—and work more efficiently than ever. 

Play it cool, Mac gamers 

You were so productive at work that it’s time to sign off for the day. Maybe you’re a dedicated Mac user, but sometimes you yearn for that epic PC game everyone raves about. Free yourself from FOMO! Parallels Desktop lets your favorite PC games come alive right on your Mac. No second device or whole new gaming rig required. Battle those mythical creatures, explore distant galaxies, or take on brain-twisting puzzles—and then click right back over to your Mac to iMessage your friends about your new high score. 

You can work on that big presentation in the morning and take on virtual foes in the evening (or, ahem, on that coffee break). Parallels Desktop seamlessly transforms your Mac into a versatile multitasking machine, where you can save time by switching between tasks without missing a beat. 

Home sweet (virtual) home 

Not much of a gamer? Your Mac isn’t just a workspace or a gaming hub; it’s your customized corner of the universe. No compromise needed, when you can easily run Windows applications on your Mac.  

Plenty of Windows-specific applications might fit your exact needs—but not your operating system. Unless, of course, you have Parallels Desktop. With Parallels Desktop, you can revive a favorite software program that you haven’t been able to use since you switched to a Mac. You can explore new software, test web development environments, and develop a hybrid virtual world tailored just to you. 

Alludo Support Manager Mikhail Ushakov loves that he can use Parallels Desktop to compartmentalize his work and home life, even if both activities take place in the same location. “I can keep all my work-related projects in a VM. When my day is over, I can use the Mac side for personal use.” It’s a great way to “shut down” your workday without relocating! 

Whether you’re an IT helpdesk worker spinning up virtual machines, a digital nomad balancing work and travel, a creative spirit crafting masterpiece, or a curious tech aficionado trying to master every realm, Parallels Desktop is the magic portal you need. 

In a nutshell 

We know a bit of Mac/PC rivalry will linger around. And we haven’t even talked about other operating systems. (Parallels Desktop can help with those, too!) But we’ve bridged the gap, creating more space and time for ideas. 

For the record, we acknowledge that not everyone is a Mac fan who uses Parallels for Windows. Sometimes it’s the other way around! Alludo Customer Success Manager Imad Aalouache is accustomed to using Windows, but decided to explore Mac. With Parallels Desktop, Imad can rely on favorite Windows apps and still launch specialized Mac apps for specific use cases. 

This is how to liberate the way you work and play. 

We’d love to hear your #MyParallelsStory and learn how Parallels Desktop gives you the best of both worlds. We want to know where your digital adventures take you, and we appreciate you bringing us along for the ride. Share your experience on social media today, using #MyParallelsStory. 

In celebration of the 17th year milestone of Parallels® Desktop for Mac, we’re looking back at an incredible journey that has seen us empower Mac users & developers to smoothly operate & build over 200,000 Windows applications on their chosen Mac device. Our dedicated Parallels team continually marvels at the inventive ways our strong base of 7 million customers utilize Parallels Desktop for Mac to cater to their specific virtualization needs daily.

Whether it’s employing a Windows-only application that Mac doesn’t support, leveraging exclusive Windows features, designing, developing, or testing software across diverse operating systems, enjoying gaming, running demanding CAD apps, or collaborating cross-platform with peers or students, our users have accomplished remarkable milestones with Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Join us as we delve into some standout moments of our astounding 17-year journey!

June 15, 2006, marked the genesis of Parallels Desktop for Mac, pioneering the world’s first virtualization software for Intel-based Mac. This innovation revolutionized the industry, granting Mac users the convenience of running Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously, a feat previously unattainable without rebooting through Boot Camp.

February 27, 2007, was the unveiling of the Coherence Mode feature, allowing customers to conceal Windows Desktop and operate Windows apps side-by-side with Mac applications within the Mac OS X environment. This mode remains a fan-favorite among Parallels Desktop users today.

On November 4, 2009, we added support for Apple trackpad gestures and keyboard actions such as drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste, further smoothing the operation between systems.

Fast forward to September 14, 2010, when Parallels Desktop introduced 64-bit mode support.

June 2011 brought the introduction of Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition, equipped with a volume license key to activate Parallels Desktop on a large scale.

November 6, 2011, we saw NASA use Parallels Desktop on MacBook laptops to land the Curiosity Rover on Mars!

We didn’t stop there; on September 4, 2012, we added support for DirectX 10 and Bluetooth devices on both Windows and macOS.

Fast forward to August 28, 2013, the birth of Parallels Access — the quickest, simplest, and most reliable remote access solution to a Windows or Mac system from iOS, Android, or an HTML browser.

By August 19, 2015, we had released Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition — an enhanced version for power users and developers. This edition introduced the world’s first voice-assisted personal assistant on the Mac: Windows 10 Cortana, working with both Mac OS X and Windows!

On August 18, 2016, the Parallels Toolbox for Mac made its entry, offering 25 single-purpose tools to simplify common Mac tasks with just one click.

Following its success, on June 29, 2017, Parallels Toolbox for Windows was launched to streamline common Windows computing tasks.

By March 2019, Parallels Desktop for Mac had garnered a DEVIE award for “BEST in Operating System Development.”

Later, on August 13, 2019, our users could run more demanding Windows programs like CAD apps and games on a Mac, thanks to the support we added for DirectX 11, 10, and 9 on Apple Metal.

By October 20, 2020, we had released Parallels Desktop for Chrome OS, the first software to run Windows directly on enterprise Chromebooks!

The following year, on April 14, 2021, Parallels Desktop 16.5 for Mac launched with complete native support for Mac computers with Apple M1 chips.

Fast forward to February 16, 2023.  Microsoft authorized the use of ARM  versions of Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise installed in a virtual machine with Parallels Desktop for Mac for customers on Mac with Apple silicon.

Finally on May 16, 2023, Parallels Desktop attained ARM SystemReady VE Certification, to meet the highest industry standards and solidify its position as a leader in virtualization technology.   

Here’s to 17 years of Parallels!

Parallels Desktop gave TravelEssence the ease of use, freedom, and flexibility they wanted

Andrew Morton knows a thing or two about transporting people to new experiences. He founded TravelEssence, a bespoke travel company, to help others break out of their routines and explore the world.

His reasoning for founding TravelEssence is very sweet: He met and fell in love with his now-wife, a native of the Netherlands, on a trip. He decided to take up residence there and turn travel into a career. His business took off (pun intended), but there was a problem: For all his ability to get himself and others out of their comfort zones, Andrew and his team were very much settled in their comfort zone when it came to operating systems. He loved Apple/Mac products and had no intention of switching to Windows.

The issue

Two of the most essential solutions for planning and booking long-distance travel are native to Windows and not Mac-compatible.

Their company’s entire IT backend was set up on Apple computers. Not a single Windows computer can be found on the desks of the roughly 60 employees. They didn’t want to compromise on what they saw as the benefits of Apple products, but they also didn’t want to stunt their competitive edge by being unable to leverage those essential travel solutions.

Were they stuck? Grounded? It seemed that way at first. TravelEssence wanted to deliver ease of use, freedom, and flexibility for their clients—but they were having a hard time achieving those elements within their own workspace.

They tried to leverage a preinstalled utility that purported to allow them to use a dual boot system to access the Windows products, but was clunky, lacked performance capability and finesse, and required constant rebooting—a death sentence in the fast-moving world of travel.

The solution

Enter Parallels® Desktop for Mac. Andrew stumbled on this solution via a Google search. He downloaded a free trial and quickly realized that this was the high-performance, sophisticated solution he’d been waiting for. Andrew loved its simple installation and seamless, resource-saving integration in macOS. The real gold star, however, came thanks to Coherence mode. With Coherence mode, allowed the OS X window and the Windows-based applications to be displayed on the same desktop, with easy copy/paste data transfer. No rebooting required.

With Parallels Desktop, TravelEssence found the ease of use, freedom, and flexibility they needed. Parallels Desktop allows Andrew and his team to have the best of both worlds: the reliability and ease of use of their preferred Apple products, with the best-in-class, Windows-native travel software that helps them serve their clients. They work together seamlessly, without hiccups or downtime—exactly what you want to achieve when you’re in the travel business.

Ready for more? Read the full TravelEssence case study or learn more about Parallels Desktop.