Parallels Desktop 17 is here and ready to run Windows 11 on M1 Macs

Parallels Desktop 17 arrived with support for macOS Monterey and Windows 11. In addition, the popular virtualization software for Mac is now a universal binary, making deployment a little less complicated for many IT professionals. computer science.

Note that you can only run ARM versions of Windows (10 or 11) on Macs with Apple Silicon chips like the M1. Windows 10 and 11 for ARM are available as Insider Preview builds. On the other hand, Parallels can run versions of Windows going back to XP if you run it on an Intel Mac. A number of Linux distributions are also supported, although Intel Macs have access to more of them than M1 Macs.

If you have access to these Insider Preview builds, you can run most Windows apps on your Mac M1, Parallels developers say, because Windows on ARM can run both 32-bit apps and, more recently, x86 apps. 64 bits. That said, even on machines it’s designed to run on, Windows on ARM can sometimes be picky about x64 applications. So your mileage will likely vary depending on what you’re trying to do.

Either way, Parallels claims significantly improved performance on the M1 Macs compared to last year’s version, which was the first to add support for said Macs. In particular, the performance of DirectX 11 is improved (Parallels says it is 28% faster). Additionally, Intel and ARM Macs will see up to six times better OpenGL performance with Windows virtual machines.

There are also other additional features and quality of life improvements. For example, you can now drag and drop content between applications running on macOS and those running on Windows while using Parallels in Coherence mode. There are other improvements to Coherence as well, like Windows shutdown and login screens which are presented in a way that looks more native and natural in macOS.

Don’t forget Monterey

Additionally, support for this year’s new version of macOS, Monterey, has been added. As is customary with these annual updates, the new version of Parallels Desktop will be able to run on Monterey host machines or run Monterey in virtual machines.

The other big addition is virtual TPM chip support for Windows 10 and 11 virtual machines, facilitating features like BitLocker and Secure Boot.

Parallels Desktop 17 costs $ 79.99 per year for the standard edition or $ 99.99 for the “Pro” edition. The Pro edition includes a Visual Studio debugging plugin that now works on M1 Macs, among other bonuses specific to certain professional use cases.

List image by Parallels