Parallels 20 turns Macs into cross platform DevOps powerhouses

Here’s an exciting development that almost got missed during Apple’s heady week of iPhone news: Parallels has hit version 20 and now provides a series of powerful features designed to streamline artificial intelligence (AI) development. 

If you run Windows on your Mac, you’re likely already familiar with Parallels Desktop. It is, after all, the only solution authorized by Microsoft to run Windows in a virtualized environment on Apple Silicon. 

If you think back to when Apple introduced the M1 Macs, you might recall the entire industry was impressed by the performance Apple Silicon unleashed. One tester went on the record to say running Windows for ARM on an M1 Mac using Parallels Desktop 16 was “the fastest version of Windows” they’d ever used. “Apple’s M1 chip is a significant breakthrough for Mac users,” Nick Dobrovolskiy, Parallels senior vice president of engineering and support, told me at the time.

Parallels now says its software can run in excess of 200,000 Windows applications quite happily on Macs. With M4 Macs on the horizon, you can anticipate further performance gains — and with Parallels, Apple Intelligence has now come to Windows. 

Apple Intelligence meets Windows?

If you are running a virtualized Windows environment on your Mac using Parallels, you will be able to use Apple’s AI-powered Writing Tools once macOS Sequoia ships. 

Parallels hasn’t told us whether we’ll also be able to access other AI features from within the Windows environment, but it has said we’ll be able to sign into Apple ID across multiple macOS virtual machines on the same Mac. What this means is that developers can fully leverage virtual Macs for building and testing software in an isolated environment.

But the big hook for Parallels in this release is the AI development tools packed inside. The new Parallels AI Package is designed to make building AI models more accessible. To do so, it offers a virtual machine pre-loaded with 14 AI development tools, sample code, and instructions. The idea is that people who want to build AI solutions can install the package and run third-party small language models inside the virtual environment, even while they are offline.

This is included free in Parallels Desktop for Mac Business and Enterprise editions and is free to install in the Desktop for Mac Pro Edition for the rest of the year.

Why did Parallels do this?

“As PCs become more AI-capable, we believe AI will soon be standard on every desktop,” said Prashant Ketkar, CTO at Parallels. “This shift challenges developers to update their applications to fully leverage AI-enabled PCs.

“That’s why we created the Parallels AI Package: to equip development teams, whether experts or beginners, with accessible AI models and code suggestions. This enables ISVs to build AI-enabled applications in minutes, significantly boosting productivity for every software development team using a Mac.”

What else has improved?

Parallels, now owned by Corel Corporation, might have put a lot of effort into support for the AI wave, but the company has also delivered additional features that should improve the experience of running Windows on a Mac.

One big change: you might experience up to 80% better performance while running legacy Windows apps using the Prism emulator on Arm.

Another enhancement comes with a new shared folders technology, which makes it much easier to work across Mac and Windows files on apps. This feature also supports Linux virtual machines, which in combination with the power of Macs and the new AI toolkits from Parallels makes for a powerful DevOps machine. The Visual Studio Code extension lets you manage multiple machines, and even lets you access Microsoft Copilot when you do. 

The enterprise connection

Lots of people working with Windows on a Mac work at companies in which both platforms are used. For IT, this can raise challenges around licensing and deployment of operating system licenses.

For them, Parallels now offers a new enterprise portal that IT can use to manage virtual machines, licensing issues and more. To achieve this, Parallels built new tech to make it possible to deploy Parallels Desktop without resorting to complex scripts.

“These advancements mark a significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to improving the IT admin experience. With these new features, deploying Parallels Desktop across a network of Macs is simpler and more flexible than ever before,” the company said in a blog post.

You’ll also find GitHub Actions to transform CI/CD workflows. In a related move, the software has attained a SOC Type 2 report, which means it is undergoing regular aggressive tests to ensure it remains secure. 

Smart for business

I’ve been watching Parallels since it first appeared on the Mac, and I’m liking the direction in which the company is going. While it remains a solid option for consumers who just want to run a few Windows apps (including games) on their Mac, it is becoming a powerful adjunct for developers, enterprise pros, and (with version 20), a useful passport to enable AI development as well. This edition builds on the many enhancements introduced in 2023.

That’s not bad for something that costs from $99 to $149 per year (Windows licenses extra).

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