Oh, and the best part is that the first year is free! I don’t know if this applies to new users too, because after updating it told me that I get the first year free as an existing user, so your mileage may vary.Īlthough charging for running non-Windows machines is actually a user-hostile move on the surface, I’m for one glad it led me to bite the bullet, migrate my Windows VMs and uninstall VirtualBox. Technically, it offers fewer features but I’d rather pay extra for having this sandboxed version of the software without all the bloat. It is $80 per year, which is IIRC on par with the “full” version of Parallels. After the update, running any VM requires a subscription. I used to use the free version alongside VirtualBox. It used to be free to run macOS or Linux, with a subscription required to run Windows.
Those always put me off from using Parallels. I have always been really enticed by it, because it offers a huge chunk of Parallels speed and convenience but it’s completely sandboxed, adhering to all the Mac App Store rules, so it does not install all kinds of kexts and other invasive hooks into the system.
Just a heads-up – Parallels Desktop Lite in the Mac App Store has just received a major update.
