And, crucially, you can run your Windows apps right alongside your existing Mac apps – rather than having to switch back and forth between Mac and Windows as you have to do when using Boot Camp on Intel Macs (and, of course, Boot Camp is no longer available on Macs with Apple Silicon at all). This virtual machine emulates the workings of a Windows PC, allowing you to install a full copy of Windows on the virtual machine and then run any Windows software or games that you need to use. In recent years, though, VMWare has seemed to focus more on its high-end corporate products and, since the introduction of Apple Silicon in 2020, Fusion no longer really competes with the annual updates to Parallels Desktop anymore.īoth programs work in basically the same way, allowing you to create a virtual machine (VM) that runs on your Mac just like any other Mac application. Every time Apple released a new version of the macOS we would see Parallels and VMWare release their own updates, and this competition was great for Mac users as it meant that both programs continued to offer new features and performance improvements every year. Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwideįor many years Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion fought a long battle to produce the best virtualization software for Mac users who needed to run Windows software on their Macs.

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