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Still, either choice comes with compromises: Apple's solution limits the guest operating system choice to only one platform and has other challenges such as having to find a way to share folders and the need to reboot the Mac every time platforms are switched. If free solutions are required due to budget constraints, then Boot Camp is by far the best option. The final choice depends on the consumer's needs, and in this case there are multiple factors to consider. Parallels Desktop charges $79.99 per year for a single Mac license or $99.99 for a lifetime license, but users can test the software free for 14 days. The same goes for apps: this deep integration allows users to run Windows in Seamless mode as if it would be part of macOS and use features such as Call with iPhone or Quick Look while still running Windows.
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And when Windows (or another guest OS) is running on a Mac, users of Parallels can take bidirectional sharing for granted since the software has smoothly integrated this function, meaning you can focus on getting the job done instead of figuring out how to share a file between the two operating systems. However, it’s the tiny automation of certain aspects that makes or break such software, and Parallels Desktop incorporates a wide variety of these.įor example, Parallels will download Windows directly from Microsoft and install it at a speed that matches Boot Camp. What makes a virtual machine such as Parallels Desktop highly appealing is the convenience of being able to run two or more operating systems simultaneously. Thanks to years of development, the hypervisor has reached a deep level of integration while still isolating the guest operating systems from its host, in this case macOS.
Launched a year before Apple added Boot Camp onto its desktop operating system, Parallels Desktop is o ne of the top paid virtual machines available for both regular and power users.
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This could easily become a hassle over time but considering that Boot Camp is available for free it is an acceptable compromise. Every time a user wants to use the guest operating system for whatever, a full reboot is required.
Maybe the biggest downside of all is the reboot process. This means that they will have to figure out how to create a communication channel between the two completely isolated operating systems to allow for file transfers across platforms. Alongside this minimum allocation of 40GB of space, users will only be able to read the Boot Camp partition's content and not write to it. The downside of Boot Camp, however, is that users need to allocate storage space on the startup disk for the Windows OS, which will be formatted to NTFS.