The Mac Observer

Skip navigational links

You're viewing an article in TMO's historic archive vault. Here, we've preserved the comments and how the site looked along with the article. Use this link to view the article on our current site:
Parallels Provides More Details on Desktop 2.5

Parallels Provides More Details on Desktop 2.5

by , 2:35 PM EST, January 15th, 2007

Details of the new Coherence mode in Parallels desktop version 2.5 were demoed to TMO on Thursday at Macworld by Ben Rudolph, Parallel's Marketing Manager. Briefly, the Coherence feature allows the user to suppress the Windows Desktop and access Windows applications directly, as if they were Mac OS X applications.

The Coherence mode works by initially placing a Windows application in the Mac OS X Dock where it is marked with the small Parallels orange logo to identify it. It is clicked to launch like any other Mac OS X application.

The Parallels Desktop is virtualization software that allows guest OSes to run along side Mac OS X in native mode and at nearly full speed on an Intel Mac.

Mr. Rudolph told TMO that, at first, Parallels was thinking about calling this "Windows without Windows" which leads to an obvious acronym, but they decided on the label Coherence instead. In addition, version 2.5 adds a true Windows native full screen mode requested by users. Another feature added is the dynamic resizing of Windows when running on the Mac OS X desktop. Mr. Rudolph told TMO that Beta 3 appears very stable and recommended that it can be installed and used until the final release arrives. This reporter upgraded without incident.

TMO was told by Mr. Rudolph that each OS runs on its own core in a dual core system. As a result, the optimum number of OSes to run on a dual core Mac is two. However, more OSes can be run with a performance penalty.

Finally, Mr. Rudolph also stated that Parallels plans to introduce accelerated 3-D graphics support in version 3. Version 2.5 remains constrained to the first 8 MB of Macintosh VRAM and can only run Vista in the non-Aero mode.

Parallels Desktop for Mac OS X is priced at US$79.95. The upgrade to version 2.5 is free.

Digg!

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:felixgardian Posts: 40 Joined: 01 May 2003
Subject:

OMG Can u play Wow wit tisÑ— cuz I ned fps ta git phat epix. kthxbai

Close Name:Bosco Posts: 1002 Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Subject: Coherence is sweet

The sweetest part about it is being able to run IE near full screen. Having the IE window behave like any Mac window will probably increase my web development productivity 50%. I can have Safari and IE and Firefox side by side and compare how my pages get rendered without doing all sorts of window gymnastics.

Another very sweet feature of the new Parallels is importing VMs from Virtual PC. I had some software stranded in a Virtual PC VM because of the software's funky licensing scheme, and can now run it full speed on an Intel Mac. Only issue is Windows' activation, but I'll try activating with the Windows license that accompanied Virtual PC and again with one I purchased for use with Parallels.

I hope Mac users aren't holding out for Apple to do this stuff with Boot Camp. The $80 for Parallels is probably the best $80 you'll ever spend.

Close Name:felixgardian Posts: 40 Joined: 01 May 2003
Subject:

Quote
Bosco wrote:
The sweetest part about it is being able to run IE near full screen.


but can it run wow? I ned moor fps ta do mc and bwl fer epix bc exp is heer but need fps for epix

Close Name:Guest
Subject: u r dumb lol

Felixgardian, there's no need to write as if you are sending text messages or breathless mid-raid messages to your WoW clan buddies....

To answer your question, Parallels *might* run WoW decently once they get the 3-D support working. In the mean time you can:

1. Reboot into Windows using Boot Camp - you'll get a few more frames per second. Maybe.

2. Run it under CrossOver - probably won't run any better, but you never know.

3. Uh, run it under OS X with the latest patches from Blizzard? It runs great on a MacBook Pro, and if you're on a MacBook, GLfaster supposedly boosts it to about 50 FPS if you're looking at nothing (or as low as 2 FPS if you're looking at a million people.)

Seriously, you're not going to get *better* performance under a virtual machine monitor - if you want maximum performance for games, run 'em native - either natively on OS X or on Windows using Boot Camp.

The nice thing is that Parallels - if they get the 3-D support working - will allow you to run native Windows games at reduced performance, but without rebooting, which is very convenient.

Close Name:mahuti -   TMO Staff Posts: 377 Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Subject: I gotta say

The coherence mode is AMAZING. It's EXACTLY what I need to make windows useful, IE, I don't have to see windows just to use its apps. Also, there's a preference to switch the alt & windows keys on the PC side... so now all of my remembered mac shortcuts cmd+v cmd+p WORK correctly without having to switch my brain around. Last but not least, drag and drop functionality works AMAZINGLY. I can drag a file to windows, edit, then drag it back to the mac... windows even asks if I want to overwrite the original.

A few nice things... the dock icons of the open windows apps work pretty well, I've yet to try dragging and dropping a file on one, or trying out contextual menus on them yet. Also, the auto screen resizing is super rad. I just drag the window to the size I want, and windows scales itself to fit. No scroll bars. Plus, the full screen mode works like fast user switching, a cube flip to the windows box.

Man, any other company that wants to do Windows on Mac, is going to have a long way to catch up, at least for non FPS, WOW kind of stuff. Since I don't play games I have no idea if any games actually run well on it, but non-game apps run just like I'd expect them to.

Close Name:Mikuro Posts: 457 Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Subject: Whoah

So it's just like Classic mode? Cool.

I just have one question. They say each OS will run on its own core on dual-core machines. What exactly does this mean? OS X naturally makes use of both cores itself. Does this mean that Parallels will somehow hog one core all to itself, robbing it from OS X, or that Windows (within Parallels) will have access to only one core while the rest of OS X can still use both?

Close Name:Intruder -   TMO Mac Specialist Posts: 3149 Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Subject:

Parallels takes one, OSX takes one.

Close Name:mahuti -   TMO Staff Posts: 377 Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Subject: Dock Icons

Oh, and I checked... there is support for some dock icon functionality. For instance, the parallels firefox icon & notepad icons display open window names in the dock icon.

Close Name:gopher Posts: 291 Joined: 28 Mar 2002
Subject: Waiting for built-in iSight support

Does the beta 3 offer this yet? I really want to be able to do Yahoo videochat in the same way I can do iChat videochat. Yahoo offers it in the Windows version of Yahoo Messenger, but not in the Macintosh version.

Close Name:Intruder -   TMO Mac Specialist Posts: 3149 Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Subject:

Not according to the forums. Haven't actually tried it on my MBP though.

Comment on this Article


You cannot edit your comments.   You cannot delete your comments.

Comments are currently closed. Please email the author instead.


Recent Headlines - Updated November 21st

Fri, 7:07 PM
Games - Soccer Sim Championship Manager 2010 Released for Mac
6:47 PM
Games - EA Publishes Original Monopoly for iPhone
6:15 PM
News - Original Apple I on Ebay for $50K, w/Letter from Steve Jobs
6:11 PM
Games - New iPhone Games: Secret of the Lost Cavern Ep 1, New DJ Nights, More
5:47 PM
Games - Star Trek D-A-C Game Headed to the Mac Next Month
4:57 PM
Product News - TidBITS Releases “Take Control of Syncing Data in Snow Leopard”
4:26 PM
John Martellaro's Blog - Particle Debris (week ending 11/20) Stationery Pads Go Poof
2:59 PM
Free on iTunes - Musée du Louvre, Art Lite, SketchBook Mobile X and More.
1:50 PM
Deal Brothers - Acer P215H bmid 21.5” Widescreen LCD Monitor:  $139.99
11:24 AM
TMO Appearances - Jeff Gamet Shares More Holiday Gift Ideas on MacJury
10:43 AM
Product News - Cocktail 4.5 for Leopard Adds QuickLook Cache Clearing
10:06 AM
News - Hack Enables Mac OS X 10.6.2 on Netbooks

The Mac Observer Reader Specials

  • __________
  • Buy Stuff, Support TMO!
  • Podcast: Mac Geek Gab
  • Podcast: Apple Weekly Report
  • TMO on Twitter!