However, even in a virtual environment version of Windows, you could get a virus although it would be isolated to your virtual environment and Windows installation – it would not touch your Mac’s hard drive. Everything in Parallels is done in a sealed environment from macOS. This means that Parallels can’t actually harm your Mac in any way. Parallels runs in a virtual environment that doesn’t affect your Mac in the same way as the macOS operating system installed on your Mac. Parallels 18 has extended this support to take full advantage of the M1 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio making it possible to run Windows 11 96% faster than before according to Parallels.

Parallels is however the only virtual solution to run Windows on a Mac officially endorsed by Microsoft. Parallels became the only virtualization software to officially support Apple Silicon ARM M1 & M2 chip Macs although other virtual machines have beta versions that support it. Parallels 17 was another evolution in the product as it had to be re-engineered for some fundamental changes in macOS 11 Big Sur, Monterey and beyond into Apple Silicon. Parallels 16 and 16.5 brought significant speed improvements plus beta support for M1 Macs. It also allowed Mac users to use seriously graphic intensive apps such as Windows only CAD applications for the first time. The last major update to Parallels was in Parallels 15 which was a big step-up from previous versions of Parallels because it finally supported DirectX 11 and Apple Metal API which allowed Mac users to play Windows only games such as FIFA, Age of Empires and Fallout.

We think it’s by far the most convenient way to get Windows on your Mac because it’s incredibly easy to setup, launches Windows apps or games quickly and allows you to switch between macOS and Windows instantly. Not only this but you can run just about any other operating system in it such as Linux and Android on it which allows you to play games such as Among Us which aren’t available for Mac. You can even copy and paste files and documents between macOS and Windows as if they were one operating system. In fact, it can run over 200,000 Windows only apps on a Mac according to Parallels. Parallels is a virtual environment that allows you to conveniently run all those Windows only applications and games that don’t run on Mac.

Windows running on mac