Guest blog post from Dmitry Geynisman, Product Manager at Parallels

Parallels inittool looks for system version 10.x, in beta 1 and beta 2 MacOS reported 10.16 as the system version from beta 3 onwards the system version is 11.0 and NOT 10.16 so Parallels inittool stops. I have a virtual machine running in Parallels Desktop App Store Edition. For some reason, there is no internet connection inside the virtual machine, even after following the steps from KB 8978. I also have the same issue on a newly created Windows 10 virtual machine running in Parallels Desktop 16 on macOS Big Sur. Dec 23, 2020 A virtual machine with macOS Big Sur shows a black screen after the Parallels Tools reinstallation. Fixed in 16.0.0. On Macs with the macOS version other than Big Sur, screen resolution of a newly created Big Sur virtual machine is set to 1024x768: Fixed in 16.1.0: 7: A macOS virtual machine showing a black screen after upgrading it to. ☛ Parallels Desktop Download Free - how to get Parallels Desktop on Mac. Download Parallels Desktop for free from t. Parallels 15 is available as an upgrade or new purchase for Home & Student, Pro, and Business Editions. Pricing starts at $50 for the Home & Student edition as an upgrade and is $80 as a new purchase.

You may have seen these messages from both macOS and Parallels Desktop for Mac:

No worries, in this blog post I will explain the situation in detail. First, I will give you a relatively short answer about why Parallels® Desktop uses system extensions, and then more details will follow.

1. Parallels Desktop uses a hypervisor technology to create a high-performance virtual machine, so you can run Windows, Linux, macOS, and other operating systems inside it.

2. There are 2 types of hypervisors on macOS that Parallels can use: Apple’s built-in hypervisor or Parallels’ proprietary hypervisor. Parallels proprietary hypervisor is implemented as a system extension.

3. System extensions in macOS enable developers to integrate deep into the macOS system to achieve better performance or provide some unique functionality.

4. When Parallels Desktop attempts to load the Parallels hypervisor system extensions, macOS prompts a user to ‘allow’ this. System extensions have elevated privileges and if they are coming from a non-trusted source, can be used maliciously. So, it is a security precaution, similar to how your phone apps ask to access your camera.
   If you downloaded Parallels Desktop from parallels.com and the system extension is signed by “Parallels International GmbH”, then you are in good hands.

5. Parallels recommends you use Apple’s built-in hypervisor. That way macOS won’t bother you with System Extension approval or the need to reboot. However, if you need to use the Nested Virtualization feature or a specific workload where Parallels hypervisor shows higher performance scores, you may keep using Parallels hypervisor.

6. To change a hypervisor type, first, you need to shut down or stop your virtual machine. Note that for this you might need to start or resume the virtual machine and approve Parallels hypervisor system extension.
   When your VM is stopped, go to VM configuration > Hardware > CPU & Memory > Advanced Settings > click on the “Hypervisor” dropdown > select “Apple” or “Parallels” respectively.
   If you have multiple virtual machines, you may need to change the setting for every one of them.

Now, if you’re not bored yet, I’d love to tell you more about this story.

For more than a decade, Parallels developed its proprietary drivers (aka system extensions) for running Windows and other OSes on top of the macOS. These drivers made Parallels Desktop the best virtualization solution, the fastest, and the most technologically advanced.

At the same time, for several years, Apple has been moving towards making macOS the most secure and reliable desktop OS (and I should say, Apple succeeded in many ways). One of the key aspects is not to let developers intrude on the OS kernel by loading those extensions (aka “kexts”), as those who have access to the kernel can do things at the very heart of your Mac, which may prove quite dangerous. In order to do that, Apple must replace 3rd-party kernel extensions with the native system APIs that ultimately enable the same product features, and that is massive engineering work even for such a big enterprise as Apple.

Since 2017, with the macOS High Sierra 10.13 release, Apple started to block 3rd-party kexts automatically, and users have had to enable them manually since. At that time, we published this blog post that can tell you even more about Parallels Desktop using system extensions.

In March 2020, with the release of macOS Catalina 10.15.4, Apple started to warn users that some of their apps (that use deprecated system extension) would “be incompatible with a future version of macOS” (read: with macOS Big Sur).

At WWDC20, Apple was quoted as saying that “System Extensions improve the reliability and security of macOS, and deprecated kernel extensions will not load by default in macOS Big Sur”. Eventually, to make Parallels Desktop fully compatible with the new macOS Big Sur 11.0, Parallels Engineering has gone through years of engineering work of rebuilding Parallels Desktop and its features using the new macOS system APIs. This extensive and time-intensive development resulted in the all-new Parallels Desktop, explicitly designed to work and integrate with new macOS Big Sur technologies, and at the same time, deliver performance and productivity improvements to benefit Parallels Desktop customers.

This scheme below visually describes the difference between the default Parallels Desktop modes on the corresponding macOS version. The old Parallels Desktop design using Parallels system extensions is shown on the left, and the newly-invented Parallels Desktop 16, using macOS Big Sur APIs, is shown on the right.

For now, our team continues to work on supporting both Parallels and Apple hypervisors and continues collaborating with Apple on implementing the rest of Parallels Hypervisor features to Apple Hypervisor. We recommend using Apple hypervisor, and if you notice any difference between Apple and Parallels hypervisors for your use case, please let us know.

Download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac and try it out yourself.

Parallels Desktop 16 launched on the Mac today. It's the latest major release of the software used by developers and others to run Windows, Linux, and macOS applications and virtual machines under macOS. Its most notable offering is full support for macOS Big Sur.

According to the Parallels representatives Ars spoke with, Big Sur support was no small task: Big Sur ended support for the third-party kernel extensions that Parallels built on. That meant an enormous amount of work was required to play nice with Big Sur—25 human-years of engineering work, they claimed.

Parallels 15 Big Sur Free

In addition to supporting Big Sur for both host machines and virtual machines, Parallels Desktop 16 has a slightly different look to fit the different appearance Apple has gone with in Big Sur.

While Big Sur support is the flagship feature here, there's a laundry list of small improvements in this release. For example, Parallels Desktop 16 supports 3D in Metal applications when running a macOS Big Sur virtual machine on a macOS Big Sur host.

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Printers can be shared between host and virtual machines across operating systems, and support has been added for zoom and rotate gestures on multitouch trackpads for Windows apps that have zoom/rotation functionality. Parallels Desktop 16 also promises faster performance than the previous version; it claims to launch twice as fast and offer a 20-percent improvement in DirectX performance, as well as 75-percent faster 'git status' in Linux virtual machines. Support for newer versions of OpenGL has expanded which Windows apps will run in a virtual machine via Parallels.

Pro Edition users can now name their custom networks, and they can export virtual machines in a compressed format that Parallels claims are a fraction of their precompression size. Also, Parallels has launched a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio to simplify testing on different OSes.

We asked about any plans for supporting Windows on Apple Silicon in Big Sur, but Parallels reps declined to talk about that, saying they would discuss it at a later date.

Parallels Desktop 16 will be available starting today. The standard edition is a one-time purchase at $99.99, while the Pro and Business Editions require a $99.99 per year subscription. Upgrading from Parallels Desktop 14 or 15 to the new version costs $49.99 once for the standard edition.

That package includes Parallels Toolbox, which was recently updated with new tools and features as well. Those include a screen-break tracker, a unit converter, and show desktop and window manager options for Macs.

Parallels 15 Big Surface

Listing image by Apple