I’m using Parallels (Windows 10) on a 2017 Macbook Air base variant (8B RAM, 128GB SSD, i5 5350u) at the time of writing this reply. So, I’ll share my experience with you. It runs smoothly and doesn’t really stutter. I use it largely for firing up Power BI with both Windows and Mac-based Excel versions. It is a well-rounded product. The program itself installs quickly and contains a very good setup wizard for both the program and the VM itself. Installing a virtual machine is more complex than installing a normal app and VMware Fusion does a good job of walking you through it. VMware Fusion manages system resources very well.

I’m writing this paragraph in Word for Windows on Windows 10. The process is as smooth as you’d expect on PC hardware built for Windows, with no hesitation or freezing, and all the features are enabled.

But I’m not using a Windows PC; I’m using a three-year-old MacBook Air. And I haven’t had to give over the Air entirely to Windows. Instead, I’m running Windows 10 and its apps concurrently with the brand-new macOS Sierra.

For instance, the Windows version of Word is running in its own window, right alongside open Mac apps, including Apple Mail and Safari. I’m doing this all with the new version of a 10-year-old program, Parallels Desktop, from a Seattle-area company of the same name, which came out last month for $80. It’s faster and smoother than ever, and has some new tricks, including a new Mac utility suite that’s also sold separately. With ParalleIs Desktop, I can hop back and forth between Sierra and Windows 10 — and even between individual apps — with ease. I just copied and pasted the paragraph above into Apple’s proprietary Notes app, exactly as I could from a native Mac app. And I wrote this sentence in Notes and copied and pasted it back into the Windows version of Word.

Then I copied and pasted the whole thing again from Word for Windows into Google Docs running in Safari natively on the Mac. Windows 10, windowed, on a three-year-old MacBook Air Through all this, the aging Air performed smoothly and quickly, even though I’m now running three Windows apps and 11 Mac apps, including two browsers — Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari — with about 15 tabs open, total.

That includes two instances of the constantly updating TweetDeck app for Twitter power users. The only sign of strain is the constant, low whir of the fans. But, to be honest, my faithful Air cranks up the fans pretty often these days even when running just macOS, and did so even before Sierra. (God, I hope Apple gives the Air a power bump, and soon.) When Parallels first came out, in 2006, I called it and “the best of both worlds.” After using this new version, Parallels 12, I can say with confidence that, in my tests, it still is. If you love and use the Mac, but need to use a few Windows apps, Parallels does the trick.

The world has changed However, the world has changed a lot since then, and the need for Parallels has diminished for average Mac users. When it was launched, shortly after Apple switched the Mac to the same Intel processors that Windows used, it was a big deal, because there were still lots of apps only available for Windows, or which — like Microsoft Office — were vastly better on Windows. Parallels also offered a smoother solution than Apple’s own method for solving this problem: a feature called Boot Camp that’s still built into the Mac.

This updates the Adobe Flash Player plugin in the Chrome web browser, this is demonstrated in Mac OS but it works the same in Windows too. This allows a user to uninstall Flash from the Mac in general but still retain Flash playing capabilities within the Google Chrome web browser sandboxed. Adobe Flash Player latest version: Essential web browser plugin for multimedia content. Adobe Flash Player 12.0.0.70 installed with Internet Explorer 10 will automatically be updated to the Deliver exciting, full-screen games with full keyboard support across browsers (including Chrome, Firefox. Adobe flash for mac chrome.

Boot Camp also allowed running Windows on a Mac, but it required you to carve out a separate Windows partition on your hard disk, and you could only run one OS at a time. You had to reboot each time you wanted to switch.