Hands up who likes gaming! Hands up who likes gaming on Macs! Er, OK. Well, Parallels has an update for you

Virtualization outfit Parallels celebrated International Left Handers Day* with an update to its Desktop package. Parallels Desktop 15 brings toys aimed at the slim Venn diagram intersection of gamers and macOS fans, as well as productivity tweaks that will appeal to users both north and south of paw. The software is aimed at …

[Dan 55]

"Parallels is merely a nibble"

Until you update Mac OS and find out you need the next version of Parallels, as your current version will mysteriously have no more updates to make it work on the new version of MacOS.

[Gonzo wizard]

Re: "Parallels is merely a nibble"

Exactly why I stopped using it. That practice is just another form of ransomware.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: "Parallels is merely a nibble"

Agreed on the ransomware. About 3 "updates" ago I figured it was cheaper to pay for native Mac apps and suffer the transition pain than continue to pay for Parallels upgrades. My photos database was the one I hung on to in Windows, but in the end bit the bullet, paid for a Mac app and manually re-categorized a few thousand snaps.

[Gordon 10]

Re: "Parallels is merely a nibble"

Me too. Although I moved to VMWare Fusion. 3 seats for the same price as 1 parallels seat, with slightly fuglier integration (imo), and all the family Macs are covered.

Million times better than Virtual box.

[regadpellagru]

DX11, my ar*

Seriously, would games today on a MAC, given the policy of 5 years old low spec gear on current models at insane prices.

There was a surge of MAC ports for even FPS years ago, and it's now dead. There are more Linux ports than MAC ports. Devs have stopped bothering.

And frankly, even if Parallels' effort are commendable, they could have waited 2025 for DX11. DX10 games are probable the only runnable on today's MACs.

[DrBobK]

This is a genuine question...

I've been running VirtualBox on my Macbook pro and it seems pretty good to me. What would paying for Fusion or Parallels buy me above and beyond what VirtualBox does?

[JDX]

Re: This is a genuine question...

GPU/graphics support is a big one. Not sure what else other than polish - seems like for a typical user VB is probably adequate.

Oh, cross-OS integration can be neat too. So, running a windows app in a window on your Mac desktop. Being able to "open with" a Mac app from Windows explorer (and/or vice versa). That sort of thing. They really are pretty slick these days, rather than just having Windows in a window. Though for some, the latter might be preferred for simplicity's sake.

[DrBobK]

Re: This is a genuine question...

Thanks!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think the only game I fire up the PC to play currently is Planet Coaster. Pretty much everything else I have on Steam has a Mac version that runs fine with the eGPU I'm using.

[LeahroyNake]

I'm sure you could also stream (it's a steam thing that works over your LAN) any game from your PC that will not run on the mac.

I frequently use it to stream from my main PC with the half decent gfx card to my HTPC that is quiet as a mouse but couldn't possibly run War Thunder or Fallout 4. Just about gets along on n type WiFi but it's much better over the wire.

[Anonymous Coward]

My fav game has pushed Mac users into a Mac compatible Linux version of the game; seems to be working quite well for most of them, especially as both the Win and Lin versions have finally been updated to 64bit.

(Really old MMO).

Game devs are on a roll, we might even get multi core support one day.