Parallels Sale - Subscription vs. Purchase

[A1MB1G]

I'm currently a subscriber of Parallels Desktop For Mac (Home/Personal Use) and pay $79.99/yr. I noticed their current version of the software is on sale as a one-time purchase for $59.99. I suspect this is because Apple has announced a new OS will be launched later this year (Big Sur).

Does anyone know if the current version of Parallels Desktop will work with Big Sur without paying for another upgrade? Also, is it worth keeping the subscription or paying the $59.99 for the one-time purchase. My subscription doesn't expire until the end of December but I want to make an effort to get away from subscription based software services as each iteration typically does not provide enough incremental value to warrant maintaining a subscription.

Any thoughts?

 

[filmak]

Usually the previous version of Parallels works less or more fine with the next macOS, they claim that the new versions of Parallels for the new OS is more optimised.

Anyway this is for the current Macs with intel cpus and not for the new ones with ARM cpus.
If you update every year your Macs to the new OS, the subscription makes sense, if not or you want to upgrade every two versions the standalone is better and it will always be yours, because with the subscription you will have nothing left when you will stop paying for it.
If you are going to stay with intel Macs only, buy the last standalone for Big Sur and be happy.

I'm also waiting to see what is going to happen with the intel and ARM Macs to cancel or not my Parallels subscriptions...

 

[A1MB1G]

Thanks for the reply. What about VirtualBox, would that be a good alternative option? There's really only 2 apps I need in Windows which are proprietary software solutions my business requires, everything else I do on the MAC so I don't really need that much power or robustness when it comes to the virtual machine. I'm going to give VirtualBox a try this week to see if I can actually replace Parallels with it.

Also, how do you see the transition to ARM impacting those of us using Parallels for the purpose of running Windows apps? I would imagine there will still be some manner in which we can run a virtual machine to launch windows apps?

 

[A1MB1G]

Scratch that, just tried VirtualBox and no matter what settings i tried, couldn't get the graphical performance to be what I needed - very sluggish. Tried all sorts of settings and optimizations, it's too bad.

 

[filmak]

Yes, it is only Parallels and VMware Fusion, Parallels is faster in general, Fusion is fast enough and has better licensing for the standalone version, you can install it on many Macs, I think...

 

[filmak]

It seems that the current version of Parallels is not working well or at all in Big Sur.

Big Sur - Working / Not Working Apps

Unfortunately I will not be installing MacOS 11 yet, as Parallels Desktop does not yet work. Fortunately I could restore my Carbon Copy Clone backup - back on Catalina again.

forums.macrumors.com

Later, it is working...

Big Sur - Working / Not Working Apps

Parallels is working fine for me. You might have to re-allow the permissions. System Preferences > Security Privacy > Allow

forums.macrumors.com

And later, it is working so so...

Big Sur - Working / Not Working Apps

Same here

forums.macrumors.com

Anyway it is too soon to know for sure...