It felt like I was using a Windows Applications on Windows, not my Mac. What I didn’t expect was how the experience would affect me. To be honest, I expected Parallels Desktop to work pretty much as most other VM solutions out there do. One thing I did have to do though before running Visual Studio was to allow it to always run as Administrator. For those that want to download Visual Studio 2013, check out the Visual Studio Community Edition. I used an ISO image for Windows 8.1 and after the installation completed, I had a blank slate on which I could install Visual Studio. It even allowed me to copy the files and settings from my current Windows PC as an option to create a VM. After the installation had completed, it started the wizard that would guide me through creating a new Virtual Machine.

The process was extremely easy and user friendly. It made me feel like I was running the installer from a regular msi. I am surprised at how easy the installation is on my Mac.

Installing Parallels Desktop and Setting Up Visual Studio Start with a valid copy of Windows (Parallels Desktop even allows you to download and install Windows 10 as well as other OS’s), a copy of Visual Studio and a few hours set aside to play. The ease of use was incredible, and the speed of Parallels Desktop actually made me forget that Visual Studio was running in a virtualized environment. I decided that I would use Visual Studio 2013 to write a simple web page and publish that directly from my Mac. I created the following video on YouTube to illustrate this concept. You have to experience it to understand how incredible it is for user functionality and usability. This creates a seamless experience between your Windows applications and your Mac operating system. It also allows you to use a feature called Coherence.

This in itself is truly astonishing, but Parallels Desktop goes one step further. Parallels Desktop creates a virtualized environment from where you can run Windows applications right on your Mac. How would it perform if I wanted to write software using Visual Studio 2013 on my Mac. I write software for a living, so I am what I guess you would call a power user? Nevertheless, I wanted to see how well Parallels Desktop would perform. Parallels Desktop 10 – Do you love your Windows Applications and wish you could run them on your Mac? Well as some of you might or might not know, Parallels Desktop is the perfect solution for you.

Copy of windows for parallels