But if you buy Windows 10 as a standalone operating system for a new computer you’ve built yourself or, in my case, so you can run Windows apps on your Mac, it’s a long, long way from free. Most of us are now accustomed to thinking of Windows 10 as ‘free’, because of the way Microsoft offered free upgrades to anyone on Windows 7 and 8. It is genuinely brilliant, even though it has followed that annoying trend of turning itself into a £70-per-year piece of subscription software, despite there being no good reason why it shouldn’t just be a one-off purchase.īut if you thought the cost of Parallels was stiff, that’s nothing compared to the price of the Windows 10 licence you need to run it. Unlike Apple’s Boot Camp, where you either boot into Windows or macOS, Parallels lets you run both Windows and Mac apps side by side. So, one of the first things I did with my new Mac was to install the Parallels Desktop 15, which allows you to run Windows apps on your Mac as if they were native Mac apps.
That said, I’m still a Windows boy at heart and, even though almost all the apps I use on a daily basis are available and almost identical on macOS, there are still a few Windows-only apps that I don’t want to forego. I know, I know – cover me in tar and slather me in magical, space grey feathers, but I simply couldn’t resist the 16in MacBook Pro with its awesome screen and speakers.
