I found the stopwatch, alarm, timer, and date countdown in the latter group particularly handy, since I typically defer such tasks to my iPhone or Apple Watch. Others are grouped into categories, providing functionality for taking screenshots, screen recording, archiving files, or managing time. Convenient? Yes, but none of the utilities are particularly special or unique, and power users are likely to have their own alternatives already installed.

These tools offer one-click simplicity for downloading or converting video, recording audio, muting the microphone, or performing system tasks such as locking the screen, hiding the desktop, preventing your Mac from going to sleep, and Do Not Disturb, which temporarily pauses notifications and Dock activity. Toolbox consolidates 20 common, everyday tasks into a single menu bar window, making them easier to find and use. Ironically, the marquee feature of Parallels Desktop 12 ($100 one-year Pro Edition or Business Edition subscription $80 Standard Edition one-time purchase $40 Student Edition one-time purchase) isn’t part of the core software at all, but a bundled standalone application called Parallels Toolbox (sold separately for $10) which is installed via Preferences. The only “new” Parallels Desktop 12 feature is the standalone Toolbox application, which consolidates 20 Mac utilities into a single menu bar icon. Having celebrated its tenth anniversary for Desktop earlier this year, Parallels encouraged engineers to come up with at least one unique new feature to justify the upgrade to version 12, although the company’s usual relentless innovation produced a mixed bag this time around. VMware marked the occasion by launching Fusion 8.5, a maintenance update with no new features. Last year, both companies delivered ambitious new versions to capitalize on back-to-back debuts of Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan, but the 2016 editions are somewhat more subdued by comparison. In what has now become an annual ritual, VMware and Parallels have updated their respective Fusion and Desktop products to coincide with the recent release of macOS Sierra. Mac users are fortunate to have not one, but two excellent commercial virtualization software packages to choose from, not to mention less-polished free alternatives like Virtual Box.

Parallels for mac 12 release date