Despite the Mac's recent gains in market share, Windows is still the dominant operating system, especially in businesses. That means there may be times when you need to run the Microsoft OS: perhaps there’s an application your company uses that’s only available for Windows, or you’re a web developer and you need to test your sites in a true native Windows web browser. Or maybe you want to play computer games that aren’t available for OS X. Whatever your reason for running Windows, there are a number of ways your Mac can do it for you.
Open virtual machine configuration > Switch to Hardware tab > Mouse & Keyboard > Check/Uncheck Smooth scrolling. Note: The behavior of the Apple Magic mouse and another mouse can be different with the same configuration. This is a follow-on post from my earlier blog post ‘Getting Back / Forward mouse buttons working in Mac OS X‘. The big problem now is getting forward / backward working in Parallels (and VMware Fusion if it doesn’t work on that either). Parallels Toolbox for Mac and Windows 30+ tools in a lightweight, powerful, all-in-one application for Mac ® and PC. Easy to use and economical—a whole suite of tools for a fraction of the cost of individual apps, packaged in one simple interface. Trackpad-tuning MacBook Air for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. Some of us like OS X’s “natural scrolling”, where the trackpad acts more like touch on an iPad screen: when you swipe down, things on screen move down. I use Windows7 running through Parallels just so I can have the 3 finger dragging. August 8, 2013.
If you need to run just one or two specific Windows apps, you may be able to do so using CrossOver (), which can run such applications without requiring you to actually install Windows. (CrossOver's vendor, CodeWeavers, maintains a list of compatible apps.)
If you need a more flexible, full-fledged Windows installation, you still have several other options. You could use Apple’s own Boot Camp, which lets you install Windows on a separate partition of your hard drive. Or you could install one of three third-party virtualization programs: Parallels Desktop 7 (), VMware Fusion (), or VirtualBox (), each of which lets you run Windows (or another operating system) as if it were just another OS X application.
Of those four options, Boot Camp offers the best performance; your Mac is wholly given over to running Windows. But you have to reboot your system to use Boot Camp, so you can’t use it at the same time as OS X; it's Mac or Windows, but not both. And while VirtualBox is free, setting it up is complicated—downright geeky, at times—and it lacks some bells and whistles you might want. Which leaves Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion as your best alternatives.
So, of those two, how do you decide which one is right for you? In the past, I tried to answer that question by comparing virtualization programs head-to-head, to see how they did on specific tasks. This time, however, that task-based approach didn’t work, largely because (with a couple exceptions that are noted below) the latest versions of Fusion and Parallels Desktop are nearly indistinguishable in performance. So instead of picking one program over the other based on how well it performs a given task, the choice now hinges on some more subjective factors. So this time around, I’ll look at those and try to explain how the two programs differ on each.
Note that, for the most part, I've focused primarily on using these programs to run Windows on your Mac. You can, of course, use them to run other operating systems—including OS X Lion itself—but that’s not the focus here.
General Performance
As noted, both Parallels Desktop and Fusion perform well when it comes to running Windows 7 on a Mac. Macworld Labs ran both programs through PCWorld’s WorldBench 6 benchmark suite, and the results were close: overall, VMware Fusion beat out Parallels Desktop by a very slight margin (113 to 118, meaning Fusion was 18 percent faster than a theoretical baseline system, Parallels Desktop 13 percent). Parallels Desktop was faster than Fusion in some individual tests, Fusion was faster in others, and in the rest the differences were almost too close to call.
Parallels Desktop 7 vs. VMware Fusion 4
WorldBench 6 uses automated test scripts and eight different applications to simulate the real-world use of a system; we run the full suite multiple times then average the results together. For WorldBench scores, higher is better. All other results are in seconds; lower is better. Best result in bold. Tests run on a 2011 17-inch 2.2GHz Quad Core i7 MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM running OS X Lion 10.7.1; both Virtual Machines were configured to use a 200GB drive, 1724MB RAM, and 4 processors
Distill these numbers to their essence, and what you have are two fast, capable ways of running Windows on your Mac.
Commercial electric digital multimeter ms8301a user manual. Advantage: Neither (or both).
Specific types of performance
While the two programs are practically indistinguishable in general usage, there are three specific scenarios in which greater differences emerge.
The first of them: gaming. If you want to run Windows in a virtual machine to play games that you can’t play on a Mac, then you’ll want to use Parallels Desktop 7. In my testing, it handily outperformed Fusion, especially on newer titles. One reason is that Parallels supports up to 1GB of video ram (VRAM), versus only 256MB in Fusion. Parallels Desktop also has better DirectX support; one game I tried looked fine in Parallels using DirectX, but awful in Fusion; switching to OpenGL in Fusion solved that problem, but not all games offer this option.
Overall, Parallels Desktop’s 3D engine seems to work much better for games in Windows than does Fusion’s engine. So if Windows gaming is your thing, Parallels is the one you want to use.
Advantage: Parallels Desktop.
Linux with Accelerated Graphics
The second big difference between the two: Only Parallels includes accelerated 3D graphics in Linux virtual machines, so if you need that, you’ll need to use Parallels.
Advantage: Parallels Desktop. Ready for el capitan piso13.
Virtualization Explorer
The third big difference: If you want to explore operating systems other than Windows, Fusion offers a much Parallels for mac activation key. broader universe of alternatives. Both programs support “virtual appliances”—dowloadable, pre-configured operating systems, often bundled with specific applications. VMware’s appliance library is huge, with over 1,900 appliances available; Parallels Desktop’ library, on the other hand, contains only 98. (Desktop can use VMware’s appliances, but they must first be converted to the Parallels format; it doesn’t really seem fair to give the program full credit for that capabiity, if it’s reliant on the VMware ecosystem.) So you want to explore the wild world of operating systems and applications, Fusion is the way to go.
Advantage: Fusion.
So much for the three categories with relatively clear winners; now for the more subjective criteria.
Purchase and license
Fusion and Parallels Desktop both normally cost $80, but pricing for both is a moving target. For example, VMware is currently offering Fusion at a promotional price of $50. Meanwhile, Parallels will sell Desktop 7 as an upgrade to owners of older versions for $50; if you’re currently using Fusion, Parallels will sell you Desktop 7 for $30. No matter how much you pay for a virtualization program, remember that you’ll also need to factor in the price of Windows itself.
There’s a big hidden cost in those prices: the software license. Fusion’s license (for non-business users) allows you to install and use it on any Macs that you own or control. Parallels Desktop, on the other hand, requires one license per machine, and it uses activation to check those serial numbers. So if you want to run your virtualization program on more than one Mac, Fusion will cost less—potentially much less.
Advantage: Fusion (for the moment).
Installation and general operation
Installing Fusion 4 is surprisingly simple: You just drag and drop the program to any directory you wish. There’s no installer to run, and you can store the program anywhere. When you first launch Fusion, it asks for your administrative password and activates its extensions. But those extensions aren’t hidden away in some low-level system folder where you’ll never find them. Instead, they remain within the Fusion application bundle and automatically activate on subsequent launches.
More importantly, they’re deactivated when you quit Fusion. In fact, when you quit Fusion, unless you choose to leave the Windows applications menu item in your Mac’s menu bar, absolutely nothing Fusion-related is left running. This setup also makes uninstalling a snap—just drag the app to the trash, and you’re done. Taking a program as complex as Fusion, and making it as easy to install and uninstall as any simple utility, is a major accomplishment.
Parallels, by contrast, is installed via an installer, its extensions are installed in the System folder and are always present, even when Desktop isn’t running. In addition, two background processes continue to run after you quit Parallels. These processes don’t take much RAM or CPU power, but they’re there.
Advantage: Fusion.
How To Slow Down Scrolling With MousePreferences and virtual machine settings
Both of these programs have lots of settings options; Parallels Desktop has more of them and, consequently, has a more complicated preferences screen. Both of their preferences panels are reasonably well organized, doing a decent job of categorizing the various settings. One thing I don’t like about Parallels is that it automatically enrolls you in the company’s Customer Experience Program, which collects anonymous usage data; you have to opt out by disabling it in the Advanced section of Preferences. Fusion offers a similar program, but you have to opt in, not out.
When it comes to changing the settings for a virtual machine, the two programs take a slightly different approach: Parallels Desktop uses a floating window that’s independent of the virtual machine being configured; that makes it easy to toggle between the settings and the virtual machine, but it’s also easy to lose track of the settings window if you click another window to the foreground.
Parallels desktop for mac. Fusion, by contrast, dims the virtual machine, and presents a fixed window in the center of the screen, on top of the virtual machine. Its settings window mimics that of System Preferences, while Parallels uses a tabs-and-lists layout. Some users may prefer one over the other, but I find they both work reasonably well.
Advantage: Neither (or both).
Windowed windows
Both programs can be run in an “integration” mode, meaning Windows applications aren't bound inside a single Windows window; rather, they appear side-by-side in the OS X graphical user interface with Mac programs. (VMware calls this mode Unity; Parallels calls it Coherence.) Download iphone to mac wifi transfer.
In this mode, both programs seem to treat these windows as though they're regular Mac apps. But there is a subtle but telling difference: Parallels Desktop actually treats the windows of your Windows apps as one, even though they display separately. You can see this if you activate Mission Control in OS X Lion: Regardless of how many Windows applications you’re running, they’ll all be lumped together in one Parallels Desktop entry. This means, among other things, that if you use a window-management utility, it may not work correctly.
Fusion, on the other hand, treats each Windows app like a window from any OS X application: The system treats them as truly separate from one another. If you open Mission Control while you’re using Fusion, each running Windows app gets its own entry.
If you prefer to think of your virtual machine as a single entity, you’ll probably prefer Parallels Desktop’ Coherence mode. But if you’re going to the trouble of using an integrated mode, chances are you want your Windows apps to behave just like your Mac ones. And in that case it makes more sense to treat the windows the way Fusion does.
Advantage: Fusion.
Updates
Programs of this complexity require frequent updates; there’s just so much going on that there’s always going to be another feature to add or another bug to fix. The two companies handle updates differently, however. Parallels Desktop pushes out updates rapidly, so users get the latest features and fixes as quickly as possible. Fusion has a slower update cycle. Both programs have in-app updating now, so that portion of the routine has gotten simpler than it was in the past.
So which update methodology is better, frequent small updates or occasional larger updates? That's really up to you; some people like knowing that they’ve always got the latest bug fixes and features, while others may prefer longer periods between updates. The important thing, though, is that both companies do actively keep their products up to date.
Advantage: Neither (or both).
And the winner is…
So which virtualization solution should you purchase? In my comparison, Fusion comes out ahead (four wins, two losses, and three ties). https://yolabargains.weebly.com/office-mac-2008-software-download.html. But you may prioritize these features differently than I do. That’s why I suggest you download each program’s free trial version and see how each handles your particular needs. Both are excellent performers in the Windows arena, so you won’t be disappointed by either program’s speed. Instead, your selection will come down to your feelings about those other, less measurable factors—and for that, nothing beats hands-on experience.
Senior Contributor Rob Griffiths is master of ceremonies at Many Tricks Software.
Izotope nectar 2 production suite free download. [Updated 02/14/12 to clarify the number of apps that can be run under CrossOver.]
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10.7: Reverse Reversed Scrolling direction | 26 comments | Create New Account
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Actually, Apple had very good reason for this change (no, it isn't backwards): It mimics the natural scrolling behavior found on the iPhone and iPad. That is, when you drag downwards, the PAGE moves downwards, showing more of the upper portion, and visa-versa. It makes total sense when using the iPhone/iPad, why would it suddenly be 'backwards' when using a desktop? Granted, it is different than we are used to, but that doesn't make it backwards. That said, I also disabled it given that I have a scroll wheel mouse, not a touchpad. When/if I get a touchpad, I'll re-enable the behavior.
From reading around the web, it seems that this setting might be in the Mouse pane of System Prefs for some people; for others, it is not showing up at all.
Parallels desktop 12 for mac home edition. On my late '09 11' MacBook Air, I found the setting in Mouse, and it reads: 'Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating'. I unchecked it to get normal scrolling back.
The setting exists both under the Mouse and the Trackpad panes. However, it depends on which devices you are using.
If you have a trackpad, then change it there, if you have a muse, under the mouse. If you have both (which is readily possible on a laptop or with a magic trackpad) then you can possibly have different settings for each, but that could be rather awkward.
I have been using the iPad for a year so I found that with a Magic Mouse the default Lion setting easier to get used to. I just think about pushing a piece of paper up the screen. When I use that analogy it makes more sense. It was a little funny for the first hour but now I am used to it. Note that Apple considers this the 'natural' way to scroll.
Maybe I am wrong but the speed translation (moving your fingers on the trackpad x mm or turning your mouse scroll wheel by x degrees moves things by y pixels) seems to be constant for the scrollbar. But since more content in a scrollable view means moving the scrollbar moves the content more, this inverse scrolling has a highly variable speed translation (quite the opposite to iOS devices where the speed translation was always unity).
Give it a try 'the new way'. My understanding early on was that there were arguments about which way/how the windows should move. Are you moving the 'paper' or are you moving the 'viewport'. The viewport won out.
Try it. The feedback is so instantaneous that you'll correct what you are doing without even thinking about it.
Yes, it's not hard to get used to, but when you're in a multi-platform environment it's much harder to do the switch. Until I get rid of my Windows machines this is going to have to go back to regular mode.
I also can't seem to change the mouse wheel independently, possibly because I have a Logitech mouse. If I could do that I'd find it much easier to adapt.
Alas, if you don't have a trackpad, the trackpad preferences don't work and you can't fix the scrolling direction. I can change the scroll direction on my four-year-old MacBook but not my trackpadless iMac. That matters because trackpad scrolling is used by many scrolling mouse, including my Microsoft one. I suspect the number of Macs using scrolling mice must run in the millions. They are out of luck.
Let's hope Apple fixes that in 10.7.1. There should be two scroll direction preferences, one for mice in the Mouse preferences and one for trackpads in the Trackpad preferences. Many users might want to make each work differently. Anyone know if there's a command line way to fix this?
You don't need to have a Trackpad in order to see the Trackpad settings pane to change the setting. The scroll direction is available under the Mouse settings.
What bugs me (and I'd read about this beforehand but had to see it to believe it) is that you cannot set the Mouse and Trackpad to have different scroll direction behaviors, i.e. behaviors you might think appropriate to each device. Whichever one you set last (Mouse or Trackpad) will determine how both devices operate.
I'm not on my Lion machine right now, so I can't tell you exactly where to look, but I can confirm there is definitely a preference in there for the mouse as well as for the trackpad. They're linked, so you can't have one set one way and the other the opposite, but you can at least re-reverse your mouse's scroll ball.
Uncontrollable Scrolling With Mouse
If you have a mouse, it's at the very top of the Mouse settings pane and is worded differently.
defaults write -g com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false
This change makes so much sense, especially if you are using a multi-touch trackpad (multi-touch is the new focus of interacting with OS X).
'Scrolling' is really 'dragging'. A page is an object just as text and graphics are objects on a page. If you drag a graphic on a page, you logically expect that object to move in the same direction that you are dragging. not the opposite direction. The same applies to the page itself. If you drag the body of a page, it should move in the same direction, not opposite (as it used to do). Scroll bars have been 'demoted' in Lion. They are invisible unless you either drag a page or move the cursor over a window edge. The scroll bars are no longer the 'object'. Although this is a change from previous versions of Mac OS X, it is a change for the better, and it makes perfect sense. If you are using a previous version of Mac OS X, and are thinking of moving to Lion, you should download a free application called 'Scroll Reverser'. It will help untrain you from dragging pages the old way (in the opposite direction), and train you on the new, logical way so that you are ready to roll when you upgrade to Lion.
After trying the new way for a bit it clicked for me and actually feels a lot more natural then the old way. Especially when thinking about other gestures like pinching which work from the point of view of the contents not the viewport.
I had to uninstall Intellipoint (Microsoft mouse software) before the option to disable reverse scrolling appeared. After disabling the option and reinstalling Intellipoint all is well.
I want to learn the new way, but since my employer forces me to use Windows, we need a hint to reverse scrolling in MS Windows :P
I have installed Scrollvetica to practice Lion's 'reversed' scrolling while I await my new iMac. After 1 day, its not quite there but as a regular iPad and iPhone user I don't think I'll take long to adapt.
My wife has Lion installed and first opened the new iPad-like Mail. She didn't even notice the scroll change - it looked like a iPad so she treated it like one. For us 'Natural' scrolling feels natural.
10.7: Fixing Reverse Scrolling where option is invisable.
Like other people, the option to change the reverse scrolling did not appear in the mouse pref pane on my iMac and I do not have a track pad.
How I fixed this was by unplugging the Microsoft mouse I use and plugging in an Apple mouse. The option was in in the mouse preferences pane as soon as I opened it. Upgrading to the latest Intelipoint (version 8) drivers did not help as I tried that first.
If you have a non-Apple scroll mouse, this option does not appear in the Mouse preference pane. It's possible to reverse the scroll direction using the defaults command in the Terminal.
defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false You'll need to log out for the change to take effect. Credit: The Mac Admin http://themacadmin.com/?p=494
Someone suggested: 'You don't need to have a Trackpad in order to see the Trackpad settings pane to change the setting. The scroll direction is available under the Mouse settings. '
Unfortunately, as someone else has noted, what appears on these panels is very hardware specific. On my late 2006 iMac the Mouse preferences screen is sparse. It only has adjustments for tracking speed and double-click speed, along with radio buttons for setting the left or right button as the primary mouse button. It's so bare, I can't miss anything else. This is interesting. I just activated my Microsoft Bluetooth mouse. Now, I get a more complex Mouse preferences that does include the shadowy 'Move content' checkbox. The good news is that I can turn Bluetooth off and, although the 'Move content' checkbox disappears, the Preference sticks. My iMac is normal again and just like my MacBook. Yeah! I've nothing against Apple's rationale for changing trackpad behavior. I just believe that it's more intuitive to have mouse scrolling behave differently. Users should be able to set both behaviors separately.
This is interesting. My Trackpad panel does not say either of those things. It has a radio button list on the left and a video display area on the right. The top choice under the tab 'Scroll and Zoom' says 'Scroll direction: natural. Content tracks finger movement' not 'When using gestures to scroll or navigate, move content in the direction of finger movement.'
Additionally, there is no 'Ignore accidental trackpad input,' choice anywhere on the panel. BTW I have a Summer 2009 Macbook Pro 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.
The new way of scrolling is all good if you're only going to work on Macs running Lion. For the trackpad it certainly makes perfect sense and the two-finger scrolling is unique to Macs anyway so there is no potential for confusion on PC laptops. But for a mouse it is different. The concept of mapping the top of the scroll wheel to a movement in the same way as swiping fingers over a trackpad is less obvious to start with. But I could get used to it, if it weren't for the fact that I have to work five days a week on a PC with an almost identical scroll wheel mouse and I also occasionally boot my Mac into Boot Camp.
The end result is that I scroll in the wrong direction in all operating systems about half of the time. I really would appreciate a separate setting for the mouse and trackpad in Lion. Or, a simple way to reverse the scroll direction in other operating systems :)
I feel the need to comment here. I'll preface this by saying I was a human computer interaction (e.g. usability) researcher for years, not that I am the foremost expert but I do have some background. I think there are a couple reasons why this 'reversed scrolling' is a mistake (my opinion only).
First of all the gesture associated with the scrollbar is different from a touch screen interface where you grab and drag. It would correspond more closely to clicking a scrollable screen with a mouse and pulling in an up or down direction. However when you use the trackpad to scroll, there is no grab (click). Intuitively you are controlling the scrollbar, which should operate in the reverse direction. The second reason is that it simply feels wrong because we are used to the opposite paradigm. I'm not saying there is no room for innovation in interface design. But, why do you think the QWERTY keyboard never changes. It is not necessarily the best design, but it is what we are all used to. And, there is something to be said for consistency. All that said, Apple usually gets it right. And, one thing I think they did do right was to make this a user preference. So, even the try to change the world, they let you change it back if you prefer. Just my 2 cents worth. Mouse Not Scrolling Windows 10
is there any way i can +1 your post?
Problems With Mouse Scrolling
The reason reversing the scrolling is silly is because a touch screen scrolls something different than a trackpad scrolls.
The touch screen (ipad, iphone) moves the content under the glass. The trackpad moves the screen (a window onto the content, sortof), even if you are only scrolling just one of the windows. This mimics the scroll bar behavior of old (errr. that is still there on the screen). Scrolling With Mouse
Many, many, many thanks for this post. I had the same problem too and it was driving me insane! Note: If you do not have a trackpad, then click on the Mouse button in Preferences and untick 'natural scrolling' box right at the top of the window. That will restore the old way of scrolling. Now I just have to unlearn my new habit. Amazing how fast habits form.
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