Making a strong acceleration in its beta program scheduling, Parallels jumps public betas for new Desktop 3.0 and directly launches first Release Candidate.
After introducing the display mode called Coherence in previous releases, Parallels reaches another level in Mac-Windows desktops integration with new SmartSelect, capable of assigning a default application (on host or guests) to any file on both systems. In this way users can don’t even need to drag & drop files from one system to another, completely forgiving they are running a virtual machine.
Parallels Desktop 3.0 also introduces snapshots, already used in competitive products like VMware Workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC, or offline virtual disk access with new Parallels Explorer utility.
Parallels also claims capability to run 3D graphics inside virtual machines through existing hardware cards on host system, even if they doesn’t provide further details.
Enroll for this release candidate here.
It’s evident Parallels will launch Desktop 3.0 RTM for Apple WWDC conference later this month, consolidating its dominance on Mac virtualization market much earlier VMware can become a serious threat with its upcoming Fusion.