Parallels certainly has a lot of challenges these days: in the server space it’s about to introduce its first bare-metal hypervisor, Parallels Server, what will put the company in competition with VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle and Sun; in the desktop space, specifically in the Apple market, it has to bank the spread of VMware that is raising much consensus with its Fusion.
On this second front the company is specially combative and demonstrates its capability with the new Desktop for Mac 4.0.
This release introduces some fifty new features. Among the others:
- Command line interface
- API and SDK for 3rd party developers
- Capability to scale Windows virtual machines desktop to fit the Mac OS screen
- Simultaneous access to removable storage devices from guests and host.
- Remote control from Apple iPhone
- Voice control (24 commands available)
- Support for 4 vCPUs per VM
- Support for Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Server as guest OS
- Support for DirectX 9.0, DirectX Pixel Shader 2.0 and OpenGL 2.0 graphical primitives on Windows guest OSes
- Experimental support for Apple Mac OS X codename Snow Leopard
Download a trial here.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.