Following up on an earlier announcement, Parallels has revealed more details of Desktop 9 for the Mac. The virtualization software will ship September 5th, and support not only OS X Mavericks but Windows 8.1. Parallels is promising substantial performance boosts, including a 40 percent jump in disk performance, and a 25 percent increase in virtual machine startup and shutdown speeds. VM suspension times should be 20 percent shorter; web browsing and 3D graphics, meanwhile, should each run 15 percent faster.
The software allows Mavericks’ Power Nap feature to apply to Windows apps, and Parallels is also promising synced cloud services. In effect, that means all virtual machines can have access to the same cloud files.
Owners of Desktop 7 or 8 can upgrade today starting for $50; download links, however, won’t be available until the 5th. New the software will cost $80 for most customers, or $40 under educational pricing. Each copy comes with a free six-month subscription to Parallels Access.
