Parallels was initially developed for Macintosh systems with Intel processors, with version 16.5 introducing support for Macs with Apple silicon.

Microsoft officially endorses the use of Parallels Desktop for running Windows 11 on Apple silicon Macs.

This name was not well received within the Mac community, where some felt that the name, particularly the term “workstation,” evoked the aesthetics of a Windows product.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is able to virtualize a full set of standard PC hardware, including[5] The first official release of version 2.5 was on February 27, 2007, as build 3186.

Full featured CD/DVD drives arrived in this version, which allowed the user to burn disks directly in the virtual environment, and play any copy-protected CD or DVD as one would in Mac OS X.

Additionally, the lawsuit claimed that Parallels Desktop 2.5's compatibility with “twoOStwo” showed that the two software products are run by essentially the same functional core.

When Netsys lost its initial urgency proceeding, it filed a new suit, in which it requested a temporary injunction from the Landgericht district court of Berlin.

A new snapshot feature was included, allowing one to restore their virtual machine environment to a previous state in case of issues.

Further, Parallels added a security manager to limit the amount of interaction between the Windows and Mac OS X installations.

This version included a long-awaited complete “Parallels tools'” driver suite for Linux guest operating systems.

[10] While accelerated graphics have materialised, Coherence, as well as the overall look and feel of Parallels Desktop for Mac has only changed slightly.

Build 4560, released on July 17, 2007,[12] added an imaging tool which allowed users to add capacity to their virtual disks.

Further, Parallels' Image Tool was updated to allow one to change their virtual hard disk format between plain and expanding.

Parallels Explorer was updated to allow for one to automatically mount an offline VM hard drive to the Mac desktop.

According to Parallels' Licensing page, Desktop for Mac version 3.0 contains Direct3D code that was originally developed by the Wine open-source project.

Officially released on November 4, 2009, Parallels Desktop 5 adds several new features, mainly to improve integration with the host OS.

[32] Released August 19, 2015, Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac includes support for Windows 10 and is ready for OS X 10.11 "El Capitan".

[36] Released August 22, 2017,[37] Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac provides macOS High Sierra readiness and support for upcoming Windows 10 features.

The update also brings in a slightly refreshed UI to better match macOS and visual improvements for Windows users on Retina displays.