Cat’s out of the bag? It appears that Parallels is preparing an update to their award-winning virtualization software for Mac. Amazon Germany has a pre-order page up with Parallels Desktop 9 artwork and an expected delivery date of September 5th. Having a quick look around, it appears you can also order it now in the US at MacMall/PCM for $74.99 shipped:
Parallels 9? http://t.co/Q4t2QvPdXM
— 9to5Toys (@9to5toys) August 18, 2013
A variety of other retailers appear to be getting units in stock after a quick Google search of manufacturer part PDFM9L-BX1-EN-NT. The September 5th release date would seem to fit into Parallels’ schedule. Previous releases were:
- Parallels 8 – Released on September 4, 2012
- Parallels 7 – Released on September 6, 2011
- Parallels 6 – Released on September 14, 2010
- Parallels 5 – Released on November 4, 2009
Parallels allows Mac Users to run Virtual machines of Windows, other instances of Mac OS, Linux, Android and just about every other Intel-based OSes out there inside of Mac OS. Likely updates this time around would probably include OSX 10.9 Mavericks and Windows 8/.1 compatibility improvements.
Parallels has traditionally allowed users who’ve bought within 2 weeks of release a free upgrade to the new version but no such policy has yet been announced for this version. (Update: Here’s Parallels Tech Guarantee saying if you buy after August 15th (now) you are covered for a free upgrade when V9 comes out.) If you are interested in purchasing Parallels now (and it is a GREAT product), we recommend downloading a free 30-day trial of Parallels Desktop 8 which would conclude after the above early September update, guaranteeing you wouldn’t need to pay extra for an update to v9.
If Parallels 9 is indeed coming out soon, you can bet we’ll have a full review of the product and/or any iOS accessory products, should such products exist, as soon as they are available.
- Parallels 8 – Released on September 4, 2012
- Parallels 7 – Released on September 6, 2011
- Parallels 6 – Released on September 14, 2010
- Parallels 5 – Released on November 4, 2009
Thanks/Danke Tipsters!
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actually, Parallels hase already announced their up-to-date program a couple of days ago: http://www.parallels.com/techguarantee2013
it means that if you buy PD8 now, you get PD9 for free when it comes out.
Great find, updated! Thanks
Is that seriously the box art? Is their marketing department run by a team of 12 year olds?!
WOW! Super tacky and gross packaging!
It looks like a box of detergent.
LOL I guess their physical retail boxes have sold pretty poorly on shelves…hence the National Enquirer-esque headline on the packaging.
As long as Parallels 8 continues to work with the upcoming Mavericks I see no reason to upgrade. I’ve paid for versions 4 thru 8 and haven’t had any recent features added that I’ve utilized. I’m fine with staying on 8, but if by some strange reason they decide to not update Parallels 8 to work with Mavericks, then I’ll be off to my local torrent site for version 9.
I am so happy with Parallels 8 that I would update just to support this company. It has made my life so much easier when developing software for both Mac and Windows. Its best feature is the ability to use the Bootcamp partition when running in Mac OS which saves a ton of disk space. I am looking forward to reading about the new features. Tip: Get IconRestorer for Windows to save the location of your desktop icons when the screen changes sizes.
I’d LOVE to take advantage of Parallels, but Parallels 7 only caused problems on my iMac; ran sooooo slowly and seemed to big down the memory even after completely shutting Parallels down. Granted, my iMac has an i5 processor with 4GBs if RAM. What are the lowest specs in which Parallels should work well? …or are there any other hints that would help me avoid this? Thanks for any input!
or, you could stick with the extremely stable and feature rich VM Fusion
Watch for VMware to release Fusion 6 soon, expected in September as well.
a few weeks ago, there was an offer on this site which contains parallells 8.
I bought it because I thought it was a great deal.
Today I saw this post about parallells 9. So I want to give a well meaned “FU C K You” to the 9to5mac team for let me buy this old sh*t
Bought parallels 8 last week and got an email this morning, informing me I can upgrade to P9 for free until october 31st. Email has download links and the required product key
Just had an early upgrade email £34.99 in UK for existing Desktop 8 users