If you find your Windows installation is gobbling too much space, you can “reclaim” it using Parallels’ control panel (provided you’ve got free disk space in the Windows virtual drive, that is). If you need more storage, it can take it. And although you will be asked how much disk space you want to afford the virtual Windows 10 installation, this is – unlike a Boot Camp partition – dynamic. Like Boot Camp, Parallels handles the Windows installation for you – you don’t even have to have the image downloaded in advance.

If you still want access to these and other Windows tools, without having to dive out of macOS and reboot into Windows every time you want to, say, record a Skype call, installing Windows 10 in Parallels Desktop is the way forward.

There are many little Windows apps that don’t have direct macOS versions or equivalents. Running Windows as a virtual machine in Parallels You can store files on external storage or use a cloud service such as Dropbox or OneDrive to keep files synced between the two, but it’s awkward in a way that installing via Parallels is not. It’s not a complete deal breaker if you need to access files from either OS. In Windows, you can’t even see the macOS partition without workarounds. You can see the Boot Camp partition from within macOS and see its files listed, but you can’t open them. The biggest is that the two OSes don’t play nicely. Apple's ARM-based Macs won't support Windows virtualisationīoot Camp does have drawbacks, though.Google and Parallels bring native Windows apps to Chromebooks.Apple MacBook Pro 16in review: A little bigger, a lot better.Once it’s done, you’ll have a Mac that can dual-boot into either macOS or Windows – one or the other, not both at the same time, like you get with Parallels. You fire up the Boot Camp Assistant “app” from within macOS, point it at the Windows image you wish to install (which you must have previously downloaded), tell it how much disk space you want to afford the Windows partition, and let it do its thing. Boot Campīoot Camp is the Apple-endorsed way of getting Windows onto your Mac. Here, then, for anyone considering running Windows 10 on a Mac, is an explanation of the three different ways to run Windows and why you might, or might not, want to do each. And just to confuse matters further, you can get the best(ish) of both worlds and run your Boot Camp Windows installation using Parallels, without having to reboot the entire system. Why have I got two lots of Windows 10 on the MacBook? Because a Boot Camp installation and a virtual Windows 10 running in Parallels Desktop have different strengths and weaknesses, which make it worth the extra storage space sacrifice. That noise you can hear is Steve Jobs spinning in his grave at 7,200rpm. There are three operating system instances running on my Mac – two of them are Windows 10.

Parallels vs bootcamp