Switching to a Mac- Parallels or VMWare Fusion?

Dec 02, 2015

I have been running Articulate  Presenter, Storyline and Storyline 2 on my PC. I am REALLY wanting to switch to a Mac and still need to access all three software programs and build new courses in Storyline 2.  Which seems to be working better with Articulate products, Parallels or VMWare Fusion? I was told that VMWare is more stable, but I noticed all of the Parallels help videos on here. I just want as few bugs as possible and for it to run fast! Any advice is greatly appreciated.

5 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Alicia,

I also wanted to share that we have an article here on working on a Mac and a specific article on Parallels.  Those articles are in the Storyline 2 section, but the same type of practices hold true for Studio as well. 

I know a number of our staff are on Mac as well using Parallels or VMWare Fusion - so let us know if you have any other questions. 

Vasily Ingogly

Another option you might consider is a Macbook Pro. I have a maxed-out 13" Macbook Pro Retina, 2.8GHz, 16GB RAM and it does everything I need plus provides me with portability. I know you didn't ask about backups, but my strategy with my Macbook Pro is to use Time Capsule for a local backup of my important files, and Arq plus Amazon S3 for a remote backup of the same. I also update a clone of my hard drive once a week on a My Passport drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. That gives me great coverage if something goes wrong (or even if my apartment building burns down).

I'm thinking about getting a monitor and a Henge vertical docking station for my desk; that will provide me with more screen real estate for design work.

Parallels keeps getting better and better with every release. Ditto for VMWare Fusion (they are, after all, in competition with each other for the same customer base). You really can't go wrong with either of them.

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