Access costs a hefty $80 per computer per year, though there’s a two-week free trial for every Mac you use. The two biggest drawbacks involve price and file transfers. Parallels Access gives the iPad a Launcher screen where Mac or PC apps are presented like large iPad app icons.ĭespite some drawbacks, Parallels Access is a very good way to make your iPad more of a productivity tool and to integrate it with your computer, without forcing you to use your iPad the same way you would use a computer. It works over both Wi-Fi and cellular connections. It runs them like iPad apps, in full screen, and at the iPad’s resolution, yet preserving full functionality and the ability to switch among open apps and windows on the computer. Unlike many others, it doesn’t force you to constantly try and emulate the precise mouse pointer for which most of these computer programs were designed. What it means by this is that it adapts them to the iPad’s familiar interface, including app launching, touch gestures, scrolling and text selection. Parallels, a company based in Seattle that’s best known for its namesake program that allows Macs to run Windows, calls this “applifying” your computer programs. The programs continue to reside on the computer, not the iPad. It isn’t the only iPad app that can remotely control computers, but of the ones I’ve tested, it does the best job of treating the computer programs it accesses as if they were iPad apps, without sacrificing functionality.

This feat was made possible by a new iPad app I’ve been testing called Parallels Access, released Tuesday, which can remotely control either a Mac or a Windows PC. The iPad is controlling the PC, which is a couple of miles away. Yet I have full access to all of its features and to the computer’s file system and other programs, and I am able to use them via the iPad’s touch gestures and keyboard, without a stylus. I am using the latest PC version of Microsoft Word for Windows, which doesn’t run on the iPad. I am typing this paragraph remotely on my home Windows PC, using an iPad in the middle of a Macy’s in a mall, over the Internet.

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