Alan, if you decide to go with Parallels, be sure that you have plenty of space on your hard drive. If I remember correctly, it used over 10GB of space on my drive before I finally decided to uninstall it when the Mac version of BIAB finally got closer to parity with the Windows version. Have you looked into Bootcamp also? This would eliminate any additional purchase since you already have Win7.

Also, re: forum activity, there is no question whatsoever that there is MUCH more action going on in the Windows forum compared to the Mac forum. Let me just say that the core functionality of the program is essentially the same in both versions at this point (or will be with the imminent release of BIAB 2014 for Mac) so even if you were to go with the Mac version you can still learn tons from visiting the Windows forum. Much of the information you'll get is transferable to the Mac BIAB. Of course, if someone talks about RealBand you just think GarageBand instead, and discussions about soundcard upgrades won't be pertinent to you on a Mac, etc.

Personally, I got tired of using emulation software (Parallels); needed to recover the disc space; could never get my USB ports, my DIGI002 interface, or my Wacom graphics tablet to be recognized by Parallels; and my copy of Windows98 is too old to work with Bootcamp, so I just went native with the Mac version and am perfectly happy with it.

Ron

UltraPAK 2021, 27" late 2012 iMac, 16 GB RAM, OSX 10.15.7
Logic Pro X 10.6.3