15104 still completely fails to support retina display

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by ReubenR, Jul 13, 2012.

  1. jeffyjones

    jeffyjones Member

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    Well I'm sure they'll be willing to give you that full support if you upgrade to v8 next week.
     
  2. Mountain Jack

    Mountain Jack Bit poster

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    I think Parallels is well worth the money. I'm happy to buy a new version. Having said that, the thing that I really dislike is being lied to. Bugs and issues are okay. Thats the consequence of computing and we have to live with it. But wilful cheating is different.

    Just in my vicinity here in Stockholm Sweden, I know of three (3) colleagues that are also swearing over this Macbook/Parallels retina "support" scam, so to pretend that they don't know about this issue is not very plausible. You really have to be blind to buy a retina Mac and not end up trying to troubleshoot this. That translates into a fair amount of Apple buyers being the victims of this wilful ignorance/deception.

    This false feature advertising has caused countless hours of troubleshooting for many Apple owners over an advertised function that was never there to begin with. No apology is offered and there is still not even the decency to inform us on what to expect or do. Would it be so hard for Parallels to write three lines of text in this forum and provide an honest comment on this?

    If retina support is still advertised in version 8 and I find it's not there after buying, there will be a lawsuit.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2012
  3. jeffyjones

    jeffyjones Member

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    All the more reason to not buy it until someone else can confirm that support is there. I don't need to be a guinea pig.
     
  4. koppah

    koppah Bit poster

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    Just confirming that Parallels 8 has proper support for Retina resolution in Windows without having to change the Mac's resolution. :) Pity that Windows 8's DPI scaling isn't as good as OS X's :(
     
  5. mmm201

    mmm201 Member

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    It's completely unreasonable to expect customers to buy the product again for functionality they were promised.
     
  6. koppah

    koppah Bit poster

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    Actually, this was added opportunistically - Parallels never promised this when they released Version 7. Honestly, they could have held everything back for Version 8. They make no money by adding major features back to the older version, so I was appreciative for them to do so in the first place.

    Given that I read and use Windows 8 on my Mac at least 6 hours a day, I'm more than happy to pay to support the company building a product I use this much, especially given it's quite a reasonable price to pay 50 bucks a year given the functionality.
     
  7. mmm201

    mmm201 Member

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  8. koppah

    koppah Bit poster

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    Please note the title: Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac Updated to Support Apple's Retina Display

    When the product was originally released, there was no promise of Windows 8 support, nor Retina Displays.
     
  9. jeffyjones

    jeffyjones Member

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    Nonsense. Windows 8 looks every bit as sharp on the display. I set it for 200% DPI and it looks great. Visual Studio in particular has never looked as good as it does.

    No, they promised it when they released an update. If that update is what compelled you to buy the product, you were absolutely deceived. You're making a straw man argument.
     
  10. koppah

    koppah Bit poster

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    Yeah looks like Windows 8 had a bit of trouble toggling between DPI modes at first. I'm not sure if it was a bad interaction with the Parallels agent/drivers, but a couple of restarts fixed it. I am also running at 200% DPI, and it's looking good. Some UI elements are a bit fubared (battery indicator, for instance), and some things don't scale as nicely as on OS X, but otherwise it's looking much better than before.

    This has been beaten to death in this post already. They promised support for Retina Resolutions, and you did get it. Prior to the update, the maximum pixel size was not available inside Windows, and it was afterwards. I do agree that their messaging was a bit misleading, however, as it wasn't done too well.

    I still maintain my insistence that if you paid the bucks for Version 7, you were already happy enough with the features that Parallels added. Retina support was an added bonus, even if it wasn't executed very well at first. I honestly believe that the performance improvements and full Retina support is worth the $50 upgrade cost, but that cost-to-benefit analysis is subjective for each person.
     
  11. jeffyjones

    jeffyjones Member

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    There's nothing subjective about it. Why are you being an apologist for Parallels? No sane person would think, "Oh, Retina support, well I guess that means I'll be able to run Windows as a pixelated mess not at the native resolution, but those icons in the status bar sure will look good! Here's my credit card!"
     
  12. ReubenR

    ReubenR Bit poster

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    grumpy but I'll still do it (shell out for the 8 upgrade)

    As a developer I totally understand that it wouldn't have been a trivial exercise to get retina support going and would have accepted it as something I have to upgrade to get, but the misrepresentation sticks in the throat a bit. And then there's the attempt in the forums to obfuscate and blame the people reporting the problem to throw up a smoke screen shielding their lies.

    But... features is features. It's not Parallels 8's fault that the PR snakes lied about the Parallels 7 "retina support". If the product works as advertised now, I'll shell out for it, because it's better and makes my work day eaiser.

    But if anyone at Parallels is listening: tell less lies. It is worth it in the end.
     
  13. koppah

    koppah Bit poster

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    Great summary. As a developer myself, that's really the way I've been thinking about it. If marketing had been up-straight about the whole deal, I would've said 'OK'. As such, I'm still upgrading, but it would be nice for them to address this communication issue.
     
  14. jeffyjones

    jeffyjones Member

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    I'm a developer too. Cookies all around! By now you know not to promise things you can't or haven't delivered.
     
  15. danieltharris

    danieltharris Member

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    So PD8 looks great at full resolution, with DPI set to around 200%??

    I can already set it to the full resolution in PD7, but even with the DPI set higher it still looks very rough.

    I just want to be sure it will look fantastic before I upgrade.

    Also can anybody check for me if the following option still exists:

    - Go to configure Virtual Machine
    - Choose Full Screen Section
    - Is there an option that says "Use Mac OS X Full Screen"

    It should be a tick box. Is this still there and can you still turn off all of the corner hotspots? For me, being able to do those things is essential for me running Windows 8.

    I don't use Coherence and prefer just switching between the two in full screen. However, the OS X Full Screen gets in the way, so I need to be able to uncheck it.

    Cheers
     
  16. koppah

    koppah Bit poster

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    I'm using PD8, and also use it the same way as you. I can confirm this still works fine.

    FYI PD8 only used 2880 correctly if your Mac's resolution was set to that. This was very impractical, as switching between OS X and Windows became a pain.
     
  17. CobusT

    CobusT Bit poster

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    Interesting issue in PD8 on Retina Display

    Upgraded to PD8 and enabled Retina support. It does indeed look great. On Win8, the resolution switches to the full res 2880x1800 and the 'size' of items are set to 199%. However, with those settings, items on my external non-retina monitor also display at 199%... would have been great if the external display was at 100% and the retina display was at 199/200%...
     
  18. jeffyjones

    jeffyjones Member

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    I'm not sure that's possible. No apps, in OS X or Windows, can dynamically change their text DPI while dragging a window between monitors.
     
  19. CobusT

    CobusT Bit poster

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    Not true. This works perfectly in OSX. The external monitor has a 1:1 pixel ratio while the retina has 4:1 ratio. When you drag a window to the external monitor, half the window is rendered in retina and the other half (on the external display) is rendered non-retina. So OSX only scales the retina display, not the external display.
     
  20. mmm201

    mmm201 Member

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    While I'm certain WPF would be able to change DPIs on the fly, Windows sadly doesn't support setting different DPIs for different monitors.
    (GDI apps would need to be scaled when they switch desktops.)
     

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