Parallels Desktop 9 and Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite (as a guest OS) compatibility

First, the Parallels Access cost only $17 or $19 (can't recall which) for two years subscription when bought with Parallels 10, which ain't bad. For that kind of money it's not worth trying to find something else.

I understand how you feel about the forced upgrade to Parallels 10. But I looked at Parallels 10 and VMWare Fusion, tried them both, and liked Parallels better. It's $50 either way for me. So, not buying Parallels because of my pique with the company is sort of hurting myself for no reason. They (Parallels) wouldn't care, and I wouldn't have the program I wanted. That's my reasoning, anyway.

 

So VM Ware just responded with 17% off for parallel users if they want to switch:
https://twitter.com/vmwarefusion/status/502785537326206976

 

Thanks for the code, Parallels team. It's a bit of a pain to use all the time, but at least it works:

sudo /Applications/Parallels\ Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/Parallels\ Service.app/Contents/MacOS/prl_disp_service -e hit Return/Enter

I hope you can fix Desktop 9 soon.

Thanks again,

David

 

What is that code for? Which version? Thanks.

 

Parallels Desktop 9 (latest version) for Mac

If you can't open Parallels, here's what you can do:

- Go to Utilities/Terminal
- Cut and paste the code into Terminal
- Hit Return/Enter
- Enter your password
- Open Parallels and it should work.

However, you have to do this every time you want to use it, which is a bit of a pain but at least it works.

I got this from the Parallels site two days ago, but it's not there anymore.

David

 

OK, thanks. I had that problem once, too, and it went away. Who knows?

On Parallels 10 now, working with Yosemite Beta 2 VM with my computer on Mavericks (they sent out a beta upgrade today). Pretty smooth.

 

I would prefer not to purchase Parallels 10 as I only use it to access IE on my Mac; I need IE for work... another pain in the neck! I hope the Parallels Team can fix version 9 soon.

 

I must admit that I was a bit too quick when complaining about PD (see the message I wrote on page 7 in this threat)....I tried VMware for several days, but I was not too happy with Fusion:
- While the import of the Win 7 and Win 8.1 VMs into VMware worked well (except the cursor issue below), importing my Linux VM's did not work very well. After the import of the Linux VM's, VMware complained about some SCSI-issues. I was not able to fix the issues quickly (an hour invested into the issue). And installing all my Linux VM's again is not an option (too much work to install them again, move files and so on).
- Win 8.1 did not always display the cursor. I had to reboot to get the cursor shown again.
- Win 7 was slower on Fusion. The Windows experience index showed 6.9 in Parallels, but 6.0 in Fusion.
- Installing the Fusion guest-additions on Linux VM's has to be done manually in the terminal of the Linux VM. PD does that automatically (one only needs to enter the root password, which is much more convenient if you have several Linux VMs).

Thinking
- of the work that I would still have to do to migrate my VM's to Fusion
- of the Fusion's shortfalls mentioned above
- and the insecurity about VMware's future upgrade policy (one can not be sure how VMware handles the upgrade policy in the future)

I bought PD 10 yesterday. I'm quite happy with it (though not everything is perfect, e.g. the huge icons in the control center and a broken Mac OS 10.8 VM, but I'm not sure whether this is related to PD 10 or some 10.8 guest issue).

 

That's pretty much my experience, too, in terms of the functioning of Parallels versus Fusion. As I said a couple posts back, the Fusion Tech Preview, free until October, didn't work as well for me as Parallels. I, too, couldn't convert the Ubuntu VM from Parallels to Fusion.

I started with Parallels many years ago, switched to Fusion when I thought it was better than Parallels, switched back to Parallels when it seemed equal to or better than Fusion and when the competitive upgrade path to Parallels was cheaper than the cost of upgrading Fusion, and I've been happy with Parallels since. No problems with their tech support, either. And now the cost to upgrade Parallels or switch to Fusion is the same, about $50. I'm sticking with Parallels 10 for now.

 

It's only $50 if you've only got one Mac to upgrade. I've recently downgraded to two Macs, but I was having to purchase three upgrades for a time. That's $150 because a Parallels license is only good for one machine. VMWare lets you use your license for up to three. I just paid $100 four months ago to upgrade my two active Macs to PD9 and now I'm looking at another $100 to upgrade to PD10. Plus $20 for remote access which is provided free with VMWare's built-in VNC server. $120 vs $50. I've been using Parallels since v3, but I'm starting to feel rather milked these days and I'm very seriously considering a switch.

On the flip-side, for what it's worth, during the 10.9 beta Parallels fairly quickly released a fix to allow PD8 to work. I'm hoping they'll do the same shortly for PD9 and OS X 10.10 (those of you still using PD8, I wouldn't hold your breath).

 

That puts a very different light on things, especially if you have more than one Mac. I didn't know all that. My recent experience comparing Parallels with Fusion in their latest versions or preview versions was that Parallels worked better for me. Whether it worked better enough to justify an addition $100 for two more machines is another matter. I wonder if Parallels could be convinced to change their policy to be competitive with Fusion? Seems as though a one owner, three computer policy makes more sense, maybe at a slightly higher cost.

 

During the early days of Fusion I had a similar experience. I was in a training class where the environment was provided on external hard drives as a VM that was to be run in VMWare Workstation. Being the one Mac guy in the classroom I decided to download a trial of Fusion to run the classroom environment. I found running a VM on an external drive to be extremely problematic - the VM software continually lost contact with the drive and I was having all kinds of issues with the environment crashing because of it. I think I even had a kernel panic or two. I then used my copy of Parallels to import the VM (still running it on the same external drive) and didn't have a single issue.

I have to imagine things have gotten better since then (I think this was probably v2 of Fusion, back when PD was on version 5 or 6). I've also been given a VM image of an OpenStep environment that I'd love to play with, but Parallels won't convert it because it doesn't recognize the OS, while I'm betting Fusion would open it without any troubles. This sort of "cross-platform" compatibility is another reason I've thought about switching.

 

More evidence that there's a lot I didn't (don't) know. My wife would tell you there was no need for more evidence of that.

Looks as though the bottom line here is that Fusion and VMWare in general has greater depth and applicability than does Parallels, and in special situation like yours with non-Windows OS, etc., or with multiple computers, Fusion is the way to go, but for a general user with one machine, needing only Windows, OSX, and/or Ubuntu VMs to work and especially using an external hard drive, Parallels may be the better and cheaper (or at least not more expensive) way to go.

 

It's gotten to the point that I'd rather pay Bill Gates before I pay parallels team again. Yup, it's easier just to bite the bullet and buy a $400 laptop running windows real native then to keep shelling out $50 every year for a fake windows VM.

 

Wow -- we live in different economic realities. Maybe because I own my own business, I have a different (dare I say 'practical') mindset here in that paying $50 for an upgrade to run multiple OSen on the latest Mac OS (not even released yet) seems reasonable to support the continuing development of this tool. It's not even the price of taking my family out for dinner at OutBack or Olive Garden. It doesn't require that I buy additional hardware.

But some would rather spend $400 to avoid spending $50. The utility of a VM -- one I can explore changing or even risking infection that is essentially disposable and rebuildable in a matter of a few minutes by duplicating a backup copy -- and a system that allows me to run how many different Microsoft or Linux versions on the same Mac laptop -- all of that for $50 seems pretty minor to me. This isn't Adobe, charging four figures for essentially the same bloated crap year after year. This isn't some 'cloud computing' model that will have you renting the software forever more, binding you forever to the enslavement of Adobe CC, Microsoft 365, Mint or similar shackles. And unless you MUST move to Yosemite, this isn't even a required update for functionality. I could see closeted fanboi folks getting their panties in a wad if Parallels is simply a toy for occasional showing off to geeky friends. Nothing wrong with that, BTW - but at the same time not reason to bash a continually developed project evolution. Just stay where you're at and P9 will service you just peachy. Or be brave and buy a $50 external 1Tb drive, clone your entire Mac over to it with CCC, and boot up in that environment when you need to use your older OS and working Parallels install. You spend $50 either way, and you can have both worlds without feeding what you perceive as greedy developers out to get you.

Or you can buy the cheap (in so many ways) win laptop. Not sure how spending that extra $350 will get you working on a Mac at the same time you are using that Windows environment, unless you relish carrying two pieces of hardware everywhere. Yep, that seems practical - not. And how well will that Windows laptop run Win7 or XP at the same time it's running 8.1? Enough snarky from me -- others have your financial model and I have mine. My business makes decisions based on real returns for the tools I buy. $50 isn't going to be painful to any real developer here that must dev in Yosemite. Those individuals will roll that cost into the fluff of any one given project, a cost of doing business. If you are a high school student working minimum wage, it's a day's wages to 'play' with a cool new toy, or purchase four new CDs of music, or a tank of gas that'll take you and some friends cruising or the mall. One wonders about the rest of the posters and posers here -- I suspect if $50 is such a painful hurdle to continue to work, those fussing folks don't have a viable business model for that much longer anyway. Perhaps they should run for political office where rationality gave way to hysterical whining so many years ago.

PS: Mr. Gates hasn't been part of the Windows dev cycle, with the forced need to upgrade your cheap laptop every two years, for quite a while. Heck, we can't even make Ballmer jokes anymore. What has the world come to?

 

How can 10.10 be released and this has never been addressed throughout the entire beta cycle!

 

just a guess: they never intended to support yosemite in Parallels Desktop v9?

 

It seemed that Parallels was again use a Mac OS X version change to force an upgrade. Taken together with all the bacon email I'm getting from them trying to push me into upgrading, their approach is clear. I went over and bought VMWare Fusion (at a discount) and have had a reliable VM product to use through the developer betas of Yosemite and the production Yosemite build. It works better than Parallels has ever worked for me, too.
Bye Parallels. Greed got you one less evangelist and one less customer.

 

This is absurd! If you are not going support Yosemite as a guest under PD 9, just say so, but to say the engineers are working on it and 3 mos later it still doesn't work.

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned previous. Sorry if it has.
I've upgraded from Parallels for Mountain Lion to Parallels for Yosemite and can access virtual windows no problem but I can no long open docs, docx or excel files from yosemite nor can I drag these files from parallels to yosemite or vice versa like I could on the previous version. To transfer these files from one OS to the other I have to put them in the dropbox which is annoying. Any suggestions?