Infrared remote control wrongly redirected

I noticed that PD redirects the Apple infrared remote control to the VM if PD is the up front application in OSX - to the effect that you are no longer remote control iTunes.

A bug? Or is there something to do about it?

 

Use Apple Remote in the Host or Guest

BernhardB,

As you're aware, integration of the Apple remote to the Windows guest environments was a feature just
added with Parallels Desktop 5.0. The remote itself works much like the integration of the keyboard/mouse
in that whatever OS or application you click on (whatever is in focus), that's where the keyboard will become active...same thing for the Apple remote. You can always disable the feature so that OS X always is paired
to the remote. This is in the configuration editor for the VM under the options section. I hope this explains
thing a bit better.

-David

 

David, thank you for your reply.

No, I was not aware of this new feature. And since I was not aware of it, I actually assumed first that my remote control is broken or that there is some other interaction on the OSX level. I discovered it by pure chance that PD is the culprit.

I think that this is also a case where the idea of the "always informed user" is just an ideal and that PD designers should consider the possibility that they set the default of such a new feature as "disabled". At least it would have saved me a lot of worries. And all user looking for this feature are aware that they need to enable it.

But more importantly, I disabled it under the VM configuration, and the problem persists: iTunes does not react, if PD is upfront.

 

Hi Bernhard,

There are always several new features included with each major release of Parallels Desktop for Mac and personally, I don't always agree with the things that are turned on by default. I sure that certain features
are left in the "on" position intentionally to be able to showcase those new features to users who might never have known about them otherwise. It's a fine line to determine which features we should turn on by default and which ones not to. Sorry about the confusion on this. I encourage you whenever you do an major upgrade to your Parallels, to check out the readme file that's included next to the "install" button from the mounted DMG. It always includes a "what's new" section.

Another good resource for new features and general info like this is the bundled Help file that comes with Parallels Desktop. I know that sounds pretty generic, but honestly, I use it frequently to just to get specific detail on what a certain feature is and how to use it best. It's under the "help" menu from the Parallels Desktop menu bar up top. It's got an index, so you can just type in a word, any word, and it will display all the hits for that word.

I'm concerned that turning off the Apple Remote feature didn't work for you. Mine's at the office so I won't be able to look at this more closely until next week. I'll get back to you when I can try it on my MBP.

 

"But more importantly, I disabled it under the VM configuration, and the problem persists: iTunes does not react, if PD is upfront"

I found the same thing. The virtual machine stopped reacting to the remote, but iTunes still doesn't get the signal when the virtual machine has focus. Very annoying, since I spend a lot of time in the virtual machine but only want to use the remote to control iTunes.