OS X Application proxies for Windows apps lost in upgrade to 4.0?

A

alonweinstein

Junior Member
Hello.


I just upgraded from Parallels Desktop 3 to 4 and I noticed something's missing -- I used to be able to search for "Excel" or "Word" in Spotlight and find "OS X" apps that launched these Windows apps in Parallels. This also let me easily define the Windows apps as default applications for opening .doc, .xls etc in OS X. After upgrading to version 4 all these "application proxies" (or however they're called) are gone and I can't figure out how to get them back.

Any ideas?


Thanks,
Alon
 
So how do I add these to Spotlight?

I actually preferred the previous method, made things simpler IMHO.

Anyway, how do I add these to Spotlight? I use Spotlight as a launcher all the time. Because the folder is inside the VM itself it's not indexed, and I can't see a way to add it in the Spotlights prefs pane.
 
It is default setting for Mac OS not to search in bundle, you can create aliases from those application to desktop, or to another place, and you are ready to go
 
I wouldn't call this an improvement.... to make it work I had to create aliases for individual applications -- when I created an alias to the Windows Applications folder from the bundle and put it in the Applications folder Spotlight only indexed the folder itself but not its contents. This means that I'll have to manually add aliases to any new Windows application I install, instead of having them easily indexed without any manual work in the previous version.

Any thoughts on changing this somehow? I think having these applications available in Spotlight was a major usability feature for 3 that was lost in 4...
 
Bundle incorporates it , to hide VM complexity from unexpierenced users
Why do not want to create just alias to Windows Applications folder and put it on desktop
 
I tried creating an alias to the folder form the bundle, but Spotlight wouldn't index its contents, just the alias to the folder itself. I'm not just trying to get easy access to that folder, I want to be able to use Spotlight as a launcher which means it has to index the apps themselves and not just the folder.

I see why "hiding" these is a plus, but how for example will a novice user find a Windows app to open a file they just downloaded if it's not easily visible in the Finder? Perhaps you could come up with a way to force Spotlight to index these applications or provide a GUI that "unhides" them from within the bundle.
 
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