Parallels Desktop 8 and OSX Yosemite - guess what?...

".. you MAY lose access to your VM if stay on 8.. " is understandable from the view of marketing way. But the service notification says explicitly: ".. WILL NOT.. "!

 

My point exactly which was not answered.

 

So the plot thickens. They also said that they have compatibility patches planned for PD8 ... Parallels as an organisation are appearing like a headless chicken with utterly screwed up internal communications on this topic.

I would like to know how they cannot tell if a VM will work or not. Whilst server/machine virtualisation is a far from a trivial piece of software to not be able to tell if it will work or not isn't exactly comforting.

 

Does it work fine since you last installed it? I have just bought my Mac about 3 months ago with the purchase of PD 8 for a couple of hundreds of dollars and now i am getting spams emails saying to upgrade to PD 10.. Wow i think i just got rip off. This is really sad.

 

The question is not if parallels 8 works with Yosemite (because it plainly does), but if parallels will release an 'update' to parallels 8 that kills it. The other question I would have is that is we had to install a new virtual machine on Yosemite would it fail? Has anyone done this test with 8?

I believe they are mad enough to do so, so I have disabled updates on both my machines.

 

If an update to PD8 on Yosemity kills it then IMO Parallels would be on even dodgier ground than they are right now. I would be incredibly surprised if Apple made any significant breaking changes to their APIs in a 10.10.X release ...

 

Considering the support cycle for PDM 8 has ended, there will be no update to it.

 

Hi,

Here's my advice : switch to virtual box. It's free and it works with both Yosemite and Mavericks.

Regards.

 

Problem there is I really like PD but after this experience as new user I'm really annoyed by this and definitely going to explore the alternatives.

 

I have put many of my clients on PD in the last few years at 79bucks a pop. I really regret this now. PD is difficult for them to use and manage, and will suddenly stop working for them for a variety of reasons provoking a call to me. Frankly PD makes Windows seem like good software. Wading into "support" is a real morass.

Now if I'm reading this right, they are saying: "PD 8 cannot be upgraded once you are in Yosemite" So give us your money now. Really, so if a client of mine hit's the yosemite upgrade without dealing with PD, too bad?

Wow that really inspires me to recommend the company. Obviously I will have to find another VM for clients going forward which I can rely on at least in the ability to upgrade.

My advice if you PD people care about your rep: get on top of this. Make it easy to upgrade to 10 from 8 once people are in Y. Or you will frustrate many many customers.

 

Where exactly are you reading this? I haven't seen anyone from Parallels saying that version 8 cannot be upgraded once you are in Yosemite.

If you are referring to this quote: "lets say the virtual machine runs and then crashes. Then user upgrades to Parallels Desktop 10 and it won't launch at all.". Then I think you misunderstood what he said.

 

Ty so for much for your attention.
"lets say the virtual machine runs and then crashes. Then user upgrades to Parallels Desktop 10 and it won't launch at all."
Is this an issue or not?
Should I expect this to happen to my users?
If it does happen what would be the logical course, and if fresh install, then would the upgrade license even work?
My frustration is not directed to you or towards individual support personnel of PD, whose help and advice I value. I understand PD stance on these issues--whatever it is--is not under the control of either. However, these are critical and obvious questions for customers who spend nearly as much on PD software as they do for windows.
Any light is greatly apreciated.

 

To the best of my knowledge:

What that quote is saying is that permanent damage inflicted to a virtual machine (worst case scenario) caused by any sort of incompatibility between PDM 8 and Yosemite might not be recoverable. This is just a possibility, not something that I have seen reports of.

Each release of Parallels has a 2 year (2 releases of PDM) of updates support, Yosemite was released at the end of this cycle for PDM8, this means Parallels hasn't tested PDM8 with Yosemite, and, as far as I know, PDM8 did not work with the Preview releases of Yosemite, personally, I was surprised that it worked (boots VMs) with the final release (judging by the reports on this thread), however, if Yosemite releases after that break compatibility, users should be aware that Parallels will not update PDM8 in order to be compatible, because its support cycle as ended. Also, because PDM8 wasn't tested with Yosemite, Parallels cannot guarantee that there aren't any short or long term issues with this combination (if it's safe or not), you'll have to rely on reports from other users such as the ones on this thread.

My recommendation is to make/have backups of your virtual machines (or Windows installation if they are Bootcamp based), specially before each subsequent OS X upgrade after 10.10.

Anyway, I'm going to try to answer your questions, but I think they are mostly based on fear and doubt rather than actual knowledge of the situation (sorry if this might offend you in anyway, but I'm a straight talker and very blunt).
"Is this an issue or not?"/"Should I expect this to happen to my users?" - It's a possibility, I haven't seen any report of this actually happening.
"If it does happen what would be the logical course, and if fresh install, then would the upgrade license even work?" - If you have backups (of the Virtual Machines/Windows Installation) then you can roll back. Why wouldn't the upgrade license work? As long as you still have the PDM 8 full license when it asks for it, there won't be any problem if you do a fresh install of Parallels. Or did you mean Windows fresh install? Again if you have backups (VMs/Windows) you should be ok, by using these backups with PDM10.

 

It has been more than a month since you started the thread and 10.10.1 is out
Did you update ?
Could you please tell of any problems since upgrading ? or is everything working fine ?

Thanks

appreciate it if others who have upgraded to OS X Yosemite, could confirm everything ok with PD8, or report any problems

 

Thank you for the clear reply.
Far as I can tell PD 8 is working fine on Y 10.10.1, I've just upgraded a client machine. These are not powerusers, mostly they just want to run their Quicken, (another software fiasco for Mac users).

If I'm hearing you right, I should not fear to install the latest PD over the current VM8 on Yosemite.

 

You are the first and only person that I have seen raising that issue, I don't see any reason why you should fear that, but again, as long as you have backups, what's to fear?

You refer to 'clients', are you an IT professional? Do you provide professional IT advice?

 

Nothing to fear, Good.

Yes, I have 150 clients, in business since 1999. However only int he last three years have I been extensively moving my folks to Mac. So I am by no means a PD expert, nor do I wish to be. The simpler the better.

I very much appreciate your attention,
All the best

 

Parallels 10 is a disaster. I try to run QuickBooks and it's a two or three second lag between characters and numbers. I sent out an email from Outlook for Windows and it was so bad that a trip I was planning on a Wednesday came out as a trip on Weednesday and our Controller asked if I was going to Colorado. I curse the day I upgraded so I could run Yosemite. I'm looking into a Parallels competitor, as it doesn't appear that this company will acknowledge just how poor this program really is.

 

Well, this thread certainly has been enlightening. I only use Parallels for running older Windows games in a Windows XP VM myself but I found it very useful for that. Promised performance enhancements got me to go from version 7 to 8. I skipped 9 as I felt there was no justification in my case for purchasing it. Then like so many Mac users, I upgraded to Yosemite when it came out and got the pop up with the dire warning it would not run and offer to get me to buy an upgrade to version 10 for fifty bucks. I decided to put that off. I was irked by this because my sense was that there would be little technical reason to require an upgrade in this case.

I have background in software development as a senior software engineer and among the responsibilities I had over the years was the oversight of a quality assurance group of test engineers. After what I just read and saw when I tried it, I am not buying that any QA effort was made to ascertain whether the product would run reliably or not which I am not happy about as someone who's purchased an initial license and one upgrade already in a relatively short period of time in the past. I am extremely skeptical about the claim that Parallels 8 would not start up and load a VM in Yosemite in a QA lab when end users are having no trouble doing this. For one thing, you would expect a QA machine to be as vanilla as possible in its configuration such that no outside influences could impact initial testing. In other words, how could they have tried it on an "out of the box" Mac configuration if end users with an unknown variety of environments had no issue firing it up, loading a VM and using the software? How is that even possible? I don't think it is.

I actually came to the site initially to consult the KB to find out how to properly remove Parallels as I was not willing to pay for it yet again for my simple purpose which does not make me money. I already have Win7 setup with bootcamp on this iMac anyway. Parallels for me was just a convenience thing to avoid reboots whenever I could get away with it but there's a limit to what I am willing to pay for that. That said, just before I went to drag it into the trash I figured I'd be adventurous and fire it up just to see what happens. Well, lo and behold it runs just fine here on 10.10.2 at least as much as I can tell in limited initial testing of it. It most certainly does start up and load a VM which the dialog with the dire warning clearly states it will not. So naturally I wonder to myself and now share with you my question which is, what's up with that?

I'll tell you what is up with that from my own perspective. I am inclined to believe that Parallels has been less than forthcoming here although I will refrain from further judgements since I do not work there and do not know exactly who knew and did what in this case. I do think there are grounds for a class action suit here but life is too short for me personally to bother initiating one over a 50 dollar upgrade. So, I'll use it until it really won't start up or my VM crashes and burns (oh, my!) and then I will remove it from the system at that time.

Given the questionable nature of what has transpired here one thing is certain, I will not be doing business again with Parallels because unfortunately they have permanently lost my trust by doing what they have done here which at the barest minimum is a complete failure to test their own software as well as take care of paying customers. I'll either go VMware next time or I'll just do the reboots but I am sure not throwing money at a company that treats its users as I have been treated along with many others here in this case.

It's too bad. The product itself at least up to version was entirely satisfactory to me. However, like my own experience in software development there can be quite a divide between the engineers who craft a product and the people who manage the company and market the product. In fact, most software development disasters can usually be traced to management not engineering at least in my own personal experience.

 

I have had several issues with PD8 and latest Yosemite 10.10.2, Its affecting my XP vm and my mac itself cause randomly can't shutdown the VM and then parallels crash, can't start again the VM and finally have to restart my mac cause I NEED to use the VM and paralles's process can't be restarted or killed by act. monitor.

I will remove it from my mac with joy, because you are into squeezing people's money.
I bought this software late 2013 and it was like trowing the money to the garbage.