Apple Retail Stores to Encourage Mac Business Usage with Parallels Desktop, Parallels 9 Pre-Orders Begin Popping Up

H2SO4 said:

I hate questions like that. For the same reason I drive a particular car to work or wear a particular shirt. They all do the same job but that's what I like, is that not good enough?

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When someone else is paying for the computer, you have to be able to defend the decision to spend a lot more money on a computer that's actually going to be MORE work to set up than a standard PC would be.

Running Windows in a VM on a Mac is definitely more high-maintenance than running Windows on a PC is; for example, I can't install updates on my Mac that require a reboot without first shutting down all of my VMs.

clayj said:

So why Parallels and not VMware Fusion? VMware is the leader in third-party virtualization technology -- we use their server-based stuff for clients on a regular basis. All Parallels does is desktop-based virtualization, if I remember correctly.

PS: I've had clients ask me whether they should do this so that they can use Macs at work. I've told them the downsides of virtualization (it's high-maintenance and more prone to crashing than a non-virtualized environment) and what's always ended the discussion is the question, "Why do you want a Mac at work beyond trying to impress people?"

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I've used both of the most recent versions and parallels offers a more seamless experience.

Amazing Iceman said:

Apple, don't bother trying to push Windows 8 for business use.

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Apple will probably do a better job of selling Windows 8 to the enterprise than Microsoft has. At least Apple couldn't do any worse.

bedifferent said:

Any time I see a Mac running Widows, the world becomes a darker place.

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I know what you mean but think of it as the first baby steps away from Windows

next: vmware for iOS devices running android

bedifferent said:

Any time I see a Mac running Widows, the world becomes a darker place.

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I gotta play Age of Empires 2 somehow.

Parallels Desktop may be good for Windows virtualization but DO NOT USE IT IF YOU WANT TO RUN LINUX VMs!!
Installing their Parallels Tools on a distribution which is not Ubuntu will fail in nearly all cases. They took ~6 months to fix it for Fedora n and until then Fedora n+1 was already out. And now PD 8 will never see a proper support for Fedora 19 because PD 9 is coming...

In some benchmarks VMWare Fusion may be a little slower than Parallels Desktop but with VMWare you can at least enjoy every kind of VM and not only Windows VMs.

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clayj said:

...All Parallels does is desktop-based virtualization, if I remember correctly...

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Parallels also has this Virtuozzo virtualization for Linux servers. It is based on OpenVZ: http://openvz.org/

clayj said:

When someone else is paying for the computer, you have to be able to defend the decision to spend a lot more money on a computer that's actually going to be MORE work to set up than a standard PC would be.

Running Windows in a VM on a Mac is definitely more high-maintenance than running Windows on a PC is; for example, I can't install updates on my Mac that require a reboot without first shutting down all of my VMs.

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Theres more to cost than the number on the receipt. All of those increased boot times, hang ups, etc = productivity lost. A minute here, a minute there.....that adds up.

That said.....the price difference up front is negligible if you're doing an apples to apples spec comparison.

ThunderSkunk said:

MS should come out with half as many Windows OS's as they do. Just skip the even number ones and put the resources into sprucing up the solid odd numbered ones.

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The image conveniently leaves out Windows 2000, which was a good version, and labels 98 as "good", which it was most definitely not. As an example feature of 98, you could log in to the admin account with no password by using the printer dialog.

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Why do you need Parallels for Mac business usage? They're pushing Microsoft's products! I only ever use virtualization for a few games.

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LordDeath said:

Fusion may be a little slower than Parallels Desktop but with VMWare you can at least enjoy every kind of VM and not only Windows VMs.

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What about VirtualBox?

clayj said:

Running Windows in a VM on a Mac is definitely more high-maintenance than running Windows on a PC is;

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I wouldn't be so sure about that.

sfrancis928 said:

I gotta play Age of Empires 2 somehow.

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asdfasdfasdfasd
The whole reason I made a Windows 7 virtual drive was for Age of Empires II HD! Except I got it working in WINE later.

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ThunderSkunk said:

But I could say the same for the last run of releases of OS X too. Leopard was shaky. Snow Leopard was perfect. Lion was a dog. Mt Lion is significantly better. Can't say I have high hopes for Sea Lion.

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I've tried Mavericks, and it seems stable. Leopard was actually amazing feature-wise at the time but always had reliability problems, and Lion just sucked, so I agree with you on 10.5-10.8.

donutbagel said:

What about VirtualBox?

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Last time it didn't look good: http://arstechnica.com/information-...-source-but-lags-behind-vmware-and-parallels/
But you are right, at first the user has to decide if he wants to pay for a virtualization suite or not. If the free ones are not good enough then he has to decide between Parallels and VMware.

It seems like what they'd be pushing is running the Windows version of Microsoft Office and a few other things using VMs that run in a "fusion" mode where you can use Windows applications as if they are regular Mac ones. Office sometimes has compatibility problems between Mac and Windows versions, but the solution I've found is to dump Microsoft software completely. WINE comes to mind for this task, too.

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LordDeath said:

Last time it didn't look good: http://arstechnica.com/information-...-source-but-lags-behind-vmware-and-parallels/
But you are right, at first the user has to decide if he wants to pay for a virtualization suite or not. If the free ones are not good enough then he has to decide between Parallels and VMware.

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Definitely agree with the article, but I was wondering about non-graphics performance. The dealbreaker in VirtualBox for me after I had been using it for a couple of years was the lack of 3D support I needed for a couple of things.

I found this for anyone interested in performance: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/arti...llels-fusion-and-virtualbox-against-boot-camp

It seems to me that the IT Manager comments in this thread reflect an old school mentality: you get issued a work laptop, use it how work tells you to, let IT manage updates, and receive Office 2007 a few months *after* Office 2010 came out at retail because it "needed testing."

BYOD programs work because it gives the user the ability to use what they're most comfortable with. I've unofficially been using BYOD since 2010 (when I figured out how to set up work email on Mac Mail). I've been more productive because I operate in the environment I picked out -- not IT. My new company is 100% BYOD. We update our machines on our own, buy our own software, pick our own smartphones -- and you won't find a more productive team than ours.

'Arry said:

Here's an idea: how about encouraging Mac business use by making more awesome Mac business software?

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Or, even more radically, a proper server solution that doesn't get ****ed over at each iteration. If you could harness the kinetic energy of SJ spinning at that idea it would be awesome!

'Arry said:

Here's an idea: how about encouraging Mac business use by making more awesome Mac business software?

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Because they're too busy targeting that same market with iOS. While I like iOS, it's unfortunate that it's an Apple product, because they stopped fighting for the Mac.

swm said:

i've been always wondering why folks run word/excel/powerpoint on mac, when there is pages/numbers/keynote.

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Amazing Iceman said:

Apple, don't bother trying to push Windows 8 for business use.

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Some people live in very small worlds.

clayj said:

I've told them the downsides of virtualization (it's high-maintenance and more prone to crashing than a non-virtualized environment)

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This comment alone mean your blowing smoke out your tailpipe

I run a LOT of servers, (servers that run corporate software and feed over 400,000 concurrent connections at any one time, more at peak times of the month) and i use virtual servers for the job, they are easy to back up, as reliable as bare metal installs, and are easy to restore from backup (or role back to a snapshot) in minutes rather than the hours it takes to re-build a full server from bare. That and the fact that a single rack can hold 30 virtual servers instead of 8 bare metal.

For desktops id say citrix apps are easier for business than messing about on a desktop level with individual virtual machines.

I user Parallels over VMware at home however, having run both, Parallels is leaps ahead of VMware on the mac for integrated OS installation, if you REALLY need it (i literally only use it for two websites i need for work that are stick-in-the-mud IE7 only activex components users)

But as someone else said, there is NO reason apple should be plugging any virtualisation, it should be making Mac OS versions of the business software people need.

Whats next, apple offering Macs pre-installed with Windows 8 if you don't want Mac OSx?

468837 said:

receive Office 2007 a few months *after* Office 2010 came out at retail because it "needed testing."

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come on, just because they changed the user interface in all subsequent releases - dunno why, probably to confuse users - it ain't no better. they introduced this dumb big circle button, and hid everything else...

spinoff: [i wonder how macos could keep the same basic structure from the very first time... if you could just teleport back to the early nineties and take your mac with you, anyone using earlier versions MacOS would not have any problems using it.]

last time i received a 10 meg xls from one of my colleagues. it just contained like 100 rows of data on worksheet1, oh yeah, and the mandatory empty sheet2 and sheet3.

i was wondering what am i missing as i opened it with Numbers. 10 meg for 100 rows? anyway. i've done my job with it, added some columns i think, then sent it back as xls with Numbers. then the attachment size was reduced to 79k.

no one was complaining about lost data, or anything else. of course no one was able to explain what else was in that 10 meg file...
as office gets newer and newer versions, it gets more chattier. the very cool xslx format is basically a zip compressed list of files, and all the data and all the formatting is stored as xml. values, formats, equations, colors, fonts, cell by cell. all in ascii cleartext. wasting resources all the time.
it's basically electronic littering.

so, i am not 100% sure that a newer office would be any better..

My father runs win8 with bootcamp but there are issues like poor trackpad drivers. Are there are good solutions for these driver problems? I've heard of better 3rd party drivers for the trackpad

Parallels is in the app store? Huh! (Oh okay, it's NOT in the app store!)

I run VMWare Fusion. I picked it for two reasons. 1. The apple store stocked it and it was right there. 2. I've used another flavor of VMWare before (ESX), the one that's a bare-bones operating system that you install on a server for the sole reason of running guest server operating systems underneath that. That more closely resembles the IBM VM operating system in configuration and concept than anything else I had seen since IBM. But the other additional reason is that Fusion installs guest machines in different modes. I run mine in almost complete isolation from the host operating system and they communicate through the network and through drag-and-drop from the virtual desktop to the host desktop and back. But there's another method where you can setup Fusion such that select applications within windows appear on the os x dock and launchpad just like they were a real native mac app. I don't do that; I prefer my separation of operating systems approach, but it's there.

And the regular version of VMWare Fusion is cheaper ($49), though when we're spending what we do for a mac-anything, $49 v $79 seems silly at that point.

Yeah, no....

As someone who has a MPB connected to a Windows 2008 AD domain, I can tell you that if you're not running Office 2011 for the Mac, your best bet is either Citrix or RDS published applications. While virtualization is handy for certain things, within an Enterprise, it's best left for running on either ESXi or Hyper-V. Local VM's are a PITA and are mostly leveraged by consultants for demonstrating their warez to a customer. Server hardware has come down so much in price that its just not worth running and chewing local resources.

I prefer VMWare for running Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 for the odd client that needs C# development work. It's actually a pretty good and fast experience on the rMBP and beats lugging around a separate PC.

I use VMware simply because I can't stand Parallels god awful icon.

bedifferent said:

Any time I see a Mac running Widows, the world becomes a darker place.

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Is it ok if I have it only for gaming that isn't on mac?

Zyphras said:

That's a fun image, but I'd have to disagree with the notion that Windows '98 was "Good". No other piece of software in my life has ever created such bitter, hostile and angry feelings.


Image

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Same here. I once couldn't empty my Recycle Bin because I did not have enough disk space. "Try deleting files to free up space." It never worked with flash drives, always wanted to install drivers for stuff like mice, and had that retarded security hole where you could get in as an admin with no credentials by bringing up the help, printing it, selecting a custom border image, and opening the C drive from the file browser.