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Dirtyharry50

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 17, 2012
1,769
183
Well, well, well... despite dire warnings that Parallels 8 will not start up in Yosemite and will not load a VM (well yeah, if Parallels won't load no kidding) it turns out it starts up and runs just fine. I am glad I waited all this time to figure this out when I was just about to trash it because I am not paying them for yet another upgrade. If I even bother to keep this option open in the future I'll give VMware a shot or else I won't do it at all. Once burned...

I found a rather interesting thread on their own forums with users who were a wee bit unhappy to learn they'd been mislead like myself by a pop up dialog with the above dire warning and of course an offer to upgrade to Parallels 10 for 50 bucks. The folks at Parallels claim that in their own QA testing they could not get the product to load in Yosemite which I have a lot of trouble believing since users in that thread and myself do not have this problem.

Anyway, just in case you are bored, killing time, in the bathroom with your iPad, whatever.... here was my little addition to the discussion which is pending moderator review and will probably never see the light of day over there.


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 8 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, many software development disasters can usually be traced to management not engineering at least in my own personal experience.
 
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Washac

macrumors 68030
Jul 2, 2006
2,511
128
The Crossover program is bad for this as well, buy a licence then it's pay for upgrade and upgrade, and when you upgrade what you did manage to get working no longer works.
 

blesscheese

macrumors 6502a
Apr 3, 2010
698
178
Central CA
Yes, the Parallels folks have effectively moved to a subscription based program...

And you know you are desperate when you post for help on their forums, there isn't any real help from the staff and if there is a real problem, all you get is a collection of people all up the creek together making the same complaint.

I'm not happy with it, but I've only upgraded twice in the last ?? years. I've effectively stopped gaming in VM's, so I can foresee just moving over to VirtualBox for my future needs (which basically only consists of needing to run MS Excel primarily, and MS Access on occasion).
 
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