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Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Released With Windows 10 and Cortana Support
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I agree and also take issue with this. I agree that it's tantamount to squeezing its customers with a product that works pretty well - Serguei Beloussov is a shrewd businessman and pretty smart guy (although I have more college degrees than he does - my 6 to his 4), and he runs a large investment firm. Beloussov has customers coming back for more, and IMHO Parallels is about at the end of this golden rope - they've removed features and segregated their product line relative to features to further fracture their client base for this type of product. Instead of producing a great product, Parallels has splintered its customers in the hopes of keeping us coming back for a feature "fix" (that's in a junkie fix, not a bug fix). MS should have named Windows 10 as "Windows" - Beloussov must be seeing this as a last stab to splinter the Parallels user base for one, final, year of subscriptions before we realize that Windows' and OS X's interaction have matured to the point where PD becomes irrelevant. If Windows doesn't "change" much, then Apple's Boot Camp should have most of us covered for the foreseeable future.
Where I disagree, respectfully, is that I've been able to skip versions for several years - I've bought into 4,6,8, and 10 - with no loss of function. I just did a bit of a dance to get from Windows 10 32-bit to 64-bit - a bit of a PITA given MS's means of getting disk images and PD's driver "conflicts", but now I'm using a Win 10 64-bit VM that should last me at least a few years. Serguei won't be getting any coin from me this year!
Could you specify your computer spec?
Could you run a modern game on it and tell me how it went?
Same, it is not supported by Parallels, but seems to work fine here. I have only upgraded when functionality was effected or the app would not function at all. I had to move from Parallels 7 to Parallels 9 because USB functionality was relatively broken under Mavericks. I will now need to move to Parallels 11 because 9 wont work in El Capitan - if I choose to stay with Parallels. So it seems to be roughly a 2 year cycle of forced updates in my experience. Could be worse, but not ideal either.
I would probably go ahead and upgrade, but the information about how they handle licenses more strictly now has pretty much put me off (I used to use the one license on desktop and laptop, naughty I know). Will be trying virtualbox and vmware again this week to remove myself from the Parallels upgrade cycle, unless I can get a really cheap copy of Parallels 10 somewhere.
I upgraded from 10.9 to 10.10 and Parallels 9 stopped working. I even talked to their support and they confirmed that I need Parallels 10 if I want to run my VMs on Yosemite.
It worked! I requested a refund and got it two days later! Thanks! Now I can purchase Version 11
I am running Yosemite 10.10.5 currently. I upgraded from Parallels 9 (where I was running Win 7) to Parallels 11 to support Windows 10. It depends what VMs you need to run. You must have Parallels 10 (or higher) to run Windows 10, but you need Parallels 11 to run El Capitan. Yes, it is the annual or bi-annual Parallels tax depending on your needs.
Im on Yosemite and still successfully using Parallels 9 with Windows 7 every day, so I'm not sure what went wrong in your case.
Installed VirtualBox today to test it. Had been using Parallels 9 until Windows 10 then installed a trial of Parallels 10 then a trial of 11. So tired of subscription based apps and having to upgrade so frequently for it to just work. All I use Windows for is AnyDVD HD when I encounter a stubborn BR that MakeMKV hiccups on in OS X. Other then that, Mac OS X is my preferred OS.
I am currently in a battle with parallels via support and twitter. My PD 9 and PD 10 licences allowed me to activate on 2 macs. This is a set limit as when I tried to activate on a 3rd, it said I'd reached my limit of activations. Now in PD 11 Pro I can only activate on 1 mac. They are saying I've been breaking the EULA and I'm arguing that my key allows 2 activations, and now it doesn't. Adding a little noise to twitter and saying I'll switch to fusion. Annoyed.
Yeh someone else mentioned similar in this thread (or another cant remember). And its one of the reason I dont want to go to PD11. I've always used the 2 activations in the past, and with them tightening the screws on PD11, the cost just goes way up really. And yes I know if buying two licenses the second is half price, but when upgrading that doesnt seem to be an option. Only solution I can see is upgrading one and paying full price for the other - meaning no benefit to me a loyal customer since PD5.
Seems to me this would not work as technically the Parallels VM is a different PC then BootCamp.
When I go to activate within the VM, I can go to the Store and it will try to activate me and tell me I am running a Genuine version of Windows. After that the Store window freezes and I have to cancel out of it so the activation never goes through.
It's important to keep the Parallels app updated. If your PD9 stopped working in Yosemite, it's probably because you were not running the latest version.
I kept creating new VMs as trial and error and each time Win 10 wouldn't activate on the VM until I first installed Win 7 SP1, activated, and upgraded to 10. I then could clean install 10 on that VM. Also could not take a Parallels VM which was activated and load it into Virtual Box. Every time it wouldn't be activated. New VM = New PC. The Win 10 free upgrade is dumb in my opinion. Just give me a new key or convert my current key.
I'm in pretty much the same situation with one of my licenses, and am considering an upgrade to the discounted offer for one of the Pro subscriptions - from time to time I spend more than that yearly fee on a nice bottle of 16-year-old Bushmills.
My point here, by parroting what a few others have written here, is that I'm going to take advantage of OWC's offer for a discounted-and-upgradeable OEM version of PD 10 - so that second license that I need is, in effect, $30-$40 off full price depending on whether or not I want anything else from OWC. Cheers!
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Parallels/PDFM10XL/
Are you running a 2015 MacBook? There is a known incompatibility that Parallels hasn't addressed in PD 10 yet. I don't know if PD 11 fixes it.
That's not gonna work. They force you to upgrade every two years unless you don't upgrade OS X. So just as you did 4, 6, 8, and 10, you'll also have to upgrade to 12.
I'm not picking nits and, in general, I wholeheartedly agree with your point, however, it will work for me - I run a small company, and I/we don't upgrade OSes at every tick in the OS number. Putting an older OS with an older version of PD on an SSD has made sense to me for years, and the same goes for functional software - I was still making coin with AutoCAD 11 running on XP SP3 running nicely in PD 8 years after Autodesk, et al, stopped "supporting" their products (both of my techs hate new versions of anything - I've built still-standing bridges and light rail lines with old versions of AutoCAD and Merlin and Excel! I'm only on Excel 2016 because I got a free sub to Office 365, but v. 2007 is right next to me right now on my PC). I've also got working cloned copies of XP, 8, 8.1 - and my plan is to use Boot Camp in the future as it works, it's free, and our SSD Macs and PCs boot and reboot in seconds and, with One Drive and SharePoint I'm not seeing the need to move to even PD 11 on more than one of my licenses.
Those zippy SSDs and excellent cloud options weren't in my Macs for those earlier versions of PD, and I don't feel the need to succumb to PDs revisionist and financial philosophy much longer - Parallels has adopted two traits for PD that have ticked me off - adopting VMWare's "standard/pro" options and charging more for the latter, and dumbing down the standard version. The only feature I really like about PD is the ability to clone VMs, and that's likely the only reason I'm considering that one upgrade, likely for a copy of their Pro subscription at the reduced rate and moving to Boot Camp for the above reasons. With the advent of much faster storage and cloud services IMHO Parallels is pricing themselves into a much smaller year-end profit margin.
As others have written here, I really wish Apple would just get over it and make an app instead of resorting to BC. Cheers!
WARNING BEFORE YOU UPGRADE to Parallels 11. In the past Parallels would also a few activations, such as your desktop and laptop, on one license. Starting with Parallels 11 they seem to be strictly enforcing the one computer per license. So if you have multiple computers, don't bother updating unless you want to pay for Parallels on each machine.