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Parallels extortion/blackmail !!!

M

MACza

macrumors member
Original poster
May 10, 2011
56
0
I just upgraded to ML over the weekend. All went well - until I wanted to run my one year old Parallels(version 6). Lo and behold, it does not run AT ALL under Mountain Lion!

The solution from Parallels? Upgrade to Parallels version 7 at a cost of $50. Isn't that just great!! :mad: :mad:

All my other apps work 100%, one or two with free updates to make them ML compatible. But oh no - Parallels saw this as a great money-grab opportunity to try and extort money from their current user base.

This is unacceptable and I have vowed not to support Parallels going forward in any way. Fortunately VirtualBox works great and I will never be reliant on Parallels again.

I guess it is a blessing in disguise - now I won't be bombarded by unwanted Ads every time I start up Parallels, and I would never be the victim of future attempts by Parallels to further extort money from me.

Good bye and good riddance Parallels. The worst experience I ever had in buying any piece of software in my 18+ years of buying Windows and Apple software.

Utterly disgusted.

If there is anybody out there contemplating buying Parallels, do yourself a favour and rather try out VirtualBox, VMware or Boot Camp. You will save yourself a lot of money and effort down the road.
 
I've never had a need for any VM software yet, but I keep hearing bad things about Parallels, especially with regards to their in-app ads. They will certainly not get any of my money.
 
1. I don't think you understand what extortion is.

2. Your problem was entirely preventable had you taken six seconds to see if your old version of Parallels was supported.

3. If this is your worst experience buying software, you must have lead a rich and fulfilling life.
 
Whilst I see your point, version 7 of Parallels was released quite some time in advance of ML, whilst version 6 preceded the developer releases of ML. It's a tad unfair to blame Parallels for not making their software compatible with a version of OS X that did not exist at the time they released it.

Had they released version 7 AFTER ML was launched and then said it was needed to run under ML then I would agree with your point.

Personally I prefer VMWare, however I got a good off from Parallels on an upgrade and found it no better or worse than VMWare.
 
Feed Me said:
I've never had a need for any VM software yet, but I keep hearing bad things about Parallels, especially with regards to their in-app ads. They will certainly not get any of my money.
Click to expand...
The in-app ads only occur on startup and can be turned off permanently via a checkbox. Not a big issue IMHO.

I can personally forgive Parallels their behaviour because running a VM is a very low-level, complex process and probably VERY OS dependent. As v7 has been out for ages, it doesn't seem too unfair to have to draw a line under the older versions at some point.

If it bothers you, why not contact them? I've found them to be fairly helpful and they might offer you a complimentary or inexpensive upgrade under the circumstances.

I would personally want to risk trying A.N.Other VM solution given how reliable Parallels has proved itself to be (for me - running on an iMac 27" i7 (W7 Pro 64) and my MBPR (W7 Ent 32)).
 
jtcedinburgh said:
The in-app ads only occur on startup and can be turned off permanently via a checkbox. Not a big issue IMHO.
Click to expand...

This thread alone put me off their company:
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=258991

Individual notifications can be turned off by clicking the “don’t show this again” button. However, because customers need to receive important product information, there is not a mechanism for customers to completely disable notifications.
Click to expand...

Not good at all.
 
Maybe because I have the VM open most of the time (for weeks, months even) on the iMac, I don't see these ads because they only appear on startup.

Look, all I can say is that Parallels has been a real gold medal* application for me, allowing me to do what would otherwise have required me to run a separate PC. I've been with it since v3 and it's rarely (if ever) let me down.

I will overlook the odd ad as a result.

* Olympic reference in case you wondered ;-)
 
Thanks for all the replies - I feel better now after venting my anger. :D

No use wasting any more time and effort on the issue now that Parallels is out of my life. Have a great day - just consider carefully your next VM purchase for Mac. :D
 
lannisters4life said:
1. I don't think you understand what extortion is.

2. Your problem was entirely preventable had you taken six seconds to see if your old version of Parallels was supported.

3. If this is your worst experience buying software, you must have lead a rich and fulfilling life.
Click to expand...

1. I don't think YOU know what extortion is

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/extortion):
ex·tor·tion (k-stôrshn)
n.
1. The act or an instance of extorting.
2. Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.
3. An excessive or exorbitant charge.4. Something extorted.

2. Ah - of course, easily preventable, just stay on Lion forever. Doh! Life moves on unfortunately.

3. Yes indeed I do, especially now that Parallels is out of my life :D

Anyway - as I said before, water under the bridge....
 
MACza said:
1. I don't think YOU know what extortion is

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/extortion):
ex·tor·tion (k-stôrshn)
n.
1. The act or an instance of extorting.
2. Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.
3. An excessive or exorbitant charge.4. Something extorted.

2. Ah - of course, easily preventable, just stay on Lion forever. Doh! Life moves on unfortunately.

3. Yes indeed I do, especially now that Parallels is out of my life :D

Anyway - as I said before, water under the bridge....
Click to expand...
Yep, $50 to upgrade to the compatible version, sounds both excessive and exorbitant. It is boggling that you paid for an upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion in the name of progress, but adamantly refused to do the same for Parallels. Wait, you're someone who invented a problem, and now publicly pat yourself on the back for solving it... you should be a politician.
 
I don't want software with ads in it if i paid for it. I chose a while ago for vmware fusion it tried both and vm was the better option for me way better compatible with linux and various os there is no advertisement and they have often good deals for buying. lastly it is cheaper very very stable and i found it more compatible.
 
lannisters4life said:
Yep, $50 to upgrade to the compatible version, sounds both excessive and exorbitant. It is boggling that you paid for an upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion in the name of progress, but adamantly refused to do the same for Parallels. Wait, you're someone who invented a problem, and now publicly pat yourself on the back for solving it... you should be a politician.
Click to expand...

ML = whole OS = $20
Parallels V7 upgrade = something I can find alternatives to (one being FREE) = $50

QED

Ah - stooping to name calling now - nice :p
 
Personally, I was expecting Parallels 8 be announced to take advantage of DirectX 11 and more features and was disappointed it wasn't updated. Didn't like Virtualbox.
 
Please look up the words extortion & blackmail again. Then come back and tell us your story. You say it is extortion because it is "An excessive or exorbitant charge;" however, you fail to realize that they're not charging an excessive upgrade fee over what one might expect. What they have done is opted not to support v6 through ML. That's douchy, but not extortion nor blackmail.
 
I personally use VMware, not Parallels, so I don't know what was involved in the update

I do know that VMware has charged for updates in the past as well
Software is rarely a buy once, never pay again proposition
That goes for MS products, Adobe products and virtually every software out there
Some have better paths than others, but eventually (almost) all will charge again

If you have other options (VirtualBox), then by all means use them
But you may find issues with them as well

I have been happy with VMware and have been willing to pay the upgrades for the functionality and dependability
 
The thing that drives me crazy about parallels is the way it hijacks your open with menu. They should at least make a utility to be able to completely uninstall it. I had a situation where I was using my bootcamp partition under parallels and parallels dumped a ton of stuff on the bootcamp partition that I had to manually remove without help from any documentation. It was a huge mess. Personally if I really need Windows I'll either use bootcamp or buy a cheap dedicated box. I don't want a program that takes over and doesn't give me a way to revert. I was unimpressed with parallels 7 personally probably because I'm not keen on giving that kind of control to a piece of software. Thankfully there are other options.
 
Eventually applications need to be sunset. Imagine the manpower needed to provide updates to multiple versions of their software so that it would work with the new OS. They have to make a business decision and cut ties with old software so they can focus on the next major version release and implementing new ideas into the new version. I would presume Parallels 8 is on the horizon, that makes 2 revisions (7 and 8) as options for ML compatibility, certainly acceptable, how long has 6 been out?

As an example, Intuit does it (with Quicken).
 
MACza said:
ML = whole OS = $20
Parallels V7 upgrade = something I can find alternatives to (one being FREE) = $50
Click to expand...

You are free to change to VirtualBox then. I agree with the others that 50 bucks is not extortion or exorbitant. I mean OSX used to cost 125, windows is pricey to upgrade. Photoshop is extremely expensive.

The great thing about capitalism is that you are free to vote with your wallet. Don't like the upgrade free from Parallels, then go to VMware (I use VMWare Fusion) but be prepared to pay for major upgrades like Parallels.
 
maril1111 said:
Not that long ago it still said that version 6 is compatible... so if anyone checked at that time... it wasn't their fault


http://www.selikoff.net/2012/07/25/os-x-mountain-lion-kills-parallels-6/
Click to expand...

Exactly what happened in my case. When I checked the Parallels website back when ML was announced, it said version 6 and 7 were compatible. I only use Parallels for my online courses that require windows and not for anything else, so when the ML upgrade was available, I went ahead and upgraded. The new semester starts in a couple of weeks so i decided to do the windows update thing so I wouldn't be slowed down at the start of the semester, and thats when I found out it didn't work. I did some googling and found I wasn't alone.

As far as whether it is extortion/blackmail, I see both sides. I understand that new versions cost $$ to develop and the developer needs to recoup those costs, but I feel that the developer needs to support their releases for more than just when it is the latest and greatest. Support the current and at least one legacy version until the next release happens.

In this situation (website originally said would support then changed), I think that an email (as a minimum), to all registered customers when it was decided to NOT support ver 6 was in order. They could have taken the oppertunity to offer a special "pre ML" upgarde price (say same as ML upgrade price) to generate some buzz.

I'm a little bitter myself, as ver 7 was released a few (2-3) weeks after I purchased ver 6 and I was not offered any upgrade promotion other than full price. Although I needed it when I bought it (class required windows after originally being told my Macbook Pro was enough), I felt cheated when the new ver came out and I didn't at least get a discounted upgrade.
 
Parallels kinda did the same thing to me. Everything was working fine, but Parallels released a new version. Since everything was working fine, I didn't upgrade. Well, shortly there after, OSX updated a .0.1 version and now things didn't work. I called them and asked what was going on. The only answer they gave me, either upgrade or too bad so sad. I downloaded the trial of the update and it STILL didn't work; and they still refused to help unless I purchased the full version, that they couldn't offer me any guarantee that it would work.

I purchased VMWare Fusion and have never had such serious problems. I know that Fusion3 doesn't work on ML; but it's many years old, I can't expect it to work. Thus why my office machine isn't upgraded to ML. At least it was a major upgrade and it has worked for SL and Lion without issue (I purchased it when I had leopard).

I don't play the upgrade game unless I have to.
 
So, you expected Parallels to give you lifetime support for your purchase price? Like others have said, you should've checked compatibility with ML before upgrading. Parallels 7 users got a free upgrade to make it ML ready; you can't expect them to support versions of their software that are older than the current release to work with the latest version of Mac OS X. Where would it stop...would you also expect them to do the same if you had Parallels 5...4...3?
 
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