Currently, .exe files are not associated with Parallels in a sensible way, as it can be done e.g. with CrossOver. Personally, I carry around a lot of "Portable apps" (www.portableapps.com) on a USB stick, and it would be cool if I could just attach my USB stick, double click an .exe in the Finder and run it in Parallels.
Given that Windows is actually a different operating system, and Windows programs aren't Mac programs and never will be, you could always start your VM, attach the memory stick, and double click the apps in Windows Explorer, or even put shortcuts to them on the menu. Despite its pretensions, Parallels is NOT a Mac wrapper for Windows apps; it's a computer virtualization app that allows a complete guest operating system to run in emulation on a host. If you need a Windows API wrapper, there are some (largely unsuccessful) attempts out there, but that isn't what Parallels is or can be.
So what you're saying is that there is no way they could take coherence One step further and just make it so that only enough of XP would boot up to run XP applications and look at XP files, while at the same time not eating up half my system's resources? cause that would definitly be at the top of my wish list
Just enough of XP would be all of it. It's possible to write a wrapper that would translate Windows API calls into OSX API calls, but that is never perfect because the design philosophy of the two OSs are different, so little hacks are required for each program that is to be wrapped. Several attempts have been made to do this, starting with Wine, but none has so far been entirely successful. Parallels is not that sort of product. It emulates the hardware and allows the OS such as XP to run on an emulated machine, so you get all of XP with all of its plusses and minuses. Coherence mode which makes it appear that Windows programs are running in the Mac environment is a video trick and nothing more. It's eye candy with no substance behind it. It's an illusion. The other tricks for making it appear as if Windows programs run from OSX just run a program that launches the VM and passes commands to it via installed tools, and are also smoke and mirrors. Windows programs DO NOT run under OSX in Parallels -- it's a simulation. OSX and Windows are VERY different systems, and do not interoperate and never will unless Microsoft adopts OSX (unlikely) or Apple adopts Windows (less likely). Modern operating systems are designed to look simple, but under the hood they are so complex that they wouldn't run at all on computers of a couple of decades ago because those machines would only execute a hundred thousand to a million instructions per second while today's machines execute billions of instructions a second and the modern OSs use that capacity to look simple. They aren't. We're spoiled today, but reality still has its limits.
I know what you're saying.. but when I first found out about coherence I was extatic, until I realized that it was, infact eyecandy... I know it's not plauseable, or probably even possible... but it's a wishlist... and I wish I could run my windows programs without windows... *sigh*
Technically Parallels is comparable to "Classic", the solution that allowed Mac OS 9 to be booted inside Mac OS X (also a "totally different", and for this matter virtualized operating system). The great thing was that you could double-click OS 9 apps in OS X, and OS 9 would silently launch and then run the app (in coherence mode). Yes, I do know the technical details of Parallels, but I see Parallels more as a "Framework to allow Legacy Windows Apps to run on OS X". So it should be integrated as perfectly as possible into the native OS X GUI. And come on, it can't be so hard to associate those .exe files to Parallels, can it? ;-)
I am also for this feature request. and I agree with goeschle, it has been done before with OSX and OS 9. It would be great to have parallels open windows xp in the background and only show the windows application you desire to launch. Even better... allow for associating file types with that program. For instance, if I have an excel spreadsheet that I download in OSX, I can click on the file, and parallels will run windows xp (in the background) and open microsoft excel and allow me to work in the application as normal... I know, I know... I'm dreaming. But it's a wonderful dream!
.exe shared folder ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I am assuming if you have an .exe on a shared folder eg. \\.PSF\Untitiled\, that you open it with the VM, using the Parallels Shared Folders link on the Parallels Desktop. Is that correct? Tks.
Are you sure that clicking on an .exe file doesn't work? I did it by accident yesterday when trying to find Firefox with Spotlight.
it should be easily possible the same way that parallels is now recognising short-cuts (dock, desktop, favourite apps) which the user can create.
This feature built-in will be available in our next release. More over, its already available in our new beta!
Are arguments also passed to Parallels when you do this? For example, I tried using Open With in the Mac side, pointing it toward the Windows app launchers that Parallels creates, and whilst it does open the program in Windows, it didn't pass the file name argument. I would like to be able to associate certain file types on the Mac side, to open with a particular Windows app. (In my case, Paint Shop Pro images).
