Parallels 11 susbscription clarifications

G

ggascoigne

Member
From your website and from looking at the forums there seems to be several changes relating to the packaging and support offered by this year's set of Parallels releases.

The changes that affect me at least include:
  • Reduced memory limits per VM in the non-pro version.
  • Snapshots moved to the Pro version.
  • Vagrant support moved to the Pro version.
Fine, I get that you feel that you should segment your market a bit and charge more for folks who might be developers, can't say that I like that, but I'd probably cope.

But, you are also changing the Pro licensing model to an annual subscription, again, I don't like that, but it could be OK.

Can someone from Parallels clarify exactly what you mean by "subscription"?

From reading the forums, my understanding is that if the subscription lapses the software stops working? Please tell me that this isn't the case, I'm not in the habit of renting software and I've got no intention of starting now.

When I read "subscription" I think of upgrades, fixes and support automatically for as long as the subscription runs, but that when the subscription lapses, the software continues to run but with no support. I'm fine with this. I've got very little problem with paying every year, I love the software and have been happy with the service, but I can also assure you that me and my employer have no intention of paying for time-bombed software.

Finally, since you are adding a new subscription, there should be something on your site that explains the terms of the subscription prior to purchase.
 
Hello ggascoigne,
I understand that you were looking for some clarification regarding the Subscription option for Parallels Desktop pro version.
If you have a subscription of Parallels Desktop Pro then you will have to subscribe to it annually. The functionality and support of the product will be available till the subscription period only. But here is the better part. You will not have to pay for any new upgrades during your subscription period. Lets say you own a subscription for Parallels Desktop pro now and tomorrow if a new version is released then you will be able to upgrade to the new version at no cost. The whole process of upgrading Parallels Desktop will be more automated and all that you will have to do is subscribe for the product annually.
Please let me know if you have any other queries.
 
That's not acceptable, I'm not going to rent software or buy time-bombed software.

Where is the option to simply purchase the pro version and upgrade it when I need to?

I've pretty happily upgraded every year for the last six years, I have no problem paying you money. I like the software and I'm very happy to pay for it's ongoing support, but the key difference is that I own the software at the end of each year. This new policy will not win you friends or earn you more money. Rather than get your $70 per year, you are now likely to get zero.

Please, please consider revising this policy, I really don't want to convert all my VMs to Fusion.
 
hi
Just to add.
it is very well to have a subscription but how can you change to another Mac after you have activated it. After all adobe does it pretty well why not Parallels. I have 2 mac (mini and laptop) I have pro onto the mini for now but if I do not want it any more on the mini but onto the laptop how do I change?
Now if I do not want to pay anymore for pro, I loose all from what you are saying.
Why not downgrade the product to home edition at no extra cost.
if I have to pay again for let say the home edition (full or upgrade) , vmware will become a very attractive solution indeed!
 
I welcome the introduction of a Pro Edition with more features but I disagree with the decision to reduce features in P11 Std when compared to P10. As it is there isn't much of a compelling case to upgrade from P10 to P11 Std., you gain some features but you lose others, might not be worth it.
 
So this is a tangent, but exactly what new features were there in 11 Pro over 10? Was it just Contura support, I don't particularly care about that. Ipad access, seen it, don't want it. Now DirectX 11 support would have been nice, but there's no sign of that.

I'd have upgraded just to keep bug fixes coming, I value that, but the rest of the upgrade was rather meh for me. All of the changes appear to be around licensing and limiting the standard version, there's no single benefit to any of those changes for me :(
 
unless having a Mac Pro or else some of the features of the pro edition regarding the VM HW settings are nice and that's it. On a MacBook Air or Mac mini....
I do have VMs with VS2013 and 2015 running from a mac host, how the add-in will work?.
I did use the P11b and even been beta it did seem faster but again I do not play game onto the VMs.
Hence pro or standard p11 or keeping p10 which does work fine for me (even w10 and 10.10 VMs) Here is the question.
One last thing, with Parallels you need to buy a copy for each mac you own hence for me one for Mac mini and one for macbook air (for VMware I believe you can use the same license on the Macs you own)..

My guess is for their licensing they follow the band wagon of MS with o365 office, Adobe latest products, etc... Where you do not own the software but only rent it with the 'added' bonus of free upgrade.
 
Andre, the difference is, you can still *BUY* Adobe's stuff outright instead of doing the subscription. They downplay it, but the option is still there. Pretty sure the same is true for MS Office.

The really weird thing I'm seeing is that they are either unable or unwilling to talk about what's really new in v11. For example, this Visual Studio plugin. There are two sentences about it on the website, mostly saying "it's cool" but little else. I've been begging them for more information and it's almost like they're hearing only ever third word or something. I told them the website needed more information, so of course they directed me to the website. On Twitter, they insisted that if I sent them an email, I'd get the info I wanted. So I emailed them, and got back a link to the same stupid, detail-free webpage I'd started from.
 
Hello Mike,
I understand that you are looking for all the features of Parallels Desktop 11 and you did not get the information yet. So let me list out some of the information you were looking for in this post.

This time we have categorized the product into different categories where the home/standard edition if for general purposes like home/Student etc. The Pro version is meant for developers and IT professionals. There are a lot of advanced features in this new version which will definitely improve your experience of using Virtual Machines. Please find some of the updates below.

Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac release build 11.0.31193 includes the following new features:
Windows 10
·An onscreen guide walks you through upgrading a Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 virtual machine to Windows 10.
·Use Cortana, the Microsoft speech-enabled virtual assistant, even when your Windows 10 virtual machine isn't the frontmost application.
·When running Windows 10, the Action Center has an icon in the OS X Menu Bar, so you won't miss messages from Windows.
Optimized for longer battery life
·Battery life is extended up to 15% in office and heavy 3D graphics scenarios.
·Travel Mode extends battery life by temporarily shutting down resource-intensive services running in the VM.
Performance
·Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 startup and shutdown are up to 50% faster
·Operations with files in Windows are greatly improved (the PassMark disk test shows up to 20% improvement).
·Operations with files moving from Mac to Windows and vice versa are up to 5% faster.
·Suspending a virtual machine is up to 20% faster.
·Improved network performance in certain scenarios.
Productivity
·OS X Quick Look for Windows apps: Quickly preview a Windows file before opening it, just as you would on the Mac.
·Menu item "Open Recent" when right-clicking Dock icons of popular Windows applications.
·Menu items "New Document," "New Spreadsheet," and "New Presentation" when right-clicking Dock icons of Microsoft Office and some other apps.
·Resuming a virtual machine can be cancelled while in process.
·Menu item "Open in Windows" when right-clicking Mac files.
·When you open a Mac file in a Windows VM, a notification gives you the option to set files of that type to always open in the Windows application.
·Printing from Windows using a printer shared from OS X allows you to adjust paper size and select one- or two-side printing using the OS X Page Setup dialogue.
·Quickly lookup a word or preview a file in Windows using a Force Touch trackpad.
·Added new default shortcuts for Windows virtual machines:
Command + Backspace = Shift + Delete
Alt + Right = Ctrl + Right
Alt + Left = Ctrl + Left
Alt + Shift + Right = Ctrl + Shift + Right
Alt + Shift + Left = Ctrl + Shift + Left
Ctrl + Alt + Backspace = Ctrl + Alt + Delete
Other New Features
·OS X Location sharing with Windows virtual machines.
·Automatic synchronization of the volume setting of the virtual machine with the volume setting of the Mac.
·New "English Japanese (Apple) - Parallels" layout to support JIS keyboards.
·Create a new OS X virtual machine from any OS X recovery partition.
General Enhancement
·Improved support for Boot Camp virtual machines.
·Simplified virtual machine configuration interface.
·Virtual Machines with Snapshots enabled now support compacting.
·Automatic virtual machine Pause mode intelligence improvements.
·Switch to Coherence using a button in the virtual machine title bar.
·Improved importing of third-party virtual machines.
Parallels Desktop for Mac
Pro Edition
A new edition to the Parallels Desktop family, Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Pro Edition is designed for developers, web and graphic designers, power users, and other professionals with demanding needs.
Support for popular Developer Tools
·A plugin for Visual Studio for remote debugging in target virtual machines.
·Integration with Docker: Manage Docker hosts in (or with) Parallels Desktop.
·Integration with Chef: ohai now detects Parallels Desktop as host system on Mac and as guest system on Mac, Windows and Linux.
·Integration with Jenkins: a plugin for continuous integration.
Parallels Control Center toolbar
·Debug Guest with help of the Parallels debugger (DBG).
·Connect to a virtual machine via secure shell (SSH).
·Generate a guest OS core dump with one click (DMP).
·Open the virtual machine IP address in default browser on Mac (WEB).
Network Tools
·Analyze network traffic in virtual machines using the tcpdump or wireshark utility from the Mac host.
·Create custom virtual networks.
·Simulate various network instabilities by configuring bandwidth and packets loss.
 
FYI - The latest version of Adobe products that can be bought is CS6. Anything added since then is only available via the subscription (CS6 came out 3-4 years ago). Only exception is Lightroom, which still has a current perpetual version...
 
HI all

VS plug-in more info would be nice since I am very curious how the thing would work.
I hope it is not like vs2015 stating you can develop for OS X/IOS, Android from it under one umbrella. I have tried it and it is not exactly true since you do need 3rd party (at cost for real work) plus Mac, etc.... For Android you do need less and can get away (more or less) with the open source tools.

Now my VMs are accessed via RDP, ARD or VNC or else 99% of the time.
I nice addition of the Pro version would have been to be able to log off and still have the VMs running (a bit like Hyper-v as an example) after all Pro meant to be for developers and you might want to use different account (login) at time for the same Mac.

Now to justify the cost... This is another story. I do it as hobby and 'bedroom programming' hence not making any money of it. 2 Versions of Pro every year is hardly justifiable.
If with one license you could easily switch between Macs this would be nice. For example, If I am on the move I could use my macbook air and at home switch back to my mac mini. Of course I could not use both at the same time.

Now I do use Parallels Access on iPad, I have to say it does work well when you get use to it (ok VNC is Free, I do know). I have just renew my subscription before the P11 came out.
Since I have the Pro which include it, how does this work?
do I get a refund?
since I still have p10 on my macbook air does the pro version of parallels access will let me access it or it is locked to the relevant Pro version hence unless I pay for another pro di I still have to buy Parallels Access (for now it is a bit academic since I have just renew it) to access my P10 or P11 Standard (if I do buy this version).
 
My PD 11 upgrade order was just refunded... PD 10 will be the last version/Parallels product I 'own' unless they introduce a full/upgrade perpetual license to the pro edition of PD 11.
 
WissamA1 said:
My PD 11 upgrade order was just refunded... PD 10 will be the last version/Parallels product I 'own' unless they introduce a full/upgrade perpetual license to the pro edition of PD 11.
Click to expand...
I agree. I don't even mind paying the yearly subscription, but If I want to stop paying for the support and other things that come along with the subscription I should be able keep the software when I'm done.

Also, volume licensing is a big issue. Between me and my wife, we have 4 Macs. I need Parallels on all 4. In the past the licensing has been a little loose so this wasn't a problem. But I'm certainly not going to pay $200 a year for VM software.

Please provide volume licensing discounts and don't take my software away when I choose to stop my subscription and I will continue as a Parallels customer. I think Parallels is the best VM software, but the administration has some work to do.
 
KevinKeenan said:
Please provide volume licensing discounts and don't take my software away when I choose to stop my subscription and I will continue as a Parallels customer. I think Parallels is the best VM software, but the administration has some work to do.
Click to expand...
Hello KevinKeenan,
In your case you can still use Parallels Desktop version 11 for Mac instead of moving with the pro version. Pro version is designed for developers who need to run their Virtual Machine to the top notch end(RAM greater than 8GB and more than 4CPUs). For all other users, if they think they can continue to work on their VM by assigning 8GB RAM at max then the home/standard version should be the choice. It is a full license for which you will not have to subscribe annually. However upgrades to the next version are not free in that version. Between Pro and the Standard version the basic difference is that in standard/home version you cannot increase the RAM more than 8GB and CPUs more than 4. Also just to add up, 8GB of RAM size is more than sufficient to run multiple applications in your Windows VM.
 
Thank you for your reply. I run some intensive graphic and development programs and just purchased a new Mac and installed 32GB of RAM specifically to allocate most of it to Windows when I'm running Parallels. That said, Parallels 10 has been working great with so much RAM allocated and I plan on continuing to use it for now. Maybe when Parallels 12 comes out this time next year, we will have different licensing options.
 
I'd also highly appreciate if parallels would rethink their licensing model. I also like the software very much, and even being an it pro my main concern with the standard version isn't it's limitation to 8gb of ram or more than 4 cpus. What made me refund my standard-upgrade version is the fact that features like nested virtualization are missing in the standard version. As long as this is the case, i will stick to 10. I would even be ok with paying a higher price to upgrade to a pro license that doesn't expire...
 
Dishonest@Parallels said:
However upgrades to the next version are not free in that version. Between Pro and the Standard version the basic difference is that in standard/home version you cannot increase the RAM more than 8GB and CPUs more than 4. Also just to add up, 8GB of RAM size is more than sufficient to run multiple applications in your Windows VM.
Click to expand...

"You will not have to pay for any new upgrades during your subscription period. Lets say you own a subscription for Parallels Desktop pro now and tomorrow if a new version is released then you will be able to upgrade to the new version at no cost."

Dishant, I don't mean to be nasty, but you really are dishonest. I'm just saying that from your recent posts here. Your politician-esque verbiage is really getting under my skin, and I can't be the only one.

Upgrades are not FREE in the subscription. You are paying for the subscription, the primary function of which is to get upgrades! Unless Parallels was going to get in the habit of releasing new full versions every 90 days or something, there is zero monetary advantage to the subscription. Zero. It could even be negative IF Parallels releases new full versions less than yearly. Your way of phrasing this is dishonest.

Let's take a five year scenario:

Old model, yearly upgrades:
Initial Cost: $79.99
Yearly Upgrades: 4 x $49.99
Total expenditure: $279.95

Subscription model over five years is $499.95, even if Parallels only releases three major versions over that time.

In fact, you'd only be better off with the new model if Parallels released NINE new full versions over 5 years, something they have never done.

Even if you're locked in to the $49.95 yearly "previous user version" you only save $30 over the original model. (And Parallels has NOT clarified that you'll keep getting the discounted price ad-infinitum, have they?????)

But in the old model, your software would not stop working if you skipped a year. So no Dishant, upgrades are not "Free" - you are forcing paid upgrades. To think we don't "get this" and will believe it's a "benefit" through your marketingspeak is insulting and dishonest.

Dishonest@Parallels said:
Also just to add up, 8GB of RAM size is more than sufficient to run multiple applications in your Windows VM.
Click to expand...

Where do you get off saying that our only complaint is to run "multiple applications" in a VM? What do you think we do? Run 8 copies of WordPad? Open up CALC.EXE 395 times? Do you really think there isn't a scenario where a home / hobbyist user would use more than 8gb? Seriously? And even if so, why is that up to Parallels?

The 8gb/4cpu limit is not a technical limit. You set an arbitrary variable in the code, a variable that was set higher in a previous, older version, and now want to charge more to flip that switch. This is not "extra code" or extra support that has to be added or maintained - it's a feature that's already in the product that you arbitrarily crippled. And you sit here and tell us that we don't know what we're talking about, and that we should be just fine with a reduction in features OR go to a time-bombed version.
 
ChrisT3 said:
"You will not have to pay for any new upgrades during your subscription period. Lets say you own a subscription for Parallels Desktop pro now and tomorrow if a new version is released then you will be able to upgrade to the new version at no cost."

Dishant, I don't mean to be nasty, but you really are dishonest. I'm just saying that from your recent posts here. Your politician-esque verbiage is really getting under my skin, and I can't be the only one.

Upgrades are not FREE in the subscription. You are paying for the subscription, the primary function of which is to get upgrades! Unless Parallels was going to get in the habit of releasing new full versions every 90 days or something, there is zero monetary advantage to the subscription. Zero. It could even be negative IF Parallels releases new full versions less than yearly. Your way of phrasing this is dishonest.

Let's take a five year scenario:

Old model, yearly upgrades:
Initial Cost: $79.99
Yearly Upgrades: 4 x $49.99
Total expenditure: $279.95

Subscription model over five years is $499.95, even if Parallels only releases three major versions over that time.

In fact, you'd only be better off with the new model if Parallels released NINE new full versions over 5 years, something they have never done.

Even if you're locked in to the $49.95 yearly "previous user version" you only save $30 over the original model. (And Parallels has NOT clarified that you'll keep getting the discounted price ad-infinitum, have they?????)

But in the old model, your software would not stop working if you skipped a year. So no Dishant, upgrades are not "Free" - you are forcing paid upgrades. To think we don't "get this" and will believe it's a "benefit" through your marketingspeak is insulting and dishonest.



Where do you get off saying that our only complaint is to run "multiple applications" in a VM? What do you think we do? Run 8 copies of WordPad? Open up CALC.EXE 395 times? Do you really think there isn't a scenario where a home / hobbyist user would use more than 8gb? Seriously? And even if so, why is that up to Parallels?

The 8gb/4cpu limit is not a technical limit. You set an arbitrary variable in the code, a variable that was set higher in a previous, older version, and now want to charge more to flip that switch. This is not "extra code" or extra support that has to be added or maintained - it's a feature that's already in the product that you arbitrarily crippled. And you sit here and tell us that we don't know what we're talking about, and that we should be just fine with a reduction in features OR go to a time-bombed version.
Click to expand...

To add to your "free" comment, they are also saying that the subscription includes "complimentary access" to parallels access (a $20 value!). That is how it is worded on their website. Found that silly also... it is almost like they felt $99 a year was steep so they needed to throw in more things to make it seem like a better value.

I can just imagine how their meeting went to discuss this...

CEO: "We need a new pro version."
Concerned Employee: "What types of features would it have?"
CEO: "Well, it would be a subscription product."
Concerned Employee: "But, what types of special features would it have?"
CEO: "We would just remove some existing features and lower the memory/cpu cap and put those in the new pro version and remove the features from whaf will now be the low end version... I mean the home user standard edition."
Concerned Employee: "Will that version be subscription also?"
CEO: "No, home users don't like subscriptions, but pros do. Just throw in an access subscription and also say that all upgrades are free... that will get them! Also, tell them the subscription only works on one computer and they will need to have a sub for each computer... they have deep pockets and will love that! And, if they stop paying,,, we will just cut them off so they cannot use the software anymore."
 
And back to my biggest complaint. I don't particularly like subscriptions but in every other case where I have one, if I stop paying the subscription, I keep the software that I paid for. You aren't offering that option, that's unacceptable.

I really feel that you've blundered here. I switched from VMWare Fusion to Parallels many years ago (because Parallels had better Windows graphics support) and I've never had cause to look at Fusion again. This debacle has caused me to take a look at VMWare Fusion again, and you know what? They don't have a time-bombed software model, and their Pro version looks awfully like the Parallels Pro one and has a competitive upgrade that is the same price. They also have a ton of VSphere integration options that they didn't have in the past.

You are not Microsoft, you aren't in a position to give your customers a bad deal and assume they'll take it because there's no alternative.
 
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