I just tried Parallels Desktop 10 today. I really have some opinions with the new GUI design for Window-View mode.
Immediately, I noticed the status bar has been changed from bottom to top. I have no way of hiding it. My monitor size is small. This new GUI design eats up several pixels in the vertical size of my display, leaving a lot of unused and unnecessary space. The traffic light buttons look beautiful when the top bar is thin, not thick! Please fix this to allow users to hide status bar. Many people actually don't need that thick bar. It just looks kind of ugly compared to previous versions. The icons on the top bar are designed way too big. I already have a menu bar, then a Window 7 power bar, and a dock. Now you doubled the width of the PD top status bar. Come on, how many bars do you want to add? It's too crowded! Try to make the GUI design more elegant so that users can have a more pleasant viewing experience.
The console's bottom of Parallels Desktop Control Center "looks" uneven. Someone needs to fix that illusion. It just looks uneven. And why do you make it flow at the back of the virtual machine's window? It is more distracting than previous versions. The pop-up of the virtual machine icon on the dock is also distracting and just eats up 1 more space of my crowded dock. MacBook Air users will be victimized. It is just unnecessary. Who would want to make the preference change of the virtual machine all the time? Move it to somewhere, a more suitable place.
Finally, why can't I have the Mac's password lock-up of the Full-screen mode? I want to prevent someone, be a kid, a friend, or a test user, from exiting Full-screen mode by my password protection. Why PD won't have that functionality?
I think those totally go against Steve Jobs's sense of taste.
Those are sorely my feedback. I know it takes time and effort to make a user-friendly GUI changes. Please don't feel offended. Thank you.
Last edited: Aug 22, 2014