Service Announcement for Users of Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac

KandidH said:
Hi everybody,

"If you intend to upgrade to Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9), please note that Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac will not support OS X Mavericks (10.9)."

I just wanted to mention here, that I am not going to upgrade my parallels software everytime I update my OS. I don't need to have always the newest features and therefore I am not ready to pay 50$ just to be able to continue to use it! For me that's actually a reason to not longer use parallels in the future anymore.
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Yes, this is not cool at all. Why would you force your consumers to not upgrade their OS until they can afford the $49.99? That is more than any other software upgrade. And a lot more than an entire OS upgrade.
 
Hi All -

To answer the questions on "I already upgraded to Mavericks and now need to upgrade my Parallels Desktop 7 (or 8) to 9"

Once you have your new product key, please visit http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/download
On the page there is a link for "already have an activation key"> click this link
This will launch the .dmg files and walk you through the activation process with your new key.

Hope this helps.

Chris
 
Hi fieroluke,

I will pass your comments over to our Online team - as I am from our support division. I know there has been a few posting on prices in Germany vs. US pricing which I will share as well.

Chris

fieroluke said:
Hello Chris,

as many others, also in this thread, I've upgraded to Maverick right after it came out. I do understand that PD is integrated much more tightly with an OS than the a "regular" application, thus requiring an update every time the OS is updated. And since this requires work on your part, I also understand this update is not free, and even if Apple chooses to supply their OS updates for free, you don't have to do the same.

But, I think the update price is outrageous. Being in Germany, I have to pay $65 just for a license key. (The full product only costs $79 in the US!)
So I pretty much have to repurchase your product for 62% of the original purchase price annualy with Apple releasing a new OS version once a year. That means I've paid 125% of the original purchase price after two updates. That smells a lot like a subscription, and if I had known that when I originally purchased PD, I would not have bought your product.

I don't think you're treating your existing customer base well, I don't feel like a "valued customer", but more like a dairy cow being milked regularly.
$20-$30 would have been fine, but $49 is ridiculous.

Consider this: if I go to a store and purchase a boxed product for $79, with the cost of the printed color box and its contents, shipping cost to the dealer and the dealer's profit margin, you'll probably end up with less money than what a digital update license key sold through your online store earns you, which is nearly pure profit. So you probably make more off of the updates than the full products! Do you feel this is fair?

So, please reconsider your pricing policy, PD is not vital component for me, so I will live without it unless you offer affordable updates.

Kind regards
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Hi Zuluguy,

I would suggest that you look at the Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition before even considering purchasing that number of licenses. I have sent you an DM via the forum.

Chris

ZuluGuy said:
I am an I.T manager in my organisation and we have 168 active mac users, all with Parallels 7 licenses.

The strategic decision going forward is to upgrade to Mavericks within the next 2 months or after its first major upgrade ( i.e. 10.9.1 etc ).

I can tell you now that I will not sign off a purchase order to buy Parallels 9 due to reasons already mentioned in this thread. I have also instructed my team to look at alternatives such as Vmware Fusion or Virtualbox.

Watching this thread with closely.
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Specimen said:
You should take into account that Apple's Core Business is Hardware, Parallels' is Software.
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And yet they can offer OS X upgrade to more-than-2-years-old machines without asking costumers to buy new hardware. Maybe they can afford it because they asked more for the hardware in the first place, but that just says how their business is more smart than Parallels’.

Now I own a 2009 MacBook that's gonna be upgraded to a 2013 OS, because they didn't forced me to buy a new hardware for that, and yet I'm quite sure my next hardware, when I feel it's time to upgrade, will be a new Apple.

By the other hand, my 2011 virtualization software will not be upgraded to a 2013 one, because they forced me to buy a new one when I don't feel the need for that, and I'm pretty sure I'll not buy software from Parallels again, because I feel frustrated by the upgrade policy.

I understand Parallels can't lose money by spending resources to upgrade old software, and I understand that's a hard task when involves virtualization software, but, hey, Apple can do that for software/hardware integration, which is way harder. The result is that their costumers are happy and Parallels’ aren't.
 
DanilloN said:
And yet they can offer OS X upgrade to more-than-2-years-old machines without asking costumers to buy new hardware. Maybe they can afford it because they asked more for the hardware in the first place, but that just says how their business is more smart than Parallels’.

Now I own a 2009 MacBook that's gonna be upgraded to a 2013 OS, because they didn't forced me to buy a new hardware for that, and yet I'm quite sure my next hardware, when I feel it's time to upgrade, will be a new Apple.

By the other hand, my 2011 virtualization software will not be upgraded to a 2013 one, because they forced me to buy a new one when I don't feel the need for that, and I'm pretty sure I'll not buy software from Parallels again, because I feel frustrated by the upgrade policy.

I understand Parallels can't lose money by spending resources to upgrade old software, and I understand that's a hard task when involves virtualization software, but, hey, Apple can do that for software/hardware integration, which is way harder. The result is that their costumers are happy and Parallels’ aren't.
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I can understand the need for the upgrade should Parallels be adding new features to take advantage of Mavericks, however it seems to me Parallels sees a revenue opportunity and it is using its leverage on the customer installed base. Simply to instruct users to send 50 dollars to get it to work is subject to ridicule. !
 
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it is ridiculous why we need to buy the upgrade for 34 pound even though we know we gonna pay for an other release of upcoming versions of mac os after two years I am so mad in you I know its not matter of compatibility I know you can fix this issue like what you did in loin and mountain lion and even its matter of compatibility why are you forcing us to buy the new version? it's not our fault that it is not compatible with Mavericks. but because you are greedy and somehow you wanna more money and take advantage of the new os x just simply let other paying with no respect to who paid the software with hidden subscription model. finally I say i am done with you i am student and a member of student union and i am not gonna pass this issue peacefully. if you really respect your customers At least support PD7 to run in Mavericks but with less features not forcing us buying year after year
 
Upgrade to P9 after loading Mavericks

Chris@Parallels said:
Hi All -

To answer the questions on "I already upgraded to Mavericks and now need to upgrade my Parallels Desktop 7 (or 8) to 9"

Once you have your new product key, please visit http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/download
On the page there is a link for "already have an activation key"> click this link
This will launch the .dmg files and walk you through the activation process with your new key.

Hope this helps.

Chris
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Thanks, Chris.

Will this process also work with a boxed full version of P9?

Ed
 
Hi IlliniEd,

If you are running PD7, you do not need to purchase a full version license. You can purchase an upgrade key from our website directly and install.
Please note, you may need to have your PD7 key depending on how you installed/registered when you purchased that version. It can be found in the My Account section of www.parallels.com
Ways of finding your activation key can be found at: http://kb.parallels.com/en/5680

Hope this helps.

Chris
 
DanilloN said:
And yet they can offer OS X upgrade to more-than-2-years-old machines without asking costumers to buy new hardware. Maybe they can afford it because they asked more for the hardware in the first place, but that just says how their business is more smart than Parallels’.

Now I own a 2009 MacBook that's gonna be upgraded to a 2013 OS, because they didn't forced me to buy a new hardware for that, and yet I'm quite sure my next hardware, when I feel it's time to upgrade, will be a new Apple.

By the other hand, my 2011 virtualization software will not be upgraded to a 2013 one, because they forced me to buy a new one when I don't feel the need for that, and I'm pretty sure I'll not buy software from Parallels again, because I feel frustrated by the upgrade policy.

I understand Parallels can't lose money by spending resources to upgrade old software, and I understand that's a hard task when involves virtualization software, but, hey, Apple can do that for software/hardware integration, which is way harder. The result is that their costumers are happy and Parallels’ aren't.
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It would make much more sense to compare Parallels to Adobe, Microsoft, VMWare and so on, as they are all in the business of selling software, Apple's main revenue stream is hardware. All Hardware accounts for 93% of revenue -- iPhones and iPads account for 60%, Macs for 13 % --, on the other hand, iTunes and Software accounts only for 7% *.

Apple uses software to integrate all devices into one ecosystem/experience, Apple is giving away OS X Mavericks because it brings more customers to the iCloud and drives iPhone and iPad sales. Apple considers that if you have a 2 year old Mac you won't buy a new one because of Mavericks, but you might buy an iPhone because of the tight integration.
This Business Model has no similarity whatsoever to that of a Software company. As you can expect practically 100% of Parallels revenue comes from software and related services.

I hope that clarifies why it's not comparable.
I can understand people can be frustrated with the prospect of paying every 2 years about 40$, and you don't even have to explain that, much less using these comparisons of totally different Business Models, that's all I'm saying.

* source for figures: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/where-apples-545-billion-in-sales-comes-from/11005
 
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I see I have to answer my own question....

I specifically asked a yes / no question about performing an upgrade in reverse order of that outlined by the manufacturer ie. Can I upgrade to Mavericks first, THEN upgrade to PD9. All responses were outlining the procedure instead of focussing on the question at hand.

Answer (as tested) is yes.

Stats:

Hardware = MacBook Pro 15
OS = OSX 10.7.5 to 10.9
Parallels = PD7 to PD9
Guest = XP SP3

Problem is with Parallels Tools Update. Open for over an hour with windows showing 60%. VM does not respond to restart command (from within the guest) Had to issue command from command line.

Awaiting results....
 
Thanks to the posters who helped. I have changed to CodeWeavers CrossOver12 and it works for my needs. Most of us only need one or two windows programs anyway. I rarely need Parallels anyway. may be once or twice a week. I used to recommend the program to everyone. Not anymore. Not worth another $50 buck per machine! I am changing all 6 of our macs over. No more Parallels... NO SUPPORT!
 
ShaneMcAllister said:
I see I have to answer my own question....

I specifically asked a yes / no question about performing an upgrade in reverse order of that outlined by the manufacturer ie. Can I upgrade to Mavericks first, THEN upgrade to PD9. All responses were outlining the procedure instead of focussing on the question at hand.

Answer (as tested) is yes.

Stats:

Hardware = MacBook Pro 15
OS = OSX 10.7.5 to 10.9
Parallels = PD7 to PD9
Guest = XP SP3

Problem is with Parallels Tools Update. Open for over an hour with windows showing 60%. VM does not respond to restart command (from within the guest) Had to issue command from command line.

Awaiting results....
Click to expand...

Reboot command from the command line failed. 4 times. Restart from the Parallels Menu failed. Had to initiate a Reset. Success. Seems a bit slower to boot, but I'm going to assume its Mavericks rather than PD9. Everything else outside of Parallels is about 15% sludgier than normal, so assume this is the new speed of everything. Parallells Tools installed upon startup - success.

I use my VM to run MS specific programs, so $49.00 Cdn is quite a deal to be able to operate again. Chalk this experiment up to not reading before updating.... I would have updated anyways, just wish the FAQ's were based on an 'all possible situations' matrix, so that discovering that phone calls were out of the question, and trial and error was my only hope came to me a bit earlier than having to navigate the odd site layout.
 
prodigalmike said:
Thanks to the posters who helped. I have changed to CodeWeavers CrossOver12 and it works for my needs. Most of us only need one or two windows programs anyway. I rarely need Parallels anyway. may be once or twice a week. I used to recommend the program to everyone. Not anymore. Not worth another $50 buck per machine! I am changing all 6 of our macs over. No more Parallels... NO SUPPORT!
Click to expand...

Anyone thinking about jumping to Crossover, please be aware, I have since investigated Codeweavers Crossover support, you pay about 60 € (~83$) to buy their product and you only get 12 month of free upgrades, after that you have to buy what they call renewals (I haven't found any information about how much they cost).

It's worth repeating that you should also see if the apps you intend to use are fully supported in Crossover: https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name

In my honest opinion, it's not a better deal than Parallels or VMWare, at all, if you buy now, and Apple releases a new OS next year after October and your current Crossover happens to be incompatible with it, you might have to buy a renewal. Also, if you intend to upgrade any of Windows programs you are running in Crossover and your support period has expired you might have to buy a renewal to keep it working (if the upgraded version is supported at all).
 
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Specimen said:
Anyone thinking about jumping to Crossover, please be aware, I have since investigated Codeweavers Crossover support, you pay about 60 € (~83$) to buy their product and you only get 12 month of free upgrades, after that you have to buy what they call renewals (I haven't found any information about how much they cost).
Click to expand...

It is €48 for 12 months so you get the full product for less than your upgrade price.
 
OttoOnge said:
It is €48 for 12 months so you get the full product for less than your upgrade price.
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Where are you seeing that info? On their site? This is what I get:
123.jpg
And by the way, do you have any information on how much it costs to renew for another 12 months, because the sum of the two gives you the equivalent of the 2 year support (from release) that Parallels gives you.
 
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I bought version 7 on 19th June 2012, so 1 year and 4 months ago. I really can't understand that I have to pay €49 to just keep it going! Updating version 7 to have it running on Mavericks is clearly not too difficult since the company has done it (and called it version 8). Doing a paid service release every year is like a subscription which should be fine if it were communicated clearly. Supporting a version only one year after it is updated is outrageous!
VNWare is keeping the same policy which is a no go as well. So unhappy customers will turn to VirtualBox (like me) or reboot incidentally into BootCamp (or even turn to illegal alternatives) which is a shame since the product is fine, only an upgrade fee of 65% of the full price is out of tune (where 20%-25% is normal).
 
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