Review: New Parallels, Fusion virtual desktops for OS X fail the smell test

Infoworld - Every time there's a new version of OS X, there's also a new version of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, the two desktop virtualization products that let you run Windows, Linux, and OS X in virtual machines on your Mac. As Apple has sped up the pace of new OS X versions, the Parallels and Fusion upgrades have gotten, well, skimpier, with fewer compelling new features.

Yet the price remains the same: for Parallels, $50 to upgrade from the previous version, and $80 from any version before that or for new purchases; for Fusion, $50 to upgrade from the previous two versions, $60 otherwise. Like last year's upgrades, this year's versions fail the value test. It's becoming a tax on using Windows on a Mac, and most people I know rarely fire up Windows on their Mac after the first few months of switching, unless their business requires it.

[ Parallels Access lets you run Windows and Mac apps on your iPad -- but you may not like what you get if you do. | Test your Apple smarts with our Apple IQ test: Round 2. | Keep up with key Apple technologies with InfoWorld's Technology: Apple newsletter. ]

With the imminent arrival of OS X Mavericks, Parallels has released Parallels Desktop 9 and EMC VMware has released VMware Fusion 6. You can run the previous versions -- 8 and 5, respectively -- in Mavericks, so you don't have to get a new version to maintain compatibility with Apple's latest OS. Although both companies tout "new" Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks guest-OS compatibility in their new versions, I ran Windows 8.1 Preview and OS X Mavericks beta just fine in the previous versions. Further, OS X Mavericks beta runs both products' previous versions without a hitch. You don't need a new version of Parallels or Fusion just because of OS X Mavericks or Windows 8.1.

Because the OS updates are compatible with older versions of the virtualization programs, it becomes even more essential that the upgrade price match the new capabilities' value.

Of the two, Parallels Desktop has the greater number of interesting features (it did last year as well) -- ironically, they're meant to improve Windows 8 by adding a true Start menu and by making it work more like OS X.

VMware Fusion 6: Nothing much new hereMost of Fusion 6's enhancements are under the hood. You can allocate more RAM to each VM (64GB, up from 8GB) and use larger drives (8TB, up from 2TB). Fusion 6 also supports -- as any app does, with no modifications needed -- new OS X Mavericks capabilities such as the options for multimonitor setups that let you put a full-screen app window in its own desktop and use an Apple TV-connected monitor as if it were a monitor attached to your Mac.

When running Windows 8, Fusion 6 lets you place Metro apps (those purchased from the Windows Store) onto your Mac's Dock, in addition to the traditional Windows 7-style applications.

VMware didn't take the opportunity to standardize how it maps the Windows key commands in Fusion; as in the last version, sometimes you press Command and sometimes you have to press Cmd-Shift with the key to get the Windows key equivalent. That's a real usability blocker.

In other words, Fusion 6 is not much of an upgrade. Make no mistake: Fusion is a fine product, but there's no reason to pay $50 for the current version.

Parallels Desktop 9: Making Windows 8 a little less objectionableUnlike Fusion, the new version of Parallels tries to add something new for users to experience.

A neat idea is shared access to your cloud storage -- be it iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and/or SkyDrive. Its appeal may not be so apparent until you realize that these cloud storage services copy their files to your local devices in a cache while you're connected; if both your Mac and VM access one of these services, you end up with two caches taking space. When running Windows, Parallels displays the iCloud (including Photo Stream), Google Drive, and Dropbox caches on your Mac as if they were local folders in Windows. They're actually aliases.

Likewise, your SkyDrive folder in Windows is supposed to appear as an alias on the Mac, in the Devices section of Finder windows. But even after installing the SkyDrive desktop app in the Windows 7 portion of Windows 8 (so that it appears in the File Explorer), I couldn't get it to display on the Mac.

Also, if you use SkyDrive on the Mac, it's not aliased to your Windows VM as the other services are, nor to Box in either direction. Cloud aliasing doesn't work if you're running an OS X VM on your Mac either.

But most of what Parallels proposes to make Desktop better in the new version has to do with Windows 8. Nearly everyone who's used Windows 8 strongly dislikes it; everyone I know who's tried it has bought a Mac or found one of the few remaining Windows 7 PCs at Dell or Hewlett-Packard instead. Not a single person I know went with Windows 8 by choice -- and these people were not fanboys of any platform.

So making Windows 8 work better is a laudable goal that may have limited appeal. After all, one of the beautiful aspects of running Windows in a VM is that you aren't forced to switch to a new version when you get new hardware. A Mac can be a Windows 7 PC you run forever.

But let's say that you have to run Windows 8. Parallels Desktop 9 claims to make it less obnoxious.

First, Parallels promises that you'll get a real Start menu, not the silly button in Windows 8.1 that merely switches between the Start screen and the Desktop -- which the Windows key on your PC (or Command on your Mac) already does for you. But Parallels' Start menu is not there out of the box. To get it, you need to ... well, I don't know. I couldn't figure it out, and Parallels didn't respond to my several queries. You might as well get an app like Start8 for your current VM and not fool with the new version of Parallels Desktop.

Parallels also promises that you can run Metro apps in windows on your Mac's Desktop, rather than in Windows 8's ungainly full-screen-only Start Screen mode. I guess the folks at Parallels took InfoWorld's suggestions for improving Windows 8, even if Microsoft didn't. However, you can't run Metro apps in their own windows within the full-screen Windows Desktop -- where this feature would be most useful. Worse, I couldn't get this feature to work as advertised on the Mac Desktop, either. Parallels' PR shows multiple Metro windows on the Desktop, sized appropriately. But in my tests, every Metro app took a full screen (and required switching to what Parallels calls Coherence mode) -- a major waste of screen real estate if you have a 27-inch monitor as I do.

There are some promising under-the-hood improvements in Parallels Desktop 9. For one, Windows apps can update while Windows is asleep, using the Power Nap mode in late-model Macs that allows OS X background app updates during sleep. Another is direct support for Thunderbolt drives, which can be directly connected to the Windows VM, if formatted as NTFS, FAT, or ExFAT. Then there's the ability to print straight to PDF from any Windows app's Print dialog box, offered by OS X for years. (Unlike some of the other Parallels additions, these actually work!)

Linux gets more support in Parallels Desktop 9, including new compatibility with the Mint and Mageia distros, as well as the ability to share apps between a Linux VM and OS X, as you could long do with Windows apps and OS X.

None of Parallels' enhancements are worth the upgrade price, especially given the futility of the key features, but at least they try to make your virtual life better.

What you should get: Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion? I suspect few people buy new copies of Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion these days (they're $80 each, by the way). Most users have probably been using one or the other for a while and are trying to decide whether to upgrade. I wouldn't pay money for VMware Fusion 6, and I would buy Parallels Desktop 9 only if I were using Windows 8 a lot. Most users can stick with what they already have.

If you're new to virtualization on the Mac, get Parallels Desktop 9. Although both Fusion and Parallels will run Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP without issue, as well as OS X Lion and later and the popular Linux distros, it's clear that Parallels is more invested in its product and is offering more Mac-like usability and clever features.

However, Parallels implements its new capabilities haphazardly, a lingering issue over the years. I dropped Parallels for Fusion two years ago for that reason, and I dumped Windows six years ago as my primary platform due to the uneven quality. As someone who already has the previous versions of both products, I'm slightly tempted to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 9 but not at all intrigued by VMware Fusion 6.

As you can tell, I'm leery of returning to a world of mediocrity -- Parallels is too PC! That alone should make you think twice before spending your hard-earned money to upgrade or switch to either of these products.

This story, "Review: New Parallels, Fusion virtual desktops for OS X fail the smell test," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Keep up on the latest developments in mobile technology and security at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Read more about virtualization in InfoWorld's Virtualization Channel.

Reprinted with permission from InfoWorld. Story copyright 2012 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Review: New Parallels, Fusion virtual desktops for OS X fail the smell test

Infoworld - Every time there's a new version of OS X, there's also a new version of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, the two desktop virtualization products that let you run Windows, Linux, and OS X in virtual machines on your Mac. As Apple has sped up the pace of new OS X versions, the Parallels and Fusion upgrades have gotten, well, skimpier, with fewer compelling new features.

Yet the price remains the same: for Parallels, $50 to upgrade from the previous version, and $80 from any version before that or for new purchases; for Fusion, $50 to upgrade from the previous two versions, $60 otherwise. Like last year's upgrades, this year's versions fail the value test. It's becoming a tax on using Windows on a Mac, and most people I know rarely fire up Windows on their Mac after the first few months of switching, unless their business requires it.

[ Parallels Access lets you run Windows and Mac apps on your iPad -- but you may not like what you get if you do. | Test your Apple smarts with our Apple IQ test: Round 2. | Keep up with key Apple technologies with InfoWorld's Technology: Apple newsletter. ]

With the imminent arrival of OS X Mavericks, Parallels has released Parallels Desktop 9 and EMC VMware has released VMware Fusion 6. You can run the previous versions -- 8 and 5, respectively -- in Mavericks, so you don't have to get a new version to maintain compatibility with Apple's latest OS. Although both companies tout "new" Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks guest-OS compatibility in their new versions, I ran Windows 8.1 Preview and OS X Mavericks beta just fine in the previous versions. Further, OS X Mavericks beta runs both products' previous versions without a hitch. You don't need a new version of Parallels or Fusion just because of OS X Mavericks or Windows 8.1.

Because the OS updates are compatible with older versions of the virtualization programs, it becomes even more essential that the upgrade price match the new capabilities' value.

Of the two, Parallels Desktop has the greater number of interesting features (it did last year as well) -- ironically, they're meant to improve Windows 8 by adding a true Start menu and by making it work more like OS X.

VMware Fusion 6: Nothing much new hereMost of Fusion 6's enhancements are under the hood. You can allocate more RAM to each VM (64GB, up from 8GB) and use larger drives (8TB, up from 2TB). Fusion 6 also supports -- as any app does, with no modifications needed -- new OS X Mavericks capabilities such as the options for multimonitor setups that let you put a full-screen app window in its own desktop and use an Apple TV-connected monitor as if it were a monitor attached to your Mac.

When running Windows 8, Fusion 6 lets you place Metro apps (those purchased from the Windows Store) onto your Mac's Dock, in addition to the traditional Windows 7-style applications.

VMware didn't take the opportunity to standardize how it maps the Windows key commands in Fusion; as in the last version, sometimes you press Command and sometimes you have to press Cmd-Shift with the key to get the Windows key equivalent. That's a real usability blocker.

In other words, Fusion 6 is not much of an upgrade. Make no mistake: Fusion is a fine product, but there's no reason to pay $50 for the current version.

Parallels Desktop 9: Making Windows 8 a little less objectionableUnlike Fusion, the new version of Parallels tries to add something new for users to experience.

A neat idea is shared access to your cloud storage -- be it iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and/or SkyDrive. Its appeal may not be so apparent until you realize that these cloud storage services copy their files to your local devices in a cache while you're connected; if both your Mac and VM access one of these services, you end up with two caches taking space. When running Windows, Parallels displays the iCloud (including Photo Stream), Google Drive, and Dropbox caches on your Mac as if they were local folders in Windows. They're actually aliases.

Likewise, your SkyDrive folder in Windows is supposed to appear as an alias on the Mac, in the Devices section of Finder windows. But even after installing the SkyDrive desktop app in the Windows 7 portion of Windows 8 (so that it appears in the File Explorer), I couldn't get it to display on the Mac.

Also, if you use SkyDrive on the Mac, it's not aliased to your Windows VM as the other services are, nor to Box in either direction. Cloud aliasing doesn't work if you're running an OS X VM on your Mac either.

But most of what Parallels proposes to make Desktop better in the new version has to do with Windows 8. Nearly everyone who's used Windows 8 strongly dislikes it; everyone I know who's tried it has bought a Mac or found one of the few remaining Windows 7 PCs at Dell or Hewlett-Packard instead. Not a single person I know went with Windows 8 by choice -- and these people were not fanboys of any platform.

So making Windows 8 work better is a laudable goal that may have limited appeal. After all, one of the beautiful aspects of running Windows in a VM is that you aren't forced to switch to a new version when you get new hardware. A Mac can be a Windows 7 PC you run forever.

But let's say that you have to run Windows 8. Parallels Desktop 9 claims to make it less obnoxious.

First, Parallels promises that you'll get a real Start menu, not the silly button in Windows 8.1 that merely switches between the Start screen and the Desktop -- which the Windows key on your PC (or Command on your Mac) already does for you. But Parallels' Start menu is not there out of the box. To get it, you need to ... well, I don't know. I couldn't figure it out, and Parallels didn't respond to my several queries. You might as well get an app like Start8 for your current VM and not fool with the new version of Parallels Desktop.

Parallels also promises that you can run Metro apps in windows on your Mac's Desktop, rather than in Windows 8's ungainly full-screen-only Start Screen mode. I guess the folks at Parallels took InfoWorld's suggestions for improving Windows 8, even if Microsoft didn't. However, you can't run Metro apps in their own windows within the full-screen Windows Desktop -- where this feature would be most useful. Worse, I couldn't get this feature to work as advertised on the Mac Desktop, either. Parallels' PR shows multiple Metro windows on the Desktop, sized appropriately. But in my tests, every Metro app took a full screen (and required switching to what Parallels calls Coherence mode) -- a major waste of screen real estate if you have a 27-inch monitor as I do.

There are some promising under-the-hood improvements in Parallels Desktop 9. For one, Windows apps can update while Windows is asleep, using the Power Nap mode in late-model Macs that allows OS X background app updates during sleep. Another is direct support for Thunderbolt drives, which can be directly connected to the Windows VM, if formatted as NTFS, FAT, or ExFAT. Then there's the ability to print straight to PDF from any Windows app's Print dialog box, offered by OS X for years. (Unlike some of the other Parallels additions, these actually work!)

Linux gets more support in Parallels Desktop 9, including new compatibility with the Mint and Mageia distros, as well as the ability to share apps between a Linux VM and OS X, as you could long do with Windows apps and OS X.

None of Parallels' enhancements are worth the upgrade price, especially given the futility of the key features, but at least they try to make your virtual life better.

What you should get: Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion? I suspect few people buy new copies of Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion these days (they're $80 each, by the way). Most users have probably been using one or the other for a while and are trying to decide whether to upgrade. I wouldn't pay money for VMware Fusion 6, and I would buy Parallels Desktop 9 only if I were using Windows 8 a lot. Most users can stick with what they already have.

If you're new to virtualization on the Mac, get Parallels Desktop 9. Although both Fusion and Parallels will run Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP without issue, as well as OS X Lion and later and the popular Linux distros, it's clear that Parallels is more invested in its product and is offering more Mac-like usability and clever features.

However, Parallels implements its new capabilities haphazardly, a lingering issue over the years. I dropped Parallels for Fusion two years ago for that reason, and I dumped Windows six years ago as my primary platform due to the uneven quality. As someone who already has the previous versions of both products, I'm slightly tempted to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 9 but not at all intrigued by VMware Fusion 6.

As you can tell, I'm leery of returning to a world of mediocrity -- Parallels is too PC! That alone should make you think twice before spending your hard-earned money to upgrade or switch to either of these products.

This story, "Review: New Parallels, Fusion virtual desktops for OS X fail the smell test," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Keep up on the latest developments in mobile technology and security at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Read more about virtualization in InfoWorld's Virtualization Channel.

Reprinted with permission from InfoWorld. Story copyright 2012 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Hands-on: Parallels Access runs your Mac apps on your iPad

Parallels is best known to Mac users as one of the handful of companies—including VMWare and a couple of others—that make apps enabling you to run Windows on your Mac. Now the company is entering a much more crowded niche: Its new iOS app Parallels Access lets you connect to a remote Mac from your iPad and so "run" Mac apps on your tablet. In doing so, it joins the likes of GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, TeamViewer HD, and SplashTop Remote Desktop, as well as VNC clients like Mocha VNC, among many, many others.

So if Parallels Access isn’t exactly unique in what it does, how does it expect to differentiate itself in that crowded field? By making remotely accessed Mac programs act as much like native iOS apps as possible. Based on my preliminary testing with the app, here’s how it works.

Installing Parallels Access is a simple, two-step process. First you install an iOS client via the App Store. From that client app, you log into your existing Parallels account or create a new one. You then install a Mac “agent” on your desktop or laptop and log into that same account from there; the Mac app must be running in order for the remote access to work. (The Mac installer is smart enough to check your system’s sleep settings and advise you whether you need to adjust them; if your Mac goes to sleep while you’re remotely accessing it from your iPad, you’ll be out of business.) There’s an Access agent for Windows machines, too, so you can control those from your iPad as well.

With those two bits of software in place, you launch the iPad app, which will then show you a list of the Macs that are registered to your account.

When you launch the iPad app, you first select the remote Mac you want to connect to.

Tap on the one you want and you’ll enter a Launchpad-like interface showing you a bunch of your Mac apps. (Which is to say it looks like a standard iOS home screen, but with Mac icons.)

After you connect to a remote Mac, Parallels Access shows you a Launchpad-like home screen of that Mac's apps.

Parallels says that, by default, this initial list shows the Mac apps you use most commonly, but you can add and delete apps as you see fit: Just tap the Edit button in the upper right corner to delete or the plus-sign (+) to add. There’s also a handy search field, which will find any app with your search string, not just those on that default home screen.

When you tap on one of the icons on that home screen, the Mac app opens smoothly; I noticed no lag between my taps and the app’s response. (That’s not always the case with this kind of remote access.) If you were near the Mac you’re connecting to, you’d see the app open in full-screen mode on your Mac’s display(s). You could type and move the cursor from your Mac input devices, but the interface would be zoomed in on the one app that’s open on your tablet.

Access isn’t just mirroring your Mac’s screen on your iPad: It’s overlaying its own interface on your OS X apps. That means you interact with Mac apps by tapping, tapping-and-holding, clicking, dragging, and so on. A regular one-finger tap on the iPad produces a single left-click on your Mac, a two-finger tap creates a right-click, a slide of your finger scrolls the screen, and so on.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a small toolbar with four icons on it. You can swipe over the toolbar left-to-right to hide it, then swipe in from right edge of the screen to have it reappear.

On the right side you get the Access toolbar; at the bottom, there's the app-switcher.

The top icon on that toolbar summons a Dock-like interface at the bottom of the screen, showing all of the apps that are currently open on your Mac. To switch to another app, you tap its icon there.

Below that on the toolbar there’s a Launchpad icon; you use that to summon that initial home screen with your Mac app icons; you can open new apps there.

The Settings bar along the bottom summons special keys or mouse pointers, expands the workspace, and more.

Next there’s the familiar gear icon for settings. Tap on that to control six settings:

Additional Keys (which lets you summon special keyboard keys, about which more below);Mouse Pointer (tap on that to get a mouse-click toolbar that makes it easier to effect left- or right-clicks);Desktop Mode (which gives you a fuller OS X desktop, including the top menubar and the Dock); Sound On/Off;Feedback; andHelp.

Finally, below that Settings icon, there’s a keyboard button that summons the Access keyboard. That keyboard is the standard iOS one, plus a set of special keys at the top: Escape; Tab; F1 through F12 keys; Delete; a button with a grid-like icon on it that, when tapped provides Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys; Shift; Ctrl; Alt; Command; and cursor arrow keys.

Access adds a row of special buttons on top of the standard iOS keyboard.

The Access keyboard doesn’t let you “chord” keys—in other words, you can’t use standard OS X keyboard combinations such as ?-B, ?-C, and so on. Instead, you must use the iOS-standard context menu (summoned by selecting text or whatever else you’re working on, depending on the app, then tapping the selection). On the plus side, you can use iPad dictation for input in your Mac apps.

Because you’re running OS X, you can run multiple apps at once, switching from one to the other using that app-switcher button in the toolbar. But because you’re in iOS, the Access interface is really optimized for running one app at a time. So if you need to hop among multiple apps, the Access interface could be frustrating.

Tapping on elements of an app’s interface—buttons in the Office ribbon, for example—works really well, in part because Parallels intelligently interprets taps that are close to buttons; you don’t have to hit them exactly.

While Parallels Access does indeed provide a nice, smooth iOS interface to Mac programs, that’s not to say the app does so uniquely enough to clearly distinguish itself from the other iPad apps that do much the same thing. For that final word (as well as word on whether and how well you can stream video or transfer files from your Mac to iPad), you’ll have to wait for our review.

Parallels Access will sell for an $80 annual subscription; you’ll need a separate subscription for each Mac (and PC) agent you install.

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