Parallels Coherence

Parallels, a virtualization product that let's you run Windows on a Mac simultaneously, released a major update Wednesday.  Build 3186 brings quite a few improvements and new features over the prior build ... probably the biggest new feature is called Coherence.

Coherence allows you to run the applications you have installed in your virtual environment right in your OSX desktop.  In essence this is a pseudo form of software virtualization.  The application is virtual, yet I can interact with it as if it's installed native.

For instance ... I live in MS Outlook.  There is NO complete full-featured Outlook clone for the mac ... perhaps the next version of Entourage??  Parallels is nice in that I can have Windows running on the mac and switch over to the windows world when I need to run windows apps (like Outlook).  Wouldn't it be slick if you could just drag the Outlook windows from the windows world over to the mac world?  Now you can :-)

So here's a screenshot of my mac desktop where I have Outlook running ... even the reminders window pops up in the mac side.

You can create favorites/shortcuts to the windows apps you want to use on the mac side ... I added IE as a favorite for now until I see what the mac version of IE is like.  You can even hit the apple key which acts just like the windows key thus the start menu suddenly appears.

You can also watch a short video demo of coherence in action from the parallels website.

At least right now to get the update you have to manually go to the parallels site and download the latest version and then install.  It will update over the top of the older version (make sure your VM's are shutdown and parallels is not running).  After you install make sure you install the parallels tools inside your VM ... this is very important.

So again props to parallels for making a stellar product.  Some of the new features are very sweet!  Now to see if VMware is up to the challenge with their upcoming Fusion product for OSX.

I'll wait a few more days before I post about my mac experience thus far.  For now I'll just say it's not living up to all the hype (e.g. thank goodness I can run windows on this mac!)

Comments

[Nathan]

wait, wait, wait! did you say that you use IE!!!???
Don't hold your breath for IE on the mac. If I remember correctly, it hasn't been supported or updated by M$ in years.

I'm not trying to be a firefox evangelist, but it just shook me when the IT guy at granger uses IE :-) interesting... ;-)

Nathan

[Brian Marquis]

For Mac browsers, skip IE. Here's a list of alternate browsers
Firefox, Camino, OmniWeb, Mozilla and Safari.

There are many more, but these are the ones that I've used.

A lot of the Macs features are subtle, and take some time to appreciate. Macs are designed to be unobtrusive. For instance, clicking a delete button in most mac apps will not display an "Are you sure" dialog.

Applications can be installed anywhere and moved anywhere, while running, without causing the program to crash. You can't drag a running app to the trash though. Shortcuts to applications (called aliases on the Mac) still work after the application is moved.

Most applications can be installed by dragging them to your computer, uninstalled by dragging to the trash. No uninstall wizards that ask the user if it's safe to delete files in the System32 directory. Library files and frameworks are versioned to prevent "dll hell". No registry to get screwed up. All application preferences are stored in plain text xml files, making them easy to fix if something gets really hosed and the app won't start. Applications are "self-healing", allowing you to delete the preference file, if necessary, to reset the application to it's default settings.

Immunity from Windows viruses and spyware (unless you're running Windows).

Backlit keyboard, excellent accessibility features (two-finger scrolling, and zooming for example). No device drivers needed for any Apple product. Most third-party peripherals work without any additional drivers. Apple laptops are known for their durability.

The latest version of OS X will run acceptably on hardware that is 8 years old, any G3 computer with 512Mb Ram and Firewire. This helps boost resale values of Mac computers.

Areas that still need improvement include network browsing and AD/exchange integration. Still the Mac is easier than any other unix system at connecting to Windows networks.

From a development perspective, OS X is a dream system. Full development tools are shipped with every Mac. Perl, Python, PHP, Apache, Java, C++, Apache, sendmail (really helpful for mobile users, although it's disabled by default), and much more.

It's a lot like Linux without all the hassles.

[Steven]

"I'll wait a few more days before I post about my mac experience thus far. For now I'll just say it's not living up to all the hype (e.g. thank goodness I can run windows on this mac!)"

Gee, what a surprise ;)

[Clif Guy]

Thanks for this post. We're looking at Parallels for one user who is a Windows user but needs to run Final Cut Pro. Interesting stuff. The demo video is really cool.

[Joe Moorman]

Jason,

We have about 12 users on Intel MacBooks. Build 3188 has tested out successfully in QA. Aside from a few installation anomolies the upgrade has been smooth. Our Web guy Ryan James is totally loving the Coherence feature. He's loaded separate instances of ie6 and ie7 on the windows side of his 17" MacBook Pro so that he can test his programs in multiple environments. He's parked these little icons on his Mac dock to launch these apps on the Mac.

I'm playing with the coherence features myself. There's not a whole lot of literature on the Parallels Website on all of the integration features.
I'm toying around with the .app applications in the Documents/Parallels/Windows Applications folder to see if I can make Outlook the default mail application for OSX. I tried setting "Microsoft Outlook.app" as the default mail application, with litlle success. A truly integrated product would allow me to pass variables (like the file location of a file attachment) from the mac side to the windows side. I haven't been able to get it to work. The best I've been able to do is get it to open Outlook when I click on a mailto link. I would love to add some code to the Microsoft Outlook.app application. Outlook.exe has a bunch of command line switches that will accept parmeters like file attachment locations and mailto email addresses.

see

http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/commandlines.htm

Does anyone know if Parallels has an api?

Thanks

Joe Moorman
IT Guy
Covenant Life Church
Gaithersburg MD

PS - Did you know that it is possible to boot parallels to the bootcamp partition on your Mac?

[Chris Todd]

It has been a few months, how would you rate your Mac experience now?