The Law of the Land

Recently Parallels Desktop has been the subject of a lot of attention from the legal field. No, we're not being sued or going to jail...we're actually making our way into the offices of more and more attorneys because of the Mac + Windows experience we offer them. Here's a sampling of the recent coverage from some of the more prominent legal technology writers:

• "Once You Go Mac, You Never Go Back", by at LawyerProfit.com, a site dedicated to helping legal professionals build the perfect law practice. Michael Sherman, managing partner of the law firm, Sherman & Jeffries, LLC, cites Parallels Desktop as the #1 reason he switched from a PC to a Mac.
• "Hello, I'm a Lawyer with a Mac", by Brett Burney at Law.com. Brett offers up a very comprehensive reviews of the pros and cons of Mac use, and names Parallels Desktop as a key reason why moving to a Mac is now easier than ever.
  

Are you a lawyer who's using a Mac + Parallels? Let me know how and why you're using Windows and OS X together.
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Nederland houdt van Parallels!

IT Enquirer, a leading Dutch technology/consumer gadgetry site, just posted a great 5-star (or rather, 5-cube) review of Parallels Desktop 3.0.

Read it (in English) here.

NOTE: Thank you to Wim Leers for correcting my Dutch grammar!

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PC World: Parallels Desktop 3.0 earns a 91/100 review and "Superior" rank

Earlier today PC World, the world's largest consumer technology magazine, published their review of Parallels Desktop 3.0. We earned a 91/100 rating and a "Superior" ranking, which once again makes us one of the top rated software or hardware products of the year!

You can read the full review here.

PC World and its crack editorial staff have given Parallels Desktop accolades from the very beginning. Here's our collection of honors (so far) for 2006 and 2007:

• 2007 "20 Most Innovative Products of the Year" (#3 out of 20)
• Review of Parallels Desktop: 90/100 "Superior" ranking (for our first version)
• "100 Best Products of 2007" (#6 out of 100, top rated software product of the year)
• Review of Parallels Desktop 3.0 -- 91/100 "Superior" ranking
  

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Desktop for Mac 3.0 -- build 4560

About an hour ago we released Desktop 3.0 build 4560, a FREE minor update to build 4128 (ie, the first release of Desktop 3.0).

The new build includes a number of new features and improvements:

• Better customizability of SmartSelect for easier app/file integration
• Faster & smoother Boot Camp partition use
• Much smoother fullscreen transitions. No more flickering or lagging redraws.
• Improved Parallels Tools for Linux...we've added a Time Sync tool
• The return of the Parallels Image Tool!
  
• A beefed up Parallels Explorer that makes sharing files and working with non NTFS drives easier. Sharp new graphics too.
• More powerful Snapshot manager that gives you greater control over how snapshots are created and deleted.
• Minor tweaks and fixes

If you're a 3.0 customer, you'll get this update free via auto-update (or you can download manually here). Not a 3.0 customer? Upgrade for only $49, or buy it new for $79 at our Online Store.
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Parallels.com has a sharp new look

In the wee hours of the morning our web team launched the completely redesigned parallels.com:

In addition to the shiny new look, the new parallels.com has a lot to offer:

• Easier access to product information
• More technical information, including a host of whitepapers, case studies, and technical documents
• Better navigation
• New screenshots and product demos
• A smoother, faster online store experience
• A great new blog template, which conveniently matches the parallels.com homepage

Take the tour and let me know what you think. Just like we do with our products, we'll listen to your comments and recommendations and make changes and improvements based on them.

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I see London, I see France...

...I see great reviews from all over the world. :) Here's a few of our most recent:

Pocket Lint (UK) - 9/10 rating and the "Hot Product" award. Full review here.

Vous et Votre Mac (France) - One of the top Mac mags in the French speaking world gave gave us a great 4/5 star rating:

MacWelt (Germany) - Next door in Germany we got a 1.2 rating (1.0 is perfect) and a hearty "sehr gut" from the editorial team of MacWelt. Check out the clip below:





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The lowdown on Parallels & Wine

Over the past few days you may have seen a sprinkling of articles accusing Parallels of violating the GNU LGPL (Library General Public License, also known as the Lesser General Public License, which basically is the official rules for using open source code in a commercial product) of Wine, the open-source implementation of the Windows API on Unix-based OSes, like Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X.

These articles claim that Parallels has been unwilling to provide both the Wine project, and our users, with the modified Wine sources that we use, as is required by the Wine LGPL. This is simply NOT TRUE.

Here's what is true:

1. Parallels does use a very small amount of Wine code in our 3D graphics implementation
2. We compiled the modified sources, checked and double checked them for accuracy, cleared them with legal, and provided them to Wine as required. The problem that arose for some people is that we didn't do this as fast as we should have (which, admittedly, we didn't). I should note here that the Wine LGPL doesn't state any timeframe for getting sources to the Wine project...only that you need to at some point.
   
3. There's no violation of the license, no secrecy and nothing to hide...just a delay of a few days due to the fact that we're a small company with a small engineering team that's trying to focus on a million things, like improving Workstation, Desktop, and Compressor, and developing our next generation of products, including our forthcoming Parallels Server for Win/Lin/Mac.
4. We are always happy to provide the modified sources to anyone. Want to see 'em? Email license@parallels.com and we'll get them over to you.
   

We're a big proponent of open source and always have been, and would never do anything to compromise our relationship with that community. Afterall, our first product, Parallels Workstation, was specifically developed to work with open source OSes like FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris!

I won't make excuses for being slower than we would have liked on this one. What I will do, however, is say that we've learned from this experience and we'll make sure to do it better the next time around so we avoid a misunderstanding like this one.



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