Let me start by saying that I’m a huge fan of Parallels Desktop for Mac. In the year since it’s introduction, I’ve installed it on a dozen systems and use it 95% of the time I am at my Mac (I keep one fullscreen window open all the time and switch using VirtueDesktops).

I’ve championed it’s use at work and have even asked our developers to look into writing code for our product that will detect a Parallels VM and act accordingly (watermarking occurs otherwise). Regular readers know of my love of Parallels.

But I’m increasingly disappointed with how Parallels (and by extension, their parent company SWSoft) are marketing the product. I’ve been involved in software development since the beginning of my career, both as a successful shareware author and as the manager of a 100 developer team that pumped out 3 retail Linux apps in a year. I know software and it’s cycles…I know the ups and downs and tribulations involved.

So it’s disheartening to see Parallels taking advantage of their position as the Mac VM leader by milking their users with the third ‘major’ release* in a year (v3 was released today) and charging a $49 upgrade fee (instead of the normal $79).

Numerous articles have been written about software subscriptions and their pros/cons, and typically I would eschew any such agreement. But in the case of a product evolving as quickly as Parallels, I think that a subscription model would benefit the end user far more than the current upgrade scheme. Offer free upgrades for a year, instead of charging twice or thee times in the same time period! But of course, a subscription model should only be used on software that is, you know, complete, which unfortunately Parallels is not.

Check out this astounding demonstration of VMWare Fusions new ‘Unity’ feature. Pretty damned impressive, don’t you think?