Paralevels

Another 150 MB on your battered SSD.

Get It Try It

Rixstep devoted an entire section of this website to educating the clueless and dimwitted. Then we left it. The pedagogic material was there. Anyone with an ounce more brains than an Apple fanboy could have caught on. We did the same thing years earlier with the (l)users on Windows.

Does it help? Do median IQs go up?

You already know the answer.

Level One: Apple Toolbox

Never let a journo rule your software decisions. The people who could be of use are professional developers, but you'll rarely find them spending time writing software reviews. They're too busy writing software, and most likely don't really much care. Programmers are a great group, but with the way things look from their POV it's not a promising world. You're stuck mostly with journos. So watch it.

'The best macOS apps of March 2021', reads the subheader. OK...

No record of the author's IT achievements, but some really hot titles like 'How To Use The Terminal' and 'How To Navigate Folders Using The Terminal'.

Obviously bountiful information.

'You can now navigate folders using the Mac terminal to your heart's content.'

'Make sure you copy trusted commands from the Internet on sites like StackExchange.'

Gosh.

'That's because when I (or most people online) type a command like this, they want you to exactly copy that text into your terminal. Leaving out quotation marks makes this simpler.'

'For the average user, this is probably everything you'll ever need to know.'

'I pity the poor fanboy.'
 - R Zimmerman

Who's fault is it? Is it Apple's?

No, it's not Apple. Apple were forced to use NeXT. They were at Chapter 10.99999. NeXT chose Unix because Steve Jobs wanted to help the academic community. So Apple's OS is actually academic, not fanboy.

And who would Apple be trying to entice? Switchers, to be sure, but who are the switchers? They're the Windows (l)users. How educated are they?

Most of them think all systems are crash-prone and vulnerable to viruses. So it starts like we gotta tone things down, and dumb things down. And that's the first false step on the road to perdition.

The first Unix user manuals were huge. They would never fit in an attache as the original Unix system manual could. Unix was simplified computing, but still and all. How do you get ordinary Windows (l)users and Apple fanboys to get comfortable with that? People like that aren't really interested in learning things. They shy away from it. Too much intellectual grief. Smart things? Crikey! So we're stuck back there. One folder for everything and one program to run. Easy peasy.

But all systems run into trouble. Mostly it's the nut behind the wheel. And they have to be fixed. Users have to learn to do more than with the infamous Lady Volvo.

So Apple Toolbox leads off with a recommendation for Parallels Toolbox.

https://appletoolbox.com/...apps_of_March_2021

What do we have here?

https://www.parallels.com/products/toolbox/

We won't be running this thing - we'll leave that to you. We'll just look at it a bit.



Parallels used to have a good reputation. As you may know. Is this toolbox good? We'll let you decide.

The download is a tidy 81,920,745 bytes. Fits comfortably in your back pocket.

Opening the DMG isn't dangerous. We run Tracker of course.



Let's look. Yep, there's a tiny background image for the window-lickers, and there are some events log files because some of the Parallels developers are also window-lickers, and then there's a GLORIOUS megabyte icon file for dimensions that no one ever uses or can use, when Apple long ago could have implemented the SVG format for icons and saved people daftabytes of precious SSD space... It's lovely.

What you really want to get at is 'Install Parallels Toolbox.app'. Peekaboo.



6446 items. Tidy little fixer-upper app.

It's got 7z embedded.

The whole monstrosity takes 150 MB on disk. Don't you feel better already?



Perhaps the best part this far is the discovery that this paragon of engineering is loaded to the gills with SWIFT frameworks. Twenty-two of them. For 11 Megabloats on your disk.

SWIFT: you remember what that is, don't you? That new programming language so Apple's poor engineers don't have to learn anything difficult like C? So they can draw pictures instead of actually writing code? After all, what's a computer anyway, right? Yes, that programming language. Bring on the window-lickers. Bring on the retards. Yes, median IQ is plummeting worldwide. You knew that too, didn't you?



The Applications subdirectory is where all the fun is. 5287 items. 46 app bundles.



Most of this is fairly trivial, as you can decode from the app names.

Airplane Mode, Alarm, Archive, Break Time, Capture Area, Capture Screen, Capture Window, Clean Drive, Clipboard History, Convert Video, Date Countdown, Do Not Disturb, Do Not Sleep, Download Audio, Download Video, Eject Volumes, Energy Saver, Find Duplicates, Free Memory, Hidden Files, Hide Desktop Files, Hide Menu Icons, Launch, Lock Screen, Make GIF, Mute Microphone, Presentation Mode, Record Area, Record Audio, Record Screen, Record Window, Resize Images, Screenshot Page, Show Desktop, Sleep Timer, Stopwatch, Switch Resolution, Take Photo, Take Video, Timer, Toolbox Tool Launcher, Unarchive, Uninstall Apps, Unit Converter, Window Manager, World Time

All apps all come equipped with monster ICNS files, monster CAR files, and monster PNG files. You knew you needed them. Translations into a dozen languages.

Going through this entire collection would be a thankless exercise in pain, so you do it if you want. Suffice it to say that most or all of this can be easily accomplished with System Preferences or the command line (as in CLIX).

This is the wrong approach. Burdening your already overly battered and beleaguered SSD with another 150 MB just to maybe do something useful now and then equates to you having a 'VACANCY' sign hanging from your forehead.

We're pretty vacant.
 - Johnny Rotten

This Parallels toolbox is run on subscription. 'Subscription' implies the software stops running if you don't pay the fee, and that's not nice.

This is an ambitious project. But lots of this is already available on your command line or with CLIX. And CLIX makes it easy to find the cool stuff.

The recurring sad story here is that the people just don't learn and that software vendors with questionable motives have nothing against exploiting this unforgivable situation.

You get what you buy. Here you don't get more control. You get incidental assistance, and the aftertaste is still confusion and the unsettling realisation that you're still not in control.

CLIX runs on all your Apple desktop OS versions. It's engineered that way. One size fits all. For that reason alone, CLIX will not go to 'the dark side' (Dark Mode). CLIX runs on anything at least as far back as 10.7, some 10+ years ago, likely even further.

CLIX is also sealed in a way Apple can't handle. So it's impervious to damage like nothing Cupertino can boast.

So Parallels? Sorry, guys.

You've obviously heard of us, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
We're known for telling the truth even if it's not in our interest.
We're now telling you to beware Apple's walled garden. Don't get locked in.
What you've seen so far may be only the beginning of something far far worse.
Download our Test Drive and at least check out our free Keymaster Solo.
That's the first step to regaining your freedom. See here.