Maslow’s Hierarchy of Ads
You’d think paying $80 for a piece of software would earn you the right not to be treated with contempt by its publisher, wouldn’t you? Well, Parallels now has “in-product notifications” that can’t be disabled. Ads, in other words.
The justification is that the notifications are used for important things, like bug fix updates, therefore they can’t be turned off. Which, of course, is complete nonsense. That story is how you sell ads to sponsors, not how you sell a product to users. What’s actually happening is that Parallels is abusing a critical information channel by stuffing paid content into it, and then pretending it’s not their fault. It’s like running ads over the Emergency Broadcast System and claiming you have no choice because it’s for emergencies.
[W]e occasionally share special offers from Parallels or other third party companies who provide special deals for our customers.… However, because customers need to receive important product information, there is not a mechanism for customers to completely disable notifications.
“Need”? Hmm, I think I read something about “needs” once, in a psych textbook or somewhere.
Yup, there it is. No problem then.
