VMware’s Fusion beta details

TUAW slips us some private info about Fusion, VMware’s answer to Parallels virtualization. Highlights of the new app include:

 

- Ability to create and run a wide variety of x86 operating systems on OS X without rebooting. You can easily create virtual machines and run multiple operating systems simultaneously on Mac OS X.

- Access physical devices from the virtual machine.

- Safely evaluate software in isolated virtual machines: You can evaluate non-OS X applications safely on your Mac by running them in an isolated virtual machine.

 

Yawn. But wait! A few features that will indeed be worth checking out:

 

- Easily share files between OS X and guest operating system. You can simply drag and drop files between OS X and virtual machines to easily share files between the two environments.

- Leverage Virtual SMP capabilities to gain additional performance improvement. You can assign more than a single CPU (on supported hardware with Intel Core Duo CPU) to gain additional performance for CPU-intensive workloads.

- Your virtual machines can have multiple virtual processors, taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips in today's newest Intel Macs.

 

Begun, the virtualization wars have. If any of you have access to this beta, tell us your experience!

For testing, I'd like to run OS X Intel as a client on OS X Intel. (OSx86 on OSx86).

GT

I REALLY hope this one can provide proper USB access... Even in the updated Parallels, I still get a BSOD whenever I try to access the firmware partition of my iPod...

I've used VMware a lot in the past, and it was great. I'll be interested to see how this turns out. However, I applaud Parallels for getting their product to Market first and I won't switch to something else unless there is a compelling reason to do so. I've been quite impressed by how quickly parallels has grown from nothing to something great and they keep adding features on a regular basis. But competition can only be a good thing... right?

Some will be very disappointed trying to install this version. I'd advise some to wait. How long? I've no idea... The problem I had with this is post install script locking the system and sometime kernel panic. I don't dare install this on Mac Pro yet... So be preped to use -x mode and execute the uninstall script if you can't normally boot.

PS. Forget "private info". read the real thing.

http://www.vmware.com/info?id=232

Sorry, at the moment you are not authorized to download

Could you post the actual download link?

you need to be a private beta tester, but it has been uploaded to mtka, where im about to test it. will report!!

it's already up on the usual p2p network.

I've got a link PM Me

you need to be a private beta tester, but it has been uploaded to mtka, where im about to test it. will report!!

What is mtka?

When it started to run the installer script, it gave me a kernel panic. I repaired permissions on my system and tried again, but it happened a second time. This beta is extremely buggy. You can tell the people over at VMware are totally new to the Mac platform.

Could you post the actual download link?

is this a stupid or a smart questions ?

I applaud Parallels for getting their product to Market first and I won't switch to something else unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

Whoever gets 3d acceleration going gets my interest.

Whoever gets 3d acceleration going gets my interest.

seconded

I'm missing an option in the GUI to enable booting from physical (bootcamp) windows partition instead of image, Windows/Linux VMware can do this, so it's worthless for me at the moment. It's probably possible through messing with .vmx files, but haven't checked yet.

I did some testing the past few days before I get rid of this C2D iMac, and Parallels is still blowing the doors off Fusion in terms of performance - even when Fusion is set to use both cores of my C2D.

At this stage, considering I've used VMWare in various incarnations for over 6 years on several hundred installations of Windows and Linux, I have to say I'm disappointed in it - and yes, I know it's a very late stage alpha they're pushing off as a beta. It's not even fair to call it beta, or private beta, or whatever they wish to name it.

Hopefully things will improve sort of the way Parallels REALLY improved in the last few builds. I remember some early 19xx builds that sucked and then wham, 1940 came out and it was like a whole new ballgame, and 1970 is working absolutely fantastic at the moment.

I sure hope VMWare gets the ball rolling soon for their sake, but I bought Parallels because it was out and it's better in my own experience. But then again, I'm selling the iMac so I guess all this was for naught anyway.

bb