VMware Fusion goes Beta

Rahul writes "Fusion is a new VMware product that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows and Linux in virtual machines on Mac OS X. The Mac virtualization market is presently dominated by Parallels and it will be worth watching if VMware can gain the mindshare despite its late entry. Ars Technica reports: 'The nice thing about VMWare Fusion is that it already supports some of the stuff that the Parallels Beta2 released yesterday just added, such as USB 2.0 and most USB devices, CD/DVD drive support, and drag-and-drop between environments (unless the guest environment is Linux, that is). You can also run multiple Fusion environments at once or assign multiple processors to your virtual machine(s), if you're into that sort of thing.'"

Comments

Prize goes to the 3D graphics provider

[2ms]

I would like to have a Mac, yet I am a mechanical engineer who works with CAD all the time. None of the industry standard CAD softwares are available for Mac. Thus, even if I had a Mac, I would have to spend more time booted into Windows than OSX. Whoever can provide 3D acceleration for PC apps in OSX will part the clouds for a whole new throng of would-be Mac users who are trapped in Windows.

Re:Prize goes to the 3D graphics provider

[dangitman]

Power mac's are all powerpc machines - hence the "power" in their name.

To pick nits, Powermacs are not named because of PowerPC. Just like Powerbooks are not named because of PPC (there were Powerbooks long before the PPC chip). They are so named because they are "power user" machines. iMacs also had PowerPC chips in them, but were not called "iPowerMacs." Xserves had PPC chips in them, but were not name Xpowerservers.

Re:Prize goes to the 3D graphics provider

[dangitman]

Not to nitpick the nitpick, but the Power Mac was originally names as such because of the PowerPC chip.

I don't think so. After all, there were Performas made soon after the Powermac, that used the PPC chip. Not that anybody actually bought PPC Performas, but they existed. I think the name was a rather nice coincidence, but was mostly intended to maintain the lineage that started with the Powerbook. When the original Powerbook was released, mobile computing was considered to be a very advanced thing - for "power" users. I believe the intention was to refer to a powerful computer - not the architecture of the processor. After all, no previous Mac used the processor as part of the naming scheme. Quadras did not use "quadra" processors, for example.

I think that lack of correlation between name of the machine, and name of the processor (eg Performa, iMac) shows that this was not a major factor in the naming. Although there might be some argument that the name actually changed. The first PPC machines were called "Power Macintosh" and quite clearly labeled. They were also widely called "Power PC." Later (I can't remember when) they started being referred to as "Powermac" to match the "Powerbook" moniker - and lost the "Power Macintosh" badge on the machines - as Apple moved away from "Macintosh" towards simply "Mac" and later moved towards simply "Apple" rather than "Apple Computer."

Re:why does linux lag windows in features?

[MarcQuadra]

I'd venture to say that it's because there are so many options when you're running on linux. How many different versions of X, how many different window managers, and how many libraries for drawing to the screen (Xlib, GTK+1, GTK+2, Qt, XVideo, etc.) would they have to write hooks for?

I'm a linux guy myself, and I love the choices I get (just switched window managers recently, in fact), but that's why you won't get those kind of features when you're running it in a VM session.

Re:It's compatible with the other VMWare products!

[dreddnott]

This is exactly why I think the "mindshare" comment is off-base, a completely misused cliche if there ever was one. VMWare is a respectable product for other platforms that's been around for quite a while, not exactly IBM but still a very fancy tool in the general virtualisation market. This is more like a big fancy MMORPG that was formerly PC-only migrating to the Apple Macintosh platform. The Mac users are happy about the game but overjoyed about being able to play it with a much larger market, the PC users, as well.

I'm looking forward to lower-level video hardware access myself. Windows crashing back to a MacOS X desktop when it blue-screens rather than restarting my entire PC is a personal wet dream of mine.

Re:Vista eula

[aaronl]

And we all want to rush out and drop $400 on a copy of Vista Ultimate, rather than $200 for Home. They're the same program. MS went out of their way to make Windows more expensive for people that want to emulate. There is *NO* reason for the anti-virtualization terms in those EULAs other than making it more expensive to emulate rather than run native.

I didn't need "permission" to run XP Home in a VM, but because of that license change, now I do with Vista.

Re:Vista eula

[mmeister]

A more accurate description is that Microsoft charges you a premium for running Vista on a Virtual Machine.

Ironically, one great use for virtual machines (in the software development world) is to test with different configurations, which you'll be able to do with all versions except HOME. You'll have to run that on a separate PC.

In general, MS is full of crap with their licensing approach here. I need neither the features or functionality of Business or Ultimate, other than I want to run it on a VM on my Mac (vs. a Bootcamp approach). It won't cause me to pay more for a product I don't need or want, instead, I'll stick with XP until they get their head out of their ass or I can kiss that crappy Window OS off once and for all (given MS recent missteps, that could been sooner than expected).

Why can't OS X based VMWare of Parallels run OS X?

[Peter Cooper]

I know OS X has some protection features to stop it running (unaltered) under VMs. That's fine. I don't want to run OS X under Windows. However, it would be useful to be able to run a second copy of OS X under a virtualized environment on OS X. Why isn't this possible? Couldn't Parallels and/or VMWare provide access through to whatever piece of Apple hardware does the "Yes, this Apple hardware" security check?

I don't really know how it works internally, but it seems insane you can't virtualize the host OS yet you can virtualize almost any other.