Some beta testers that we won't name for their own protection have let us know that VMWare is now ready to take Parallels to task in the desktop virtualization market with Fusion.
What is Fusion? According to the private beta site... "Fusion is the codename for a new VMware desktop product for Mac that will enable Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. It is built on VMware's robust and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today."
Fusion boasts the following features and benefits:
- 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. In addition, you can download and run any of the 300 virtual appliances available on VMware's Technology Network.
- 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.
- Access physical devices from the virtual machine. You can access physical devices such as CD ROM drives, video cameras, iPods, printers and high-speed disks from the virtual machine.
- 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.
- Consolidate onto your Mac: If you need a PC to run specific applications that are not supported on your Mac, you can consolidate onto your Mac by running the PC environment in a virtual machine. In addition to space savings, consolidating onto your Mac reduces hardware, power and cooling costs.
- 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. If the application crashes or corrupts the system, your Mac is not affected.
- Run over 300 virtual appliances: You can download any of the over 300 virtual appliances - preinstalled and preconfigured applications packaged with an operating system in a virtual machine - available from VMware's Technology Network. Setting up a wiki or blog server has never been easier.
- Fusion supports all Intel Mac hardware, including the new 64-bit Mac Pro and iMac.
- Your virtual machines can have multiple virtual processors, taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips in today's newest Intel Macs.
- Fusion supports high-speed USB 2.0 for a huge range of devices. Even devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X will work in a virtual machine.
- Simply drag and drop files and folders in and out of your virtual machines to transfer your data.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
11-03-2006 @ 10:20AM
Boris Shubinsky said...
Point #2 is what I'm looking forward too. I hate when I'm running Parallels, come across something I'd love to have on my Mac, and have to upload it somewhere/email it to myself in order to get it on my Mac.
Drag & drop is what I yearn for.
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11-03-2006 @ 10:26AM
Adrian said...
Wow, looks like Parallels has a lot of competition from VMWare. I hope Parallels can kick out new features.
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11-03-2006 @ 10:35AM
James Darling said...
As a parallels user, I'm not exactly buzzing with excitement with this. It's not as if parallels is doing a bad job, it's fast and slick to use, and I couldn't really ask for much more.
RE about point 2: while that does seem to be the only feature that seems quite niftily above parallels, parallels do have tools for windows that allow you to have a shared folder, and with parallels networking you can mount anything you wish anyway.
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11-03-2006 @ 10:36AM
Kevin said...
USB 2 is a very nice feature. If Parallels doesn't implement that, I may have to switch :)
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11-03-2006 @ 10:36AM
Kevin said...
Also, if VMware is a Cocoa app instead of a Carbon/Qt app, that will sway my opinion greatly! :D
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11-03-2006 @ 10:37AM
mapin said...
Hey Boris, I dont get it...I just drag my the file I want on my mac to the Parallels Shared Folder and wha-la, it's on my mac (in the home directory).
So someone give me a pros/cons of VMware vs. Parallels (i already dropped my 80 bucks on Parallels, not like i'm switching now anyway, too late VMware)
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11-03-2006 @ 10:39AM
Peter said...
WMWare is the de facto standard in virtualisation software. It's good for everyone that they are developing for the Mac. Parallels will prevent them from being lazy but it's likely that their platform will gain the majority of market share.
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11-03-2006 @ 10:41AM
Romain Guy said...
Boris, you can actually do that with Parallels. If you've installed the Parllels Tools, you should have at least one folder shared between Mac OS X and Windows. It works really fine, both ways.
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11-03-2006 @ 10:41AM
bobics said...
What about *undo* functionality? None of the other reasons are compelling enough for me to choose a late to to the party goliath over the well performing incumbent.
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11-03-2006 @ 10:56AM
S said...
I can't wait for GPU virtualization - both Parallels and VMWare are working on it so we can virtualize Vista with all the effects (and play games, no doubt).
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11-03-2006 @ 11:02AM
phlyingpenguin said...
As a user of VMWare on other platforms and trying Parallels on my new MacBook, I can't wait for Fusion to come out. Parallels does the job, but I'm hardly impressed with it. The lack of USB support and the inability to run more than on VM at a time is a real hinderance. Not to mention that my Core2 Duo only has one processor in the VM. I suspect that the performance in the VMWare product will be much better than Parallels. I don't have any quarrels with performance on Parallels yet, but that's probably only because this machine has the horsepower to make up for it. More is always better.
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11-03-2006 @ 11:14AM
herb said...
The biggest advantage will be sharing of virtual machines between OSes. I'm developing under linxu and i have with coworkers a developing "machine" with a fixed software basis as vmware virtual machine. It will be great if I can use this sam virtual machine under OS X, too!
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11-03-2006 @ 11:17AM
Mike Dent said...
Well I welcome this. I bought Parallels about 3 months ago and despite several emails to their support and posts on their forum I still get no support from them. I could understand this if the product was free but shoddy support like this for a paid for product is bad. Lets hope VMware support will be better, it would be hard pushed to be worse!
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11-03-2006 @ 11:17AM
http:www.MacWork.com said...
This is significant news.
More than a convenience to individuals, virtualization can be about making optimal use of the horsepower available in modern computers, and especially in Macs. This helps Macs be one of the most flexible, powerful platforms on earth, materially improves their prospective value to enterprises.
When an organization installs thousands of systems for its team members to use M-F, what else can those systems be used for? At night and on the weekends those systems largely lie dormant. With virtualization it's often more efficient to use those systems for other purposes, to help achieve other organizational goals, for example, working together as a loosely knit cluster to solve complex problems.
It's support like this, with Fusion, that may make the Mac a universally recognized leader in enterprise computing.
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11-03-2006 @ 11:31AM
John H. Doe said...
Would there, could there be a way to convert a Parallels hard drive file to VMWare Fusion?
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11-03-2006 @ 11:38AM
Mithras said...
The main feature (in my book) that VMWare could offer to get a leg up on Parallels would be booting from a Boot Camp partition, obviating the need for separate Boot Camp and virtual machine environments.
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11-03-2006 @ 11:41AM
dave said...
well, coming from emc - the parent of vmware - coupled with vmware's legacy as the father of the virtual machine for high end commercial implementation, i can only suppose that they will produce a version 1 that blows past parallels in terms of stability...however, until there's a solid comparison out there, i'm inclined to believe that parallels is getting it done already and doing right by users...it's the tech market that really sells this for me, personally, the whole prepackaged environment with an app, that's cool, and that's something parallels isn't even trying to touch...
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11-03-2006 @ 11:44AM
Hobofuzz said...
About time VMWare starts the beta.
I hate parallels, it can't run anything right.
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11-03-2006 @ 12:31PM
McUser said...
One thing, I haven't seen anyone ask about is virtualization of Mac OSX. Why can't we run a VM of Mac OSX on a Mac OSX hosted machine (licensing issues aside)? I would love to use this as a test environment for software. It would be running on Mac hardware so couldn't those deep DRM system calls be passed on to the host system? I am familiar with how VMs work, but not the DRM practices of OSX. It seems to me that this would be another bonus for the Paralles/VMware battle.
I, for one, will still, most likely, replace Parallels with VMWare (of course, depending on the cost).
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11-03-2006 @ 12:33PM
Adrian vG said...
What's better than Parallells except for the drag&drop thing (which IS a big plus) ?
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