Filed under: Software
VMWare Fusion: Unity
Parallels' killer feature is Coherence, a display mode that lets Windows apps and Mac apps seem to co-mingle with one another. VMWare, the market leader in virtualization, had a solid Mac offer (in beta) called Fusion but it lacked a similar feature. It looks like VMWare has figured out that people are crazy about Coherence, and so Unity is coming to a Fusion install near you.
As you can see in this video, Unity is pretty cool. It seems to have a little more polish than Parallels' implementation (the drop shadows are a nice touch) but I'll reserve judgement until I can use it myself.The desktop virtualization market really is heating up!
[via VMTN Blog]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
carson said 5:14PM on 6-06-2007
I think I just wet myself. I love parallels but, this little video was amazingly fast and sharper looking than novas app. I think I'll demo both and just buy which ever will run these speciality apps for my job, the fastest. I didn't know unity was a contender in this arena, Parallels is usually what you hear about in the news.
C.
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DeMarko said 5:16PM on 6-06-2007
that's more than kinda hot, I think I need a few moments to myself. I REALLY don't want to BootCamp
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Dannel said 5:19PM on 6-06-2007
oh, also, any word on when this is coming out?
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uros said 5:29PM on 6-06-2007
Ha, I knew VMware had an impressive feature like this up its sleeve. This blows away the current Coherence! I especially like the Exposé support. Parallels better be ready to compete with this, with their "new Coherence 2.0". But in the end, if they ever turn out to be completely equal, Fusion may have a slight advantage since it's a native Mac app. Anyway, this shows that the virtualization wars have just begun.
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Quix said 5:31PM on 6-06-2007
Aargh, I just ponied up another $40 to upgrade to the yet-unseen Parallels 3.0. I like Parallels, but depending on the day it can really be sluggish for me (2.0 CoreDuo iMac with 2 gigs of RAM).
I'd love to compare it to Fusion, IF VMWARE WOULD EVER RELEASE IT!!! I mean geez, the switch to Intel is a year-and-a-half old already!
What will VMWare charge for this? When will it finally be released? How will it compare to Parallels? Nobody knows - but my wallet would sure like to.
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marcosmalo said 5:58PM on 6-06-2007
This is sort of a tangent, but watching this video got me thinking about different UIs and UI styles operating concurrently, and how it's not necessarily a bad thing. The most important aspect of UI design (imho) is clarity and avoiding confusion. The different look of the Windows apps and the OS X apps is helpful in such a mixed environment.
I think this applies to sets of apps within a given OS. Whether an app is brushed metal or aqua or something else, the style of the UI should give us a subtle clue as to what purpose the app serves.
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sladuuch said 6:05PM on 6-06-2007
Holy fungus.
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Adam said 6:14PM on 6-06-2007
Dang, now I'm regretting my $40 Parallels 3.0 upgrade that I just bought.
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andy said 6:30PM on 6-06-2007
wow, expose!!! minimize!!! intermix layering!!! start menu access the wow starts now me thinks ;)
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Tony said 6:48PM on 6-06-2007
"Ha, I knew VMware had an impressive feature like this up its sleeve. This blows away the current Coherence! I especially like the Exposé support."
Coherence has Expose support...I use it all the time. Also, there was nothing I saw in that video that Coherence doesn't already have. So, how exactly does it blow away Coherence?
One thing I like better about Coherence: it allows you to have the Windows start bar/quick lauch/system tray displayed as an overlay on your desktop. I find that handy. I have my default OS X desktop on one monitor, and the Start bar running in Coherence mode on the second monitor. I can drag and drop and/or copy and paste between OS's to my hearts content...
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Scoyle17 said 8:08PM on 6-06-2007
Coherence may support Exposé, but all of the Windows applications are treated as one big window, effectively rendering it useless. As well as that, you can layer Windows and OS X applications separately, whereas with coherence, they're all treated as one.
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JR said 8:36PM on 6-06-2007
It just bugs me that the development for Fusion is coming along at a snail's pace, with little info trickling in from developers. It'd also be nice to know how much this thing will cost in the end.
It should be noted that we have yet to see this new "Coherence 2.0" that Parallels is touting for 3.0. It could very well be that the majority of the features found in Fusion's "Unity" are also in "Coherence 2.0"
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Rick said 10:18PM on 6-06-2007
I've been using VMware ESX/GSX/Server/Workstation for a long while now and nothing surprises me anymore.
I mean nothing bad towards the Parallels guys, they've got a bang up product, but VMware is simply the most squared away company when it comes to virtualization.
BTW, you ain't seen nothin' yet.....
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Stephen Waits said 12:06AM on 6-07-2007
Parallels is up against a Goliath (ugh, bible crap). They way they *might* be able to compete is to go for the budget market. Offer nearly the same features for much less.
Of course, VMWare is huge, and might be able to squeeze even that.
And, there's a limit to all of this b/c I'm running Windows in VirtualBox and it works just dandy, and it's FREE.
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Dan Gleckler said 12:33AM on 6-07-2007
The thing is, I bet Leopard will have something very similar, but better, built-in.
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David Allouch said 6:40AM on 6-07-2007
For some reason i dont expect much from leopard. This is amazing that companies like VMWare are paying attention to the mac world.
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Mark said 6:31AM on 6-07-2007
Anyone else notice thy conveniently avoided expose use with overlapping windows? Even going so far as to open another VM? I have a sneaking suspicion it reacts just like exposing a seamlessRDP session in that overlapping windows will draw over each other when you use expose. I look forward to any clarification on this, maybe another video. If it doesn't have some special way to handle this issue I'd be really disappointed.
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Mark said 6:32AM on 6-07-2007
*just to clarify: I mean overlapping XP windows in the VM.
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John Laur said 6:23PM on 6-07-2007
Mark: There is support in the XP graphics driver 2d acceleration api for all windows to have independent framebuffers. The primary reason is to allow for hardware redrawing when you move windows around, but the case you mention is easily achievable if they implement this feature in their graphics driver. Of course in Vista all windows are rendered to a texture anyway, so the problem is nonexistent in vista.
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Tony said 11:35AM on 6-07-2007
#11: Ahhhh...I usually only have one app open (Outlook), so I didn't notice. It always seemed to be working perfectly with Expose...
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