Filed under: Macworld, Enterprise, Software, Video
Macworld 2009: Interview with VMware's Peter Kazanjy
In the world of desktop and enterprise virtualization for the Mac, two companies, VMWare and Parallels, top the list. Each offers a suite of products designed to meet the needs of virtualization aficionados -- whether they need to run a rack full of servers or just use Outlook to check email.At last week's Macworld Expo, TUAW's Michael Rose visited the VMWare booth and spoke with the company's Peter Kazanjy to get all the latest info on their VMWare Fusion product for the Mac and some news that will be of particular interest to those of you wanting to play some cool Windows-only games.
Click through to check it out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
H said 5:09PM on 1-12-2009
VWWare? I didn't realize Volkswagen made Virtualization Software? :D
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Jeremy said 5:33PM on 1-12-2009
I really hate the way this guy uses the (made-up) word "performant," like a million times. I really hope that doesn't catch on, it's totally ridiculous.
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alf said 5:38PM on 1-12-2009
unlike faux news, it's nice to see some actual fair and balanced reporting with parallels and vmware posts together! haha
@ jeremy, i concur!
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James said 5:47PM on 1-12-2009
I call spulling mistake !! Now where do I collect my proof reading fee ?? :D
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afterwords said 5:58PM on 1-12-2009
He starts flipping us off at about 4 minutes.
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Zorin said 7:01PM on 1-12-2009
I saw this and boggled, so I tried installing Oblivion into my VMWare Fusion 2 installation to see if it ran as well as Portal.
It's completely unusable. The mouse pointer slogs about the screen, and I can see individual frames rendering.
I don't know if I did something wrong, or if that install in that video is on a prerelease build or something, but I wasn't able to duplicate that amazing feat. And I have a Mac Pro as well, with the speedy Radeon X1900XT and 4GB of RAM.
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Peter Kazanjy said 8:08PM on 1-12-2009
@Zorin
The ATI video cards are not as strong as the NVIDIA ones. If you want good 3D, an NVIDIA GeForce card is your best bet.
The Mac Pro in the video is running an NVIDIA GeForce 8800, though I've played Portal on my MacBook Pro which has a GeForce 8600 chip.
Hope that helps!
Pete Kazanjy
Product Marketing, VMware Fusion
p.s. Thanks to the TUAW folks for coming by the booth!
qwerty613 said 8:04PM on 1-12-2009
I spy Google Chrome on that dock!
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yyzUnderdog said 9:28PM on 1-12-2009
@Peter - should I be able to run HL2 or TF2 or Portal for that matter on a 24" iMac with nVidia 7600GT onboard (256MB RAM)?
I have not had any success yet and have been working with your support team but no luck yet.
The video looks great - and would be wonderful to have that kind of performance.
All of these apps run very well with Crossover Games btw... (I know - different product/methodologies) but I'd much rather have them in Fusion.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Cheers...
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MKnight said 9:41PM on 1-12-2009
Remember the MacPro they demoed this on has two CPUs with 4 cores each...
These are server grade chips with a hell of a lot more cache plus not to mention the faster disk I/O of that machine plus the ability to run more then 4GB of RAM.
It's hard to compare both machines but if you really wanted better formance using Fusion, I'd say upgrade to a MacPro. If that is not an option, then just use Bootcamp for gaming.
Greg said 11:23PM on 1-12-2009
This guy is possibly one of the worst demo'ers/evangelist that I've ever seen.
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Ashley Grayson said 10:21PM on 1-12-2009
I'd like to know why when I bought VMware because of the deal offered here at tuaw.com, my coupon code wasn't accepted, my emails were not acknowledged and the customer service rep who emailed me that my problem had been sent to the "right people" on Dec 11, produced no result.
Also, VMware puts software on the Mac that the uninstaller does not remove. I think the product is neat, but no one has communicated with me about the order problem. I'm not likely to recommend it until the business and technical issues are resolved.
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Alicemagic said 10:22PM on 1-12-2009
I remember Parallels being mighty hard to completey get rid of which turned me off. Or it wasn't hard but it was a hassle... VMware takes forever and a half to shutdown or pause.
Both leave 2~3 networking processes constantly running even when the actual program is shutdown or paused to make file execution and transfers "seamless". I know it doesn't take much RAM but I just hate seeing so many things running when I feel like they don't have to be.
If it's just for simple use like MS Office and IE, Virtual Box and MicroXP is a killer combo. MXP's idle state only uses about 45 MB of RAM! One tab of Firefox 3 takes more RAM than that. Plus the Windows folder is under a gig so it's space friendly too AND its got 3D graphics support. All for free. Nuts I tell you.
I'm on a Core Duo MBP (the bear minimum requirement of Virtualization on a Mac) and sometimes I forget Virtual Box is even running.
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Andrew said 2:20PM on 1-13-2009
VMWare runs smooth on my Macbook Air (1.6 Ghz CPU and 1 GB RAM), just like it does on my MacBook Pro (C2D 2.4 Ghz and 4 GB RAM).
They both suspend in no time at all and are quick to reload!
Peter Kazanjy said 10:24PM on 1-12-2009
@MKnight
The dual CPUs, and multiple cores, doesn't really have much effect on this demo. What it comes down to, for 3D acceleration, is the quality of the 3D video card, and the quality of the virtualization software passing instructions from the guest OS (in this case, x64 Win XP Pro) down to that GPU.
But you're right on the mark about Boot Camp. This is why we have the feature that lets you run VMware Fusion *on top of* Boot Camp, such that when you want to get all crazy fragging the baddies, you can reboot natively. The rest of the time, when you're multi-tasking between Windows and Mac apps (switching between Safari and Outlook, or Chrome and Mail.app, say), you can run that Boot Camp partition virtualized with Fusion.
The point of the conversation with Mike in this video, was that 3D acceleration in virtual machines is getting closer and closer to the day where you won't need to reboot into Boot Camp.
It's not there 100% yet, for example, Vista and Windows 7 Aero doesn't fly in a VM right now, and you can't run Crysis in a VM. But we're getting closer, that's for sure.
This is actually why VMware recently acquired Tungsten Graphics, a 3D graphics driver company responsible for maintaining OpenGL drivers for Linux, in addition to lots of other 3D driver development. The ultimate goal is to make it such that a virtualized 3D app is wholly indistinguishable from a native one.
That is to say, with apologies to grumpy @Jeremy up top, highly performant ; )
Pete Kazanjy
Product Marketing, VMware Fusion
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Rylin said 5:54AM on 1-13-2009
Peter, what's the status on virtualized I/O?
If there's one thing that'll be good for gaming, that's it.
There's simply no reason I should be forced to play my games at D3D9 SM2 levels when I have hardware capable of D3D10 with SM3 or higher.
Driver emulation really should be a thing of the past by now.
Duncan said 11:03PM on 1-12-2009
I love that he has LimeWire running in the bottom, you crazy pirates... arghhh!
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swarner said 12:09PM on 1-13-2009
It demos well -- but it plays poorly. Sluggish - stutters. You still need to boot-camp it to get real nice game play. Nice progress, but no cigar.
s
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