How bad is the "forced annual upgrade" for VMware fusion?

[mike mike]

Just got my first rMBP, have a few questions on running Windows virtual machines. Parallels is not in my consideration since it requires 1 license per computer and I might buy more Macs in the future.

1. I hear that Fusion also has this so called "forced annual paid upgrade". How bad is it? If you decide not to upgrade after OS X upgrade, will existing virtual machine stop working?

2. For Virtual box, can it import or convert a VMware machine? or does one need to build from scratch?

3. I understand that Oracle owns Virtual box, but I could not tell from its website whether Virtual box is still being updated. Is it regularly updated?

Thanks for advance

 

[yjchua95]

Just got my first rMBP, have a few questions on running Windows virtual machines. Parallels is not in my consideration since it requires 1 license per computer and I might buy more Macs in the future.

1. I hear that Fusion also has this so called "forced annual paid upgrade". How bad is it? If you decide not to upgrade after OS X upgrade, will existing virtual machine stop working?

2. For Virtual box, can it import or convert a VMware machine? or does one need to build from scratch?

3. I understand that Oracle owns Virtual box, but I could not tell from its website whether Virtual box is still being updated. Is it regularly updated?

Thanks for advance

1. It will still keep working, but VMware Fusion itself might not work after several OS upgrades. For instance, VMware Fusion 5 doesn't really work on Yosemite, but 6 still works fine (7 is the current version).

2. I'm not sure. But chances are that it should, since Oracle also supports the VMDK standard.

3. Yes, it's regularly updated.

 

[Linuxpro]

You are scaring me. I have VMware fusion 7 running on Yosemite. I have Linux in the VM.

Has it a built in expiration?

 

[ScottishCaptain]

There is no built in expiration.

Apple is continually changing Mac OS X (for better or for worse). VMWare Fusion is an EXTREMELY complicated product that needs to hook into the OS X kernel in order to operate.

That being said, VMware only really supports two versions of their software (the current version and one version back). So of course if you have a version of Fusion that is 3 versions behind, you can't expect it to work on the latest greatest Apple software. It will, however, continue to work just fine on whatever Apple was shipping at the time.

If you're going to blame someone, blame Apple for making radical changes to their operating system without a single thought about backwards compatibility. They're the ones messing stuff up enough that older software ceases to function correctly, not VMware.

-SC

 

[yjchua95]

There is no built in expiration.

Apple is continually changing Mac OS X (for better or for worse). VMWare Fusion is an EXTREMELY complicated product that needs to hook into the OS X kernel in order to operate.

That being said, VMware only really supports two versions of their software (the current version and one version back). So of course if you have a version of Fusion that is 3 versions behind, you can't expect it to work on the latest greatest Apple software. It will, however, continue to work just fine on whatever Apple was shipping at the time.

If you're going to blame someone, blame Apple for making radical changes to their operating system without a single thought about backwards compatibility. They're the ones messing stuff up enough that older software ceases to function correctly, not VMware.

-SC

This really sums it up.

I'm a software engineer at VMware Inc and any changes to the OS X kernel will make the Fusion team tear their hair out and then do a whole lot of lower-level modifications to make it compatible before releasing it as a new version. The same goes for the Workstation team.

Fortunately, at least every change in the OS is carefully documented for the team, so that they know what to change and/or reimplement.

Myself, I'm part of the vSphere team, so we largely deal with the even lower level stuff like the boot loaders and the EFI, but it's easier for us since these lower-level stuff don't change as much over time.

 

[Linuxpro]

Apple is a huge buggy "money pit", isn't it?

I am a Linux developer. While Linux does not change much in and of itself, the API's , and drivers developed by our in house team change a lot. I write the abstraction layers that go between the applications and the drivers. Often I must jump through hoops to keep them working.

 

[Nermal]

The thing that annoyed me about VMware was the cutoff for upgrades. I bought version 1 when it came out, got the free upgrade to 2, then finally went to 3 when it was cheap, and eventually to 4 when it was cheap. I never saw decent deals for newer versions so I stayed with 4.

Version 4 continued to work up to and including 10.9, but broke in 10.10. Fortunately, by that point VMware offered a cheap upgrade if you owned a previous version... except only if you owned 5 or 6. So if you had the version that had just broken (4), you had to pay full price.

I ended up switching to VirtualBox. It's come a long way in the last few years and although the UI isn't very Mac-like, it does seem to get the job done.

 

[maflynn]

I don't upgrade my Vmware every year.I usually do a every other or every third depending on the the upgrade and so far that hasn't hurt me.

 

[mike mike]

There is no built in expiration.

Apple is continually changing Mac OS X (for better or for worse). VMWare Fusion is an EXTREMELY complicated product that needs to hook into the OS X kernel in order to operate.

That being said, VMware only really supports two versions of their software (the current version and one version back). So of course if you have a version of Fusion that is 3 versions behind, you can't expect it to work on the latest greatest Apple software. It will, however, continue to work just fine on whatever Apple was shipping at the time.

If you're going to blame someone, blame Apple for making radical changes to their operating system without a single thought about backwards compatibility. They're the ones messing stuff up enough that older software ceases to function correctly, not VMware.

-SC

Well, if it is the case, then it's fine with me. I just don't like artificially set upgrade schedule for no reason, such as Quicken. Since M$ discontinued Money, Quicken appears sets this 2-year upgrade cycles, which drives me crazy since I have such a long period of data and I cannot find an alternative. At least for the last 2 upgrades, I had to cough up $ since either something would not work or old file format would not be supported.

I don't upgrade my Vmware every year.I usually do a every other or every third depending on the the upgrade and so far that hasn't hurt me.

Good to hear. I do not object upgrading, but just do not like being forced for no reason. Every third year seems fine to me.

Thanks everybody.