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VMware Announces Fusion and Fusion Pro 8.5 With Sierra and Windows 10 Anniversary Support

cau said:
Everything in this post is my own speculation. I have no VMware inside information!

I assume that VMware could not achieve a late summer delivery for whatever they have planned for VMware Fusion 9. Lacking anything to announce that could line up against Parallels 12, VMware chose to take the next point release with whatever bug fixes that their developers have managed to close, ran a round of regression testing against macOS Sierra (host and guest) and Windows 10 Anniversary (guest), called it "Version 8.5" and declared victory.

I wonder when the real VMware Fusion version 9 will be released?
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That's a pretty good theory and sounds reasonable too.
 
DavidDoyle said:
Tabs! This is an excellent and long overdue addition. Definitely worth upgrading for.
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What VMWare isn't pointing out is that 8.1.1 already gets tabs in Sierra. It's not clear from any of the articles whether this will be a 10.12+ only feature or not.
 
pentidoes said:
Finally, I always wanted... err. Nope. Forget about it. V6 still runs fine.
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hehe.... I'm still on version 7.1.3 Pro.... Not looking to Windows 10 at all, so no point in upgrading Fusion.

I hope VM fixed the performance issues on OS X guest.... They always lag behind. in OS X but favor Windows more for performance. I'll never understand why
 
No new DirectX versions supported? No sale.

Ah, I see it's a free upgrade for me, so I guess I can't really complain, but I had bought Windows 8.1 Pro here for over a year now and haven't even opened it because I found I could not install it on my RAID 0 Mac Mini without removing RAID and thus I could have used it to get a free Windows 10 upgrade, but that time has now passed. I could have installed it with VMWare Fusion, but without newer DirextX support, it defeated my entire reason for getting it which was to play certain games running newer versions of DirectX (V.11.x or newer) with Windows 8.x or newer (which I could only do with Boot Camp). Namely, I'd like the dynamic lighting effects in Pinball Arcade, which the Mac and earlier Windows versions don't support.
 
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Glad its a free upgrade for 8.0 users. Just hope they keep development on it for the future. I really cant stand parallels.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
That's not entirely accurate.

This was posted by Michael Roy on the VMware communities forum on March 23, 2016 in response to the many questions people have on the future of Fusion. Michael Roy is the Product Line Marketing Manager for Fusion, Fusion Pro, Workstation Pro and Workstation Player at VMware. He guides product roadmap and messaging, produces and presents technical collateral, and works across teams to refine product integration strategy.
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I read that mostly as a lip service.

The fact of the matter is that Fusion 8.5 is a minor update, with under-the-hood-improvements, bug fixes, and just two user facing features: (1) Siri integration and (2) tabbed VM windows (which frankly works on 8.1.1 already). As far as I can see, macOS Sierra and Windows 10 Anniversary Edition work fine under 8.1.1.

Meanwhile, Parallels added many more user features. Granted, Parallels 12 is a paid upgrade, but as a Fusion user since 4.0 (and Pro ever since it became available), I am frankly disappointed by where Fusion is heading.
 
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nutmac said:
I read that mostly as a lip service.

The fact of the matter is that Fusion 8.5 is a minor update, with under-the-hood-improvements, bug fixes, and just two user facing features: (1) Siri integration and (2) tabbed VM windows (which frankly works on 8.1.1 already). As far as I can see, macOS Sierra and Windows 10 Anniversary Edition work fine under 8.1.1.

Meanwhile, Parallels added many more user features. Granted, Parallels 12 is a paid upgrade, but as a Fusion user since 4.0 (and Pro ever since it became available), I am frankly disappointed by where Fusion is heading.
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To be honest, parallels is so hell bent on making Windows and macOS integrated, frankly I don't want that. If I want to run a virtual machine I want to run it either in a window self contained or full screen as another space. Cluttering up Mac and Guest VMS is just bull. This and the fact that VMware fusion can import workstation / esxi images is a huge boost over parallels.
 
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Meh. Apple now provides a hypervisor API. Virtual Machines can use it and gain access to the hardware without installing insecure and potentially destructive kernel extensions.

Check out Veertu. It's native to macOS and uses this API. It's free to use with some Linux distros and WAY cheaper than VMWare/Parallels for Windows. You don't have to pay to upgrade it every year since it uses a built-in, stable, userland API.
 
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chrfr said:
What VMWare isn't pointing out is that 8.1.1 already gets tabs in Sierra. It's not clear from any of the articles whether this will be a 10.12+ only feature or not.
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They're a little glitchy right now. Especially on stopping or suspending a vm. Presumably "support" means modified and tested to work properly.
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UKgaryb said:
To be honest, parallels is so hell bent on making Windows and macOS integrated, frankly I don't want that. If I want to run a virtual machine I want to run it either in a window self contained or full screen as another space. Cluttering up Mac and Guest VMS is just bull. This and the fact that VMware fusion can import workstation / esxi images is a huge boost over parallels.
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Totally agree on both counts. I isolate my VMs as much as possible in VMWare and if I need to exchange files between them I use the OS' native file transfer mechanisms. The enterprise VMware compatilibity is gravy.
 
You would think the author would actually investigate and find out when this is available instead of just assuming it was available today, right now. Ugh. Is journalism completely dead?
 
Feenician said:
They're a little glitchy right now. Especially on stopping or suspending a vm. Presumably "support" means modified and tested to work properly.
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Totally agree on both counts. I isolate my VMs as much as possible in VMWare and if I need to exchange files between them I use the OS' native file transfer mechanisms. The enterprise VMware compatilibity is gravy.
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One thing I did see in the email announcement for my lapsed // licenses is better Time Machine backups of VM clients. I'd love to see Time machine save only the changed part of a VM in Fusion instead of the whole .vmdk in Fusion but need the ESXi management, binary compatibility & support for .ova files more.
 
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Initial reaction reading the headline - they're going to want $ again, only a few months after my last purchase. Good on them for at least doing what they should be doing...not trying to force an 'annual paid upgrade.'

Would be great if they'd improve their VM -> host filesystem performance.
 
nimbusthegreat said:
You would think the author would actually investigate and find out when this is available instead of just assuming it was available today, right now. Ugh. Is journalism completely dead?
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Tell me, how much is your annual MacRumors subscription?
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wickoo said:
Check out Veertu. It's native to macOS and uses this API. It's free to use with some Linux distros and WAY cheaper than VMWare/Parallels for Windows. You don't have to pay to upgrade it every year since it uses a built-in, stable, userland API.
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While Veertu is interesting, it's only a competitor if you need some basic functionality. It doesn't virtualize the GPU (and to my knowledge, Apple doesn't provide a "built-in, stable, userland API" for it to do so, so you'd lose that benefit anyway), and it lacks many of the convenience features like rootless mode (Unity / Coherence / etc.), file drag & drop, and so forth.

I have also yet to see any benchmarks, oddly enough.
 
They may be holding back until the release of macOS 10.12 Sierra. According to some reports, Apple announced the official release date to be 20 September 2016. I have not yet found the official Apple announcement, however.
 
Looks like they have a bug to fix before they'll release it.
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SandboxGeneral said:
Looks like they have a bug to fix before they'll release it.
View attachment 649154
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Thanks for charing that.

A bummer, but understandable for sure. I don't know what qualifies as a Nasty bug but for a product that lives to run a whole OS in, I sure don't want something that could cause corruption or instability.

A game crashes from a "nasty bug" and that's an inconvenience, but a VM crashes and someone could be losing a lot more than that. I want the update now but more than that I want it right :)
 
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