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VMware Fusion 12 Now Available With macOS Big Sur Support and More

nylon said:
Do you have a VMware account? If so, login before using the link. You need an account to get the free license.
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Yes, I do have an account. And I am logged in, I have absolutely no idea why clicking onto the "Register for a Personal Use License" link takes me to the "Workspace ONE UEM" page...
 
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I can't see a free perpetual licence at all when I attempt to register, only a 90 day evaluation...? I've clicked on all the links people have provided - what am I doing wrong?

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Did this too many times - don‘t know how often I upgraded my VMware license. Now I just added a Windows partition to my Linux workstation standing beside my Mac.
 
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pacmania1982 said:
I can't see a free perpetual licence at all when I attempt to register, only a 90 day evaluation...? I've clicked on all the links people have provided - what am I doing wrong?

View attachment 953109
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Yah, that's a typo... I'm working with the backend... some of the standard boilerplate stuff snuck through in a late edit... it is 100% a perpetual license (the product itself reflects that).

Source: I'm the product manager
 
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According to my co-worker, VMWare works much better for stuff that uses the GPU.

I've now upgraded numerous times, though I've skipped the odd version and try to take advantage of a "30% off" event, which it feels like they have every month. Black Friday is usually a good time for an extra discount, though.

I am still running Mojave and I'm not really in the mood to run a dot-zero release of macOS.
 
Malus120 said:
I don't know how many times we have to go over this. Apple Silicon Macs will NOT RUN WINDOWS as you know it. They will probably (no guarantees) be able to run the ARM version of windows, which is NOT COMPATIBLE with most Windows software aside from Office, in one form or another (likely virtualization), but this will NOT be like running x86 Windows in a VM today (and won't hold a candle to Bootcamp).

If running Windows in one form or another is a requirement for you, you need to buy an Intel Mac, a Windows PC, or a hackintosh. Period.
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This is not true anymore. They have full Windows 10, including x86 software support, on ARM now. The limited ARM version of Windows was discontinued.
 
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mikeroySoft said:
Yah, that's a typo... I'm working with the backend... some of the standard boilerplate stuff snuck through in a late edit... it is 100% a perpetual license (the product itself reflects that).

Source: I'm the product manager
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Thanks - I just checked the email I received and it has a weird expiration date, so someone is doing something somewhere ;)
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Last time i used Fusion (v8 or 9) it mangled my Bootcamp partition which i had to erase.
Always liked VMWare interface but since that happened i switched to Parallels.

I basically use VM to deal with updates and files transfer on my BC partition without rebooting but then always restart the mac on Win10 if i have to actively run apps.

The free license is a no brainer though.. as i dont need/use any of the pro features.

Do you guys recon this version is better than Parallels?
 
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Aston441 said:
can someone explain to me why the paid VMs are so much better than VBox?

I've been running VBox for years and it's fine. Why should I pay?
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  • Better graphics support
  • Better USB support
  • better support for obscure not-frequently used things in VMs like PXE boot from network (I tested back to back with virtual box some time back, virtual box booted about 30x slower from the network which made it useless for me doing network OS deployment testing for example)
  • VMware has integration with vSphere for uploading/downloading your VMs from vSphere and building templates for vSphere
  • Vmware disk format is compatible with vSphere as well
The TLDR:
  • if you want better performance with graphics and need to maintain enterprise gear, get Fusion
  • if you just want best gaming performance get Parallels
  • if you need neither of the above either Player or Virtualbox will do the job just fine
 
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alba_83 said:
Any mention anywhere of how this might work in a future-state Apple Silicon Mac? I very rarely use Windows apps but sometimes I have had the need (esp. for work).

I realise we're not there yet but I had thought perhaps a roadmap may have been formed.
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They will have to emulate the x86 CPU instruction set on the Apple Silicon as Microsoft Virtual PC did before on the PowerPC and 68K. So it could be much slower than current Fusion or Parallel do.
 
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woocintosh said:
They will have to emulate the x86 CPU instruction set on the Apple Silicon as Microsoft Virtual PC did before on the PowerPC and 68K. So it could be much slower than current Fusion or Parallel do.
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They won't do that, they don't do that on any other platform.

You'll be able to spin up ARM VMs on an ARM Mac is my bet, but right now VMware have no ARM-to-x86 translation technology.

If that's something you want to do, you'll likely need to get a copy of Bochs, which can emulate x86 on other platforms. It's SLOOOW though.
 
VMWare Fusion 12.0 Player successfully installed and running Windows 10 smoothly on my 13" 2020 MBP (i7/32GB/1TB) with a 580-based eGPU. No benchmarks yet, but subjectively much snappier in retina scaled 4K now that the eGPU is utilised (guest allocated 3 CPU cores, 16GB RAM and 4GB VRAM).
 
epheterson said:
Hey, I'm seeing the same thing! No idea how to fix, hope somebody finds a way. The article on it isn't much help, though I didn't find the entries it mentions here.
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I'm hoping this is connected with the fact that smb networking is broken in the latest Beta and that this will be fixed in the next round, which will hopefully be this week for both developers and Public Beta users.
 
Richdmoore said:
Probably a basic question, but I have a subscription to parallels currently. Is the free fusion software good enough to stop renewing my paid parallels subscription?
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The free Fusion 12 is basically Fusion 11.5 Standard for non-commercial use.

Full disclosure I am a Fusion user but I have tried out Parallels a couple of times. I find Fusion a little bit less intrusive and therefore prefer it. I have had occasional issues with both Fusion and Parallels. VMWare is of course a much bigger player in virtualization. VMWare seems to have re-energized their development team after a period of tepid releases.

You should give it a try!
 
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mikeroySoft said:
Yah, that's a typo... I'm working with the backend... some of the standard boilerplate stuff snuck through in a late edit... it is 100% a perpetual license (the product itself reflects that).

Source: I'm the product manager
Click to expand...

Can't believe product manager had a sneaking in forum conversation, that's great support. Very appreciated, thanks for perpetual license confirmation.
 
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goMac said:
This is not true anymore. They have full Windows 10, including x86 software support, on ARM now. The limited ARM version of Windows was discontinued.
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It appears x86_64 apps run under emulation according to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm. This sounds like it might perform poorly.

I'm not sure whether the selection of ARM64 apps is really mature enough for prime-time use, but I imagine this will improve over time.

I've yet to see any reviews that claim Windows on ARM runs well, but this could be due to the limited power of the Qualcomm CPUs that MS have used in their Surface.

However, if Apple is successful in creating Apple Silicon based machines that perform much better than Intel, then I imagine that Microsoft will invest some effort in improving Windows on ARM.
 
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Of course. I just installed 11.5 (trial) on my new iMac yesterday so I could start playing with some VMs. I new 12 was on the way, but thought they might wait and release it at VM World at the end of the month. Hopefully the upgrade is nice and clean.
 
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