VMware Fusion 13 Now Available With Native Support for Apple Silicon Macs

[Cromulent]

My opinions/experiance:
1. Fusion remains much better for Linux VMs.
2. As good (if not better) for macOS VMs.
3. Arguably Parallels is better for Windows VMs, but I have never had problems.
4. Fusion has only recently got there for Apple silicon (but I don't have need for that).
5. I have found Fusion support forum useful.
6. Only one is free (for personal use).
Conclusion: I can't see any reason to consider Parallels for my use.

Obviously, I don't agree. Just as you won't agree with my opinion. That's the way it goes.

Thank you. That is very useful.

 

[chucker23n1]

They made no attempt to create VSphere Client for macOS in over a decade.

Their Windows vSphere client has been deprecated long ago in favor of a web one, so I don't think that has anything to do with the Mac.

 

[sirozha]

I went with Fusion rather than Parrelells because Fusion seemed the better choice when dealing with Linux virtual machines. Parallels pushed Windows 11 a lot.

Should I look into Parallels again?

I don’t even understand your question. There are several Linux distros you can load from Parallels directly without even having to download a binary yourself.

I don’t understand how Parallels “pushed Windows”. Back in 2006-2007, Parallels was first launched to run Windows on the new architecture. After Apple transitioned to Intel from PowerPC, the purpose of the Parallels software was to run Windows on a Mac, which was a revolutionary concept at the time. Linux has been running under Parallels for many years now on Intel-chipset Macs, and now it runs smoothly and ridiculously fast on the Apple Silicon chipset under Parallels.

For the Apple Silicon chipset, there is no competition to Parallels. For the Intel chipset Macs, Fusion is in the ballpark with Parallels, but we are talking about legacy hardware here. Those who are staying with the Intel chipset Macs are obviously budget focused, so the free Fusion Player is more important to them than the performance boost that Parallels provides, especially since they can’t really expect performance on their legacy hardware that overheats under any hypervisor and throttles the performance of any VM with moderate load.

I used to work for a company that provided licenses for both Fusion and Parallels. I compared the performance of the two for many years, and I would switch back and forth between Fusion and Parallels almost every other year. A few years ago, I noticed a significant lag in performance by Fusion compared to Parallels (that was several years before the Apple Silicon Macs were first released). Then I heard the news of Fusion having laid off the entire groups of programmers working on Fusion. Later, they reversed their decision and rehired those who were willing to come back. Apparently, the most talented ones didn’t want to come back because it was at about that time that Fusion started seriously lagging behind Parallels. With the release of Apple Silicon, VMware was a year behind Parallels in releasing their virtualization software that worked on the new architecture, and when they did release it, it was almost unusable. The main reason most people need to run virtualization on their Macs - running Windows - wasn’t even supported until recently in Fusion.

To me, Fusion is dead. I don’t mind paying $50 a year for Parallels for a polished, high-performance. and well designed piece of software.

 

[chrfr]

My opinions/experiance:
1. Fusion remains much better for Linux VMs.
2. As good (if not better) for macOS VMs.

Fusion has no support at all for macOS guests on Apple Silicon while Parallels does. On Intel, I'd agree that Fusion was better for this sort of thing, but on Apple Silicon Macs Fusion is looking increasingly under-featured.

 

[macuser_777]

With the new announcement from Microsoft and VMware on Windows ARM now fully supported with VMware Fusion, does this now mean that I'll be able to install VMware Tools and get better screen resolution than before? I think there was some powershell script that they previously included that didn't install any graphics.

 

[chrfr]

With the new announcement from Microsoft and VMware on Windows ARM now fully supported with VMware Fusion, does this now mean that I'll be able to install VMware Tools and get better screen resolution than before? I think there was some powershell script that they previously included that didn't install any graphics.

That article only says that Windows is supported on Apple Silicon and was written in response to Parallels announcing their full support. VMware has not yet made any changes according to this, so VMware Tools is still largely nonexistent.