VMware Fusion 7 Launches with Virtualization Support for OS X Yosemite and Windows 8.1

[AndyB2007]

All that being said - if you NEED to run Windows on a Mac - or a PC that is supposed to run Linux as its main operating system - you have chosen the wrong main platform for your daily work. You should have stayed with Windows, period.

I NEED to run windows on a mac (visual studio), but I also NEED to run xcode. I don't want 2 machines, and I want to easily share data between the 2 platforms.

There are use cases for parallels/vmware, otherwise why would people buy it (Also its a lot cheaper in hardware cost and support/backups/restore time to have a couple of virtual machines on one set of hardware, regardless of what operating systems are actually in play).

 

[ds2000]

Okay - I get it. You can run a Windows app directly on you mac using VMware

I see it's handy.

Its brilliant to be fair. I'm a Parallels user and work on several secure sites with my own mac. I generally have a windows 8.1 install in the VM where I keep all the clients sensitive data, stash repositories etc. This is all encrypted and has passwords around booting, starting up, shutdown etc. With the thunderbolt display adapter connected to my MBP I have windows to my left and OSX right in front of me.... several people at my office are now taking this approach as it saves cluttering up your own laptop with client info

 

[KALLT]

But like I've said, if you NEED such a tool on your desktop machine to run an application that you NEED for your daily work - you should have chosen Windows as your main platform, period. It doesn't make any sense to double your platform complexity and maintenance costs just because you bought into some hype and decided to go with an OS that does not have the application software that you NEED.

VMware/Parallels/VirtualBox is a pretty good reason why you can choose OS X as your main platform. Sure, there are extra expenses, but there are plenty of reasons why you might prefer OS X for all your other stuff. Why should Windows keep such a firm grip on everyone, just because some proprietary software is not available on OS X? I can understand completely why some people would like to take this option. Moreover, it could entice more developers to bring their applications to the Mac.

 

[slehman805]

@AppleInTheMud

Can anyone give me just one reason, why to buy this if you want to run Windows on your Mac? We have Bootcamp and it's free - With VMware you have to pay for both Windows and VMware.

VMware must be slower than running a real install. And it costs you more.

People have given you reasons which you choose to ignore.

I personally will start with why I use a Mac. The Mac OS is by far more secure than Windows and more stable.

That said, I do have to use Internet Explorer (not the Mac version) for work. Our customer resource manager will only work with Internet Explorer. Everything else I need for work I have on the Mac side so running Windows virtually allows me to use both Windows and Mac OSX at the same time. While running Windows virtually can be slower than running it natively, I don't need great speed when only running Internet Explorer for work. Plus, since I'm running everything else on the Mac side, most of my work flow is not interrupted when Windows Explorer decides to crash which happens way to frequently running natively or otherwise.

The good news is that my work is re-writting their system to now be compatible with Mac OSX and IOS as well. I will soon be able to dump windows and Internet Explorer.

 

[Jeaz]

Indeed, Windows 8.1 is a really solid OS. If you can look past the start-menu failure, it's a much faster and stable OS than Windows 7 has ever been.

Anyhow, I'm personally a bit disappointed with the lack of DirectX 11 support on both PD and Fusion, which really kills any need I have of upgrading.

 

[maflynn]

Nice, I've been waiting for this. I'm a few versions down at this point and I was looking to upgrade.

 

[Dranix]

Wtf? Pay again, already? Sorry but this is getting ridiculous. We are currently at 6.04 - There is nothing in-between that and 7.0? I'm out of this. When VMware stops working it's time to start using VirtualBox... I'm fed up with this "hey look we have a bug fix release - pay us again" attitude 8(

 

[antonis]

Dual GPU support ? That's interesting. I wonder how they take advantage of this. We might be close to the day where graphics intensive apps/games will run faster inside a VM, than native.

 

[cRizz]

Are there any real world comparisons (I know its early) between this and parallels? I've been on parallels since the start (everyone else I know seems to be on vmware), however whenever upgrade time comes around I like to check things like:

Will the old version still support the latest OS (yes I know its not required, but nice to know if I upgrade to yosemite, that theres no breaking changes and I can no longer access my VMs)

Whats the procedure like to jump from parallels to vmware? (or vice-versa)

Does vmware play nicely with timemachine? (parallels does if you change the settings and have plenty of disk space)

I've been running windows 8.1 (my main vm is 7 pro) inside parallels for ages, whats the real change in fusion for this?

retina displays? fixing windows itself to properly support retina would be good start, shame they can't do that - I keep getting dialog boxes with no buttons (and thats on native machines too - not just VMs).

Has anyone used vmware or parallels on an osx server? (I'm thinking of setting up a mac mini server, the vmware pro network virtual networks may swing this for me)

Finally retina display support for unity mode. But sadly still smaller UI if you virtualize the Bootcamp Windows in Mac OS...

 

[n-evo]

Wtf? Pay again, already? Sorry but this is getting ridiculous. We are currently at 6.04 - There is nothing in-between that and 7.0? I'm out of this. When VMware stops working it's time to start using VirtualBox... I'm fed up with this "hey look we have a bug fix release - pay us again" attitude 8(

Both VMware and Parallels uphold what is more like a yearly subscription plan where you have to pay for full next-generation OS X support.

 

[Steve121178]

Wtf? Pay again, already? Sorry but this is getting ridiculous. We are currently at 6.04 - There is nothing in-between that and 7.0? I'm out of this. When VMware stops working it's time to start using VirtualBox... I'm fed up with this "hey look we have a bug fix release - pay us again" attitude 8(

Fusion v6 isn't supported in Yosemite...

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Both VMware and Parallels uphold what is more like a yearly subscription plan where you have to pay for full next-generation OS X support.

It's only £49.95 to upgrade in the UK. For a professional enterprise class product it's peanuts.

It costs me nearly double to upgrade my VMware Workstation license each year on Windows...

 

[Vodka]

Windows? What's that?

 

[Dranix]

It's only £49.95 to upgrade in the UK. For a professional enterprise class product it's peanuts.

It costs me nearly double to upgrade my VMware Workstation license each year on Windows...

It's mighty expensive if you use it to play with Linux and FreeBSD... I'm not against payed updates, but yearly around 50eur is mad.

 

[justperry]

Well, I'm an "IT person" and I prefer Windows 8.1 (in desktop mode, if you want to call it that) over any of its predecessors. Why? It's MUCH faster than Win 7 or XP. It's more secure out of the box than any other desktop OS on the market. It's rock solid.

Bold: Hmmmm... I have my doubts.

 

[thasan]

Windows? What's that?

something to let air (virus) come into your room (computer)
the glass panes turns blue at times and u need to open and close it to make your room useful again.

 

[Steve121178]

It's mighty expensive if you use it to play with Linux and FreeBSD... I'm not against payed updates, but yearly around 50eur is mad.

Play? I can see why it would be expensive for people who just want to play about with a different OS, but those who use Virtualization professionally £50 is nothing when other software can costs 1000's per year just for maintenance contracts!

VMware Fusion is a professional product so if all you want to do is play around perhaps you are better off with a free alternative?

 

[Aetles]

I know. But with VMware you have to purchase Windows AND WMware. I still see no reason.

No reason for YOU, that is. It all depends on how you use it. I'm on the opposite end: I see no reason to use Bootcamp at all, but I've bought both VMware Fusions and Parallels Desktop over the years.

My need is to occasionally run Windows to test web pages in Windows browsers (mainly IE) and sometimes (less often these days) to run software only available for Windows. But I still want OS X for everything else, so rebooting back and forth would be madness.

A good virtual environment is well worth the money for me. (Now, on the other hand, the way both Parallels and VMware are trying to (or even forcing) users to pay for upgrades each year just to stay compatible with OS X upgrades is another issue.)

 

[Dranix]

Play? I can see why it would be expensive for people who just want to play about with a different OS, but those who use Virtualization professionally £50 is nothing when other software can costs 1000's per year just for maintenance contracts!

VMware Fusion is a professional product so if all you want to do is play around perhaps you are better off with a free alternative?

Fusion PRO is the professional product. Normal Fusion is marketed at home users and started cheap, but got more expensive with time. It's not like we talk about ESX here...

 

[maflynn]

Is there any advantage to running Windows in bootcamp over Parallels/Fusion?

Yes, you get superior performance since Windows how has direct access to the hardware. Still for many tasks virtualization is an excellent alternative since you do not have to leave OS X.

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But like I've said, if you NEED such a tool on your desktop machine to run an application that you NEED for your daily work - you should have chosen Windows as your main platform, period. It doesn't make any sense to double your platform complexity and maintenance costs just because you bought into some hype and decided to go with an OS that does not have the application software that you NEED.

Actually I think you're wrong on that. Virtualization removes the need to have multiple computers running and a person can run Windows, Linux or what ever without having to buy a new box.

I NEED windows, and vmware fits that need without requiring the purchase of a PC. I also NEED to use OS X, so instead of having two computers sitting side b side, I can have one.

With Vmware Fusion 7, I now can avoid bootcamp for those times when I need both platforms running at the same time.

 

[Steve121178]

Fusion PRO is the professional product. Normal Fusion is marketed at home users and started cheap, but got more expensive with time. It's not like we talk about ESX here...

Yes very true. And I am not a fan of them fragmenting the products like they did with Fusion & Fusion Pro, but that's VMware for you. Having said that, VMware products are so good it's software that I don't mind paying for.

Software prices rarely come down unless they 'do an Apple' and strip a ton of features out, so I don't think people can expect prices for popular products to fall dramatically.

However, last year I managed to pick up VMware Fusion 6 brand new on Amazon for just £12.99!

 

[steve62388]

When you buy Parallels Desktop, you still have to get a Windows copy to install on it, it does not come along. They do supply other OS's like Linux etc, but no MS Stuff.

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Actually Parallels 10 is much faster than 9.....

What benchmarking are you basing this on? According to the review here http://www.tekrevue.com/parallels-desktop-10-benchmarks-review/2/ I don't know that you can call it much faster.

I use Parallels 9.

 

[S.B.G]

Can anyone give me just one reason, why to buy this if you want to run Windows on your Mac? We have Bootcamp and it's free - With VMware you have to pay for both Windows and VMware.

VMware must be slower than running a real install. And it costs you more.

Some people need/want to run both OS's simultaneously and not have to reboot into Windows. For instance I like to run them both for certain Windows apps, like Visio and still keep all of my OS X apps working for me while I use the one app in Windows.

 

[maflynn]

However, last year I managed to pick up VMware Fusion 6 brand new on Amazon for just £12.99!

I hate pay "full" upgrade price but I'm in need of the latest version so I'll probably jump on the upgrade sooner then later. Vmware does typically discount upgrades during the year and I expect around the holidays we'd also so a price reduction.

 

[S.B.G]

I hate pay "full" upgrade price but I'm in need of the latest version so I'll probably jump on the upgrade sooner then later. Vmware does typically discount upgrades during the year and I expect around the holidays we'd also so a price reduction.

I'll be having to pay full price as I only a week ago downloaded the trial of VMware 6!

 

[maflynn]

Can anyone give me just one reason, why to buy this if you want to run Windows on your Mac? We have Bootcamp and it's free - With VMware you have to pay for both Windows and VMware.

There are many times when I'm working on a website on OS X, and need to boot into windows for a task. I'd rather not leave my OS X platform while doing that. For many people the need for windows is not something they require 8 hours a day or full implementation. Using office from time to tim, email or some app that is not available in OS X.

VMware must be slower than running a real install. And it costs you more.

For games, I'd say its definitely slower, for many other tasks the overhead is not terribly noticeable.

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I'll be having to pay full price as I only a week ago downloaded the trial of VMware 6!

That's a tougher pill to swallow to be sure, but I like Vmware over Parallels because its generally more stable, and the tech support is excellent.