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iSIght Drivers...

Looks like that toolbar is just listing USB devices to me. Doesn't mean any of those will actually work under VMWare. Is there a Windows driver for built in iSight or Apple IR?

I don't know about the Apple IR, but supposedly the iSight Driver from the Bootcamp driver cd (burn the drivers using bootcamp) work splendidly, and allow you to use the iSight in a VM in VMware's app.
 
the virtual appliance stuff will be great for people who host their own casual low-traffic blogs and such. i was doing that, but then i worried that someone would hack in and screw with important files. knowing that the server is in a virtual machine would make things a lot nicer.
 
:p Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee


I can't wait! I signed up for the public beta.
 
From the screenshots alone, it looks like a Cocoa app, which pretty much guarantees it'll be faster because it won't have the extra Qt bloated code in it ;)

Right, and Cocoa isn't the slightest bit bloated? :rolleyes: (can you say runtime messaging and binding overhead?)

Regardless of the relative difference in overhead, I'd expect it to be negligible in both cases. This is just the gui that sits around the virtual machine, a nice window dressing to make it accessible to the user. It should only be exercised when you're doing stuff like editing configurations or attaching devices. The real meat of either VMware or Parallels should have nothing to do with what gui toolkit they use to display the window.

It's exciting to see this finally moving along. I really think virtualization will play a much larger role in everyday computing in the future. Forget backwards compatibility nightmares, just virtualize it. I'm already hogging way too much disk space on my Macbook with a few Parallels VMs that I use on a regular basis. Whenever Apple releases an affordable desktop Mac that can take more than 4 GB of memory, I might check out VMware at that time and see if it's any better.
 
Right, and Cocoa isn't the slightest bit bloated? :rolleyes: (can you say runtime messaging and binding overhead?)

I'm not saying that the actual virtualization should be done in Cocoa (ha yeah right), but the GUI definitely should. Parallels takes way too long to launch, and the GUI sucks.

Plus, do you really think a Qt C++ wrapper around Carbon is faster than direct Cocoa calls? :rolleyes:

I just want a nice documented-based Cocoa app that behaves like a Mac app, with a fast virtualization at its core :)
 
Parallels takes way too long to launch, and the GUI sucks.

Mine pops up instantly. 2.0 GHz Macbook. What's wrong with the GUI? Is it just that it's not Cocoa, the holy grail, or is there something tangible that isn't good? I've found it easy to use and unobtrusive.

Plus, do you really think a Qt C++ wrapper around Carbon is faster than direct Cocoa calls? :rolleyes:

Wouldn't surprise me a bit if it were. Many of the things that make Cocoa such a joy for programmers also slow it down at runtime. That's just a design decision that Apple made, and with faster computers always coming out, it becomes less of a drawback at runtime.

I just want a nice documented-based Cocoa app that behaves like a Mac app, with a fast virtualization at its core :)

Err, why should a virtual machine be document-based? That doesn't make any sense to me.

The whole thing that drew my attention to your original post was that comment about Cocoa. Why do you, as an end-user, care about that? Cocoa is great, but there seems to be a mentality here that anything else is inferior or a second-class citizen. I kind of understand why that mentality came to be - Cocoa came with OS X, Carbon is a bridge to the past in OS 9. Thus people automatically assumed that Cocoa = good and Carbon = bad. But Carbon is every bit as capable as Cocoa, and thus why an end-user would care one bit about either is beyond me.

Granted, Parallels is done with Qt, which looks a little bit "off" sitting next to a Carbon or Cocoa app, but does that really matter? It looks damn close, and frankly, looks mean nothing to me if the interface works intuitively. And that it does.

I'm not picking on you, just trying to understand your reasoning. ;)
 
The nicest thing about a Cocoa app is that it looks and behaves like every other Cocoa app. There is a sort of consistency in behavior. Things that look almost like a Cocoa app, but don't quite behave that way annoy me.

But what'll make VMware faster is the better support for multi-core processors and allowing the VM to take advantage of that.
 
Dont count Parallels out. They will eventually have multicore support in their app, and i am sure will keep getting better over time.
 
Dont count Parallels out. They will eventually have multicore support in their app, and i am sure will keep getting better over time.

Oh, not counting them out at all. That would most certainly be a mistake. No, but VMware certainly brings a lot of history and man power to the table. They are THE elephant in the room when it comes to virtualization (they essentially pioneered the market that exists today).

I think they bring with them a long history of good, solid, stable roducts that the enterprise trusts.
 
Release notes

Check out the release notes here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/releasenotes_fusion.html

For the squeamish who don't realize they're squeamish (the fearless/masochistic can ignore this):
Note that there's a reason this is a private beta. It's rough still. There are bugs that will freeze your Mac. That requires a hard power-off, and even though we have journaled HFS+, there's still the chance of corrupting the image.

In other words, don't use this unless you really know what you're getting into. Wait for the public beta unless you're experienced with rough software.

Otherwise, it looks like it will put up a good fight against Parallels. That's very useful, as I'd like them to add some of the features VMware has had for years (access to raw HD partitions, for example).
 
Wine

This is all very interesting and I can discern the excitement amongst you that have an immediate use for this technology. For me, I am looking forward to a full implementation of Wine, or similar product, which will eliminate the need to load the Windows OS before running Windows programs. I do believe this will truly set OSX free.

Does anyone know if any of the emulators will allow MS Sql Server to run on an Xserve platform? What about Exchange or other backoffice applications?
 
This is all very interesting and I can discern the excitement amongst you that have an immediate use for this technology. For me, I am looking forward to a full implementation of Wine, or similar product, which will eliminate the need to load the Windows OS before running Windows programs. I do believe this will truly set OSX free.

Does anyone know if any of the emulators will allow MS Sql Server to run on an Xserve platform? What about Exchange or other backoffice applications?
Elegant post but sheesh!

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

There's a manual here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/fusion_getting_started_100.pdf

The beta is probably floating around the Internets by now, if you know where to look. I can't confirm that directly, but these things do leak fast.
Yeah it already is.
 
Dont count Parallels out. They will eventually have multicore support in their app, and i am sure will keep getting better over time.
The single core support currently is a design decision. Per a note by Andrew (of Parallels), "One core is used by Mac OS X and the other core is used by Windows XP - it brings excellent resource management and optimal performance for both systems running simultaneously."

Thus it can be presumed they may end up allowing multicore as an option in future releases.

The good thing about having two companies in this space is the competition will result in two better Mac products. I've just finished installing XP Pro on Fusion but the beta test agreement has a note about confidentiality regarding the discussion of benchmarks/performance data of the beta. Upon starting a VM, a sheet drops down noting there is debug code and logging which affects its performance. Thus, comparing it's current performance against Parallels isn't fair game at this time. Outside of that, the user interface is a bit more spartan (not much configuration options including the ability to tweak an already created VM) than Parallels. The VM setup while not much different than Parallels Desktop feels more streamlined. Fusion also drops down sheets with plenty of information to help make the setup process idiotproof (all of those dialogues can be turned off by checking the provided box).
 
Given that a number of VmWare's products are essentially free, Parallels will indeed have some significant challenges ahead if the OS X version is likewise free.

I don't think this is a realistic hope. The equivalent Windows/Linux app is VMware Workstation, which is definitely not free.

VMware's free apps can certainly be used on a workstation; but they're targeting the server space and lack some of the niceties of Workstation (such as experimental hardware video acceleration). But I do use the free VMware Server on a Fedora box for generic Windows stuff like IE testing, and it fits that bill just fine.

I would think it likely that VMware's pricing will have to be somewhat competitive with Parallels - people aren't going to spend $180 on it unless it totally blows Parallels out of the water (which would be hard to do).
 
Well. I have to say Bravo! VMWare!!!!
It use SOOOOOOO little amount of memory compare to Parallels (4xxMB vs 2.xxGB), so there is better system performance. I cannot wait to test it on my Macbook but the different on my Mac Pro was HUGE!!
 
i just finished installing xp sp2 on vmware works fine....

just under device manager it tells me one unregonised hardware....the video card... any1 knows how to solve this?
or is it part of the game
 
i just finished installing xp sp2 on vmware works fine....

just under device manager it tells me one unregonised hardware....the video card... any1 knows how to solve this?
or is it part of the game

You need to install VMware tools from Virtual Machine menu.
 
VMWare is going to smoke Parallels when it comes out. I can’t wait. I'm still a little bit miffed though that no one has gotten native partition support so we can use the same partition while virtualizing or dual booting.
 
Mine pops up instantly. 2.0 GHz Macbook.

Whatever dude. 2Ghz\2GB RAM\256MB Video\160GB HD and there is NOTHING instantaneous about Parallels at all. It takes anywhere from 1-2 minutes to resume a session and another 2+ minutes to suspend it. This is with multiple images, several OS X installs, and I know how to tweak Windows with the best of them. Then there is the bug where it likes to freeze the entire system when you change locations. Not always but it’s a common enough thing that I have to stop the session to change locations or risk crashing my system.
 
Ok so here's the newb question of the day!!

Have to buy Windows correct regardless of Parallels or VMware?

Yes.

As for some results, I really can't post performance results, but I can say that this competition in the virtualization market is good and we should be getting an excellent product for VMware (hopefully, if they give us a more of a workstation than a player).
 
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