Today is an exciting day for all of us in the Apple community; Apple released OS X Mountain Lion. We have using OS X Mountain Lion since its early developer release and are extremely excited about this latest Mac OS. 

Based on our experience as well as those in the developer community, VMware Fusion 4.1.3 currently runs on OS X Mountain Lion without any known major issues. We are super excited about a lot of the new features and always looking for ways that we may be able to take advantage of them in VMware Fusion. Stay Tuned!

 If you are using one of the new Retina Mac Book Pro’s with VMware Fusion 4 check out the blog post here on how to optimize VMware Fusion with the display.

To learn more about VMware Fusion 4 or download a free 30 day trial click HERE

Just a quick note to folks lucky enough to get their hands on a Retina Macbook Pro. A small number of users have mentioned an issue with their Windows Virtual Machine not maintaining a constant screen resolution. We are here to report the quick fix.

From the applications folder right click on VMware Fusion, and select: "get info". 

Then from the info window check the box titled: "Open in low resolution"

Once this box has been selected, you are good to go. Windows will match the screen resolution of OS X just like you would expect.

If you would like more info about VMware Fusion or to download a 30 day trial click here

 Today the Panic inc team released Coda 2, a much anticipated web development tool for the Mac OS. We think it’s awesome software, but it gets even better when paired with VMware Fusion 4. So naturally we thought we would take a second to talk about why it’s so great.

Coda 2

Coda 2 is a “do everything” web development tool designed to stream line the web development process by putting everything in one place. Whether you need to work with an editor, Terminal, CSS, or Files Coda 2 has got it all. With over 100 new features including a totally redesigned UI, Coda 2 is a truly major update.

VMware Fusion 4 + Coda 2 =Rejoice

One of the biggest advantages to Coda 2 is the ability to cross test your code across any Mac OS native browsers on the fly, but what about Internet Explorer? That’s where VMware Fusion steps in. With VMware Fusion 4 you can instantly gain access to all versions of Internet Explorer giving you the final piece of the proverbial puzzle to the ultimate web development test bed. Here's how it works.

1.From inside Coda select the Preview tab, then click the browser preview icon in the bottom left of the window.

2. Next select the version of IE that you would like to test. 

It's that easy! With just a couple clicks you can now test across virtually any browser. 

If you want to check download a trial of Coda 2 click here.

To download a trial of VMware Fusion 4 click here

The latest update for VMware Fusion fixes over 20 bugs, many reported by users, and is available for free for all VMware Fusion 4 users via the auto-update feature. 

Among the list of bug fixes are,

• Resolved an issue that caused the following message when you resumed a suspended virtual machine: The Virtual Machine is unable to reserve memory.
• The McAfee Virus Scan software is updated.
• Resolved an intermittent problem that caused printing to fail on Mac OS X Lion.
• Resolved an issue that occurred when copying and pasting information from newer Linux distributions.
• Improved compatibility with certain versions of Mac OS X.
• Improved the behavior of the minibar when placed at the top of the display.
• Fixed mapping of comma on numeric keyboard mapping of a French keyboard.
• Resolved an intermittent problem when removing a CD device from a virtual machine.

To download the free update start VMware Fusion, select the “VMware Fusion” menu and click on “Check for Updates.”

If you would like to find out more about this update, click here.

Interested in VMware Fusion 4?

Try it for free for 30-days by clicking here.

If you have additional content that you would like to see from a System Administrator perspective we would love to hear your suggestions. Drop us a comment below. 

If you would like to download the VMware Fusion 4 Mass Deployment Guide click here.

MusicBrainz is an open-source encyclopedia of music information, created by Robert Kaye in 2000 in response to Gracenote’s purchase and commercialization of the original database of user contributed album information CDDB. Essentially, Musicbrainz is like a wikipedia for music. All data is collected and corrected by its users.

Robert Kaye (far right) at the Last.FM headquarters.

Musicbrainz uses an application called Picard, which takes a music collection loaded with inaccurate or missing information, and performs a metadata tag analysis and acoustic finger printing analysis of the sound file that underlies the music, identifying the music information and writes corrected metadata tags and directory structures for the users files. In short, Musicbrainz cleans up your music library with factual album and artist information including ratings and tags. The only request they make is that once the cleanup is performed, the user devote one hour to going back through their library and make any further corrections and make the same corrections in Musicbrainz database. 

Here’s where VMware Fusion becomes an important part of the process. The rate limit to access the main site is one request per second, which is much longer than some users with large music libraries want to wait. Musicbrainz makes their software and data available for users to download and run locally, but it's over a GB of data, and in order to run the software, users must install Linux, web servers and hundreds of modules. “It’s just painful,” says Kaye in an interview with the VMware Fusion team. The solution was to prepare a virtual machine image and offer that for people to download. Initially they recommended Virtual Box to run the virtual machine, but users found a frustrating number of problems and error messages. “I have an inbox of complaints about Virtual Box not working, so we now strongly encourage users to use VMware Fusion as a more realistic alternative as it seems to be much more stable,” says Kaye. 

If you would like to learn more about the Musicbrainz project, or to try out Musicbrainz Picard for yourself go to musicbrainz.org.

One last piece of VMware Fusion news, Techworld.com released their review of VMware Fusion 4 in which they stated, “VMware Fusion is, then, a highly attractive choice for running multiple guest OSs on a single hardware platform.” Click here to check out the full article.

This is part 1 of a re-recording of the presentation that Simon Bennett Senior Product Manager for VMware Fusion delivered at the 2012 Mac IT event in January. In part 1 Simon will go through an introduction to VMware Fusion 4, speak to some of the new features and the key highlights for Business interested in Running Windows on the Mac.

Stay Tuned for Part 2, where we take a technical deep dive into VMware Fusion 4.

Today Microsoft released its much anticipated Windows 8 Consumer Preview. VMware Fusion 4 is a great choice if you want to try Windows 8 for yourself.  By running in a virtual machine you can remain isolated from your documents and other important applications, and simply roll back using snap shots in the event something goes wrong. If you’d like a walkthrough of installing Windows 8, checkout todays post by Arstechnica detailing the installation of Windows 8 in VMware Fusion.

Everyone here on the VMware Fusion team is amped about this new release, and what it means for VMware Fusion.  Stay tuned for more updates in the future!

Want to get in on the Windows 8 Action? You can download it from Microsoft at this link.

In other VMware Fusion news, PCPRO.CO.UK released their review of VMware Fusion 4. Calling VMware Fusion “shinier, faster, better and more efficient…” You can check out the full review here.

To download a 30 Day trial of VMware Fusion 4 click here

Save 10% when you enter promo code ‘FUSIONLOVESLION’ at checkout!

Recently chosen by Macworld as the best way to run Windows
on a Mac, VMware Fusion® 4 roars on OS X Lion!

Whether you would like to add your favorite Windows programs to Launchpad, experience them in Mission Control, view them in Lion full screen or switch between them using Mac gestures, VMware Fusion 4 is designed to give you the best Windows experience on
OS X Lion.

Hurry! Offer ends on February 16, at 11:59 PM (PST)

We are constantly hearing from developers that VMware Fusion is an essential tool in their development process. So we thought it would be cool to invite a few of them to share their stories. In this post we spoke to Shawn Hart, Lead Developer for Bullet Proof Orange. 

I live in a Mac world, but work in web design where my audience can be using any number of browsers working on any number of systems. Although browser compatibilities are slowly becoming a thing of the past (fingers crossed), the legacy of the browser wars is still very much present and when I build a site I have to keep this in mind. As a freelancing designer/developer, I'm very much a one man shop for my client's needs and don't have a  dedicated QA department that can use different machines running different OS's. Instead I use Vmware Fusion 4 on a regular basis to test my product and make sure that my clients are reaching the largest possible audience, and looking good in the process (even in Explorer 7). Having the flexibility to just open up a window and have another operating system there at my beck and call, has made life so much easier and has streamlined my workflow considerably. I love that VMware Fusion gives guys like me the ability get the most out of the Mac. Thanks VMware Fusion!

You can check out Bullet Proof Orange at bulletprooforange.com