I usually leave the Team Fusion blog to the more talented writers on our team including Peter Kazanjy and Eric Tung, but I wanted to share with our readers my thoughts on 2008.
The Beginning – Macworld Expo 2008
This time last year, we were preparing to attend our second Macworld Expo. The VMware Fusion team was riding high off winning the 2007 Macworld Editor’s Choice Award right before Macworld Expo and we were excited to come to Macworld to show off VMware Fusion 1.1.
There was also a flurry of activity getting ready a surprise for Macworld, a technology preview that demonstrated installing and running Mac OS X Server in a virtual machine on Apple hardware. It was an exciting milestone to be the first virtualization company to publically demonstrate installing Mac OS X Server into a VMware virtual machine directly from Apple’s shipping Mac OS X Server installation media, but since it was a “technology preview” we couldn’t commit to when it would be released though some users were begging us to let them steal a copy of the technology preview as is from on the show floor.
Listening to Our Users and the Switch to VMware Fusion Contest
VMware Fusion continues to get amazing reviews from the press, but just important we are getting amazing user reviews on the Apple Store, Amazon.com, VersionTracker, MacUpdate and on personal blogs. The strong support from the Mac community telling us what we were doing right and areas we could improve is something we greatly appreciate.
Great user reviews allowed VMware Fusion 2 to be chosen as the Most Loved Software product on Amazon.com and users voted VMware Fusion to be the only Mac virtualization software in the 2008 TidBITS Gift Guide. So, thanks for you support in 2008!
We had heard a lot of users telling us their were switching from Boot Camp and Parallels to VMware Fusion, so we wanted to hear their stories. We sponsored a Switch to VMware Fusion video contest and we saw some great videos, though Cara Jean Mean’s winning video was absolutely incredible.
VMware Fusion 2 Announced and Enters Public Beta
In May 2008, we announced VMware Fusion 2 and released VMware Fusion 2 Beta 1. The VMware Fusion 2 announcement was exciting as the team had been working six months on a great new product and all we could say publically since VMware Fusion 1.1 was “no comment, but we are constantly working on making VMware Fusion even better.”
We are big fans of public betas at VMware. Our public betas give our users the opportunity to see what we are working on and more importantly it gives us broader coverage to make sure when we release the product that it is ready for prime time. So, thanks to you our users for taking the time to give us valuable feedback on what we did right and what we did wrong, which allows us to ship even better products!
VMware Fusion 2 Launched
On September 15, 2008, we launched VMware Fusion 2 at VMworld in Las Vegas and at Apple Expo in Paris. VMware Fusion 2 has over 100 new features and improvements over VMware Fusion 1 and was FREE upgrade to for all VMware Fusion customers as our thanks to you for choosing VMware Fusion as your choice for running Windows on your Mac.
Awards and Reviews in 2008
VMware Fusion 2 received many great reviews so far including three I want to call out:
Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal said "VMware Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on the Mac virtually."
Rob Griffiths at Macworld said "If you want to run Windows, Linux, or other operating systems on your Intel-powered Mac, there’s no better choice than VMware Fusion 2."
Dave Girard at Ars Technica said "VMware, in my opinion, is just the better option at this point…It’s fast, extremely stable, supports 64-bit client operating system and up to four processors for VMs, has VMrun command-line access, and multiple snapshots: all server-level features in a consumer priced product."
In addition to the many great reviews, VMware Fusion has won some great awards in 2008 including our second Macworld Eddy Award in a row!
PC World’s Top 100 Products of 2008
2008 Macworld Editor's Choice Award
Amazon's Best Software of 2008
Thank You
2008 was an amazing success for the VMware Fusion team thanks to your support. We can't thank the Mac community enough for how you have embraced VMware Fusion to date and we look forward to making 2009 an even better year for Mac users running Windows and other operating systems on their Mac.
Please come by our Macworld booth to meet me, Pete, David, and other members of the VMware Fusion team, we are in Booth 2202 in Moscone South.
