unity Archives - VMware Fusion Blog

I am pleased to announce that VMware Fusion 3.0.1 is now available.

The team has been working hard since we released VMware Fusion 3 at the end of October to add some a few new features, improve performance, and fix over 50 bugs.

For long time VMware Fusion users, VMware Fusion 3.0.1 is the first opportunity to take advantage of the new automatic updates feature in VMware Fusion 3, which we hope you enjoy!

Some highlights on new features include:

Improved 3D & Video Performance: Improved WDDM driver and 3D backend improvements speed up 3D applications from 20-80% on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Video playback with Windows Media Player on Windows Vista and Windows 7 is greatly improved as well. See the updated Windows Experience score for my MacBook Pro below:

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala): Full support for Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit & 64-bit editions. Just like other Linux virtual machines, we support copy and paste, drag and drop and even Unity!
Even More 64-bit Support: Networking subsystem is now 64-bit native to match 64-bit core engine released initially with VMware Fusion 3 (vmware-vmx).
Easier Move to VMware Fusion: Import standalone VHD virtual disks and Parallels Desktop 5 virtual machines into VMware virtual machines.
Improved Resume Times: For those users who suspend their virtual machines, we reduced the time required to resume your virtual machines.

In addition to the new and improved features, VMware Fusion 3.0.1 fixes over 50 bugs. Some highlights include:

Performance Update: Some users encountered slow downs with VMware Fusion 3.0. Thanks to your help, we were able to track down the performance issues to three key areas that we have addressed in 3.0.1 or where we have a recommended workaround:
- Older versions of VMware Tools caused a slowdown and VMware Tools included with VMware Fusion 2.0.5 could not be easily upgraded. The tools upgrade issue has been resolved with VMware Fusion 3.0.1 to make it easier to upgrade to VMware Fusion 3.0.1 tools, which resolves the problem.
- Leaving the Virtual Machine Library open in the background on some machines caused excessive Spotlight searches looking for virtual machines. This has been addressed in VMware Fusion 3.0.1. If you encountered this issue, install VMware Fusion 3.0.1, launch it and then quit it. The next time you launch VMware Fusion 3.0.1, the problem is fixed.
- AVG Free 9 takes lots of CPU and makes the virtual machine sluggish. This is a AVG Free 9 problem that has been reported to them for investigation. We recommend new customers use the included 12-month subscription of McAfee VirusScan Plus or look at other free antivirus solutions such as Microsoft Security Essentials or Panda Cloud Antivirus that do not exhibit this problem.
Shared/Mirrored Folders Improvements: Incompatibilities with Zone Alarms AV & Outlook 2007 Preview mode resolved.

Click here for a detailed list of bug fixes in VMware Fusion 3.0.1.

Updating to VMware Fusion 3.0.1
VMware Fusion 3.0 will offer to automatically download your update to VMware Fusion 3.0.1 the next time you launch or you can select Check for Updates in the VMware Fusion menu to check for updates immediately. Click on Download and Install and VMware Fusion will download and install VMware Fusion 3.0.1.

After the VMware Fusion 3.0.1 update has been installed, you will need to upgrade VMware Tools in each of your virtual machines to the latest version shipping with VMware Fusion 3.0.1 to see the improvements with Unity, Aero, Shared Folders, and much more.

See below on updating the VMware Tools in your Windows virtual machines:

Start up your existing VMware Fusion virtual machine.
Select "Install VMware Tools" or "Update VMware Tools" in the Virtual Machine menu.
VMware Fusion will display a confirmation dialog with instructions. Click Install.
Windows should display an “Autorun” dialog. Click Run Setup.exe (published by VMware, Inc.) to start the VMware Tools installer.
If you do not see VMware Tools begin installing, open the CD-ROM device in Windows Explorer, open VMware Tools and double-click "setup.exe".
Click Next and follow the prompts to install VMware Tools. Once installation is complete, you will be asked to reboot your virtual machine.

If you don’t wish to use automatic updates or need to get a new installer for deployment, click here to separately download VMware Fusion 3.0.1.

Thanks for your continued support and we hope that you enjoy VMware Fusion 3.0.1!

The Beginning

This time last year, we had just shipped our first public beta of VMware for the Mac, codenamed "Fusion" and I had just joined VMware and the Mac team right before Macworld. VMware had its first Macworld booth ever and the Mac team talked to thousands of Mac users looking for a way to run Windows on their Mac (or maybe they talked to us get the free t-shirt that we gave away! )

The Mac team came away from Macworld pumped and got back to work making VMware for the Mac even better. We added DirectX 8.1 accelerated 3D graphics , the first hardware acclerated 3D graphics in the Mac virtualization market when released in beta 2 in February 2007. In April, we announced we had a name for our Mac product: VMware Fusion (TM). In June, with beta 4 we introduced Unity , the most seamless way to run Windows applications like Mac applications. In the end, there were over 250,000 beta downloads of VMware Fusion before we launched VMware Fusion 1.0.

The Launch

On August 6, 2007 we launched VMware Fusion 1.0 and brought the following exclusive features to the Mac platform that still aren’t shipping today in other products including a Cocoa-native user interface with customizable toolbars, support for 2-way Virtual SMP for multiple processors in a virtual machine, ability to run both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems in a virtual machine, and no limits on the number of virtual machines runnings at a time, you are limited only by available memory.

The Dot Release

In November 2007, we released VMware Fusion 1.1 which added experimental support for DirectX 9.0 (without shaders) 3D graphics, full support for Mac OS X Leopard, and simultanously shipped a single installer for English, French, German, and Japanese. In addition, we also released beta 1 of VMware Importer , which allows you to easily migrate your Parallels Desktop for Mac virtual machines to VMware Fusion.

Virtual Machine Importation with Ease

Earlier this week, we released beta 2 of VMware Importer which adds support for importing Virtual PC 7.0 for Mac virtual machines in addition to improving support for importing Parallels Desktop for Mac virtual machines. I recommended checking out VMware Importer , it is great tool to get you up and running in VMware Fusion quickly.

It was been an incredibly busy year and I can’t be prouder of being part of the Mac team at VMware. The Mac team is building products that we as Mac users want to use and are happy our users love. The acceptance of the VMware Fusion to date has been incredible. Thank you to the Mac community for your support so far.

Awards and Reviews

VMware Fusion received many great reviews including three I want to call out:

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal said "Fusion has a much smaller impact on the Mac’s overall performance"

Rob Griffiths at Macworld said "I currently prefer Fusion for its low impact on other OS X applications, support for multiple virtual CPUs, and huge library of virtual appliances."

Daniel Begun at CNET Crave said "From a pure performance perspective, Fusion proves to be a faster performing platform than Parallels. Additionally, in our anecdotal hands-on testing we found Fusion to be somewhat more stable than Parallels"

In addition to the many great reviews, VMware Fusion has won eight awards to date including the 2007 Macworld Eddy! See below for the list of awards won so far:

2007 Macworld Editor’s Choice Award

2007 Pogie (David Pogue of New York Times Technology Award)

Macworld UK Editor’s Choice

PC Pro Recommended (PC Pro UK)

Amazon’s Best of 2007

Lifehacker Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007

Redmond Magazine Editor’s Choice Award – Biggest \\\\\\"Wow\\" in an IT product

IT Enquirer Editor’s Choice

We can’t thank the Mac community enough for how you have embraced VMware Fusion and we look forward to making 2008 an even better year for Mac users.

Please come by our Macworld booth to meet me, Pete, and other members of the Mac team, we are in booth #2717 .

Pat

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