Since August, when we announced that we were bringing VMware desktop virtualization to the Mac, the VMware Mac team has been working hard to create the easiest-to-use, most reliable solution to run Windows and other x86 operating systems on your Intel Mac.
There has been a great deal of excitement around the Fusion public beta since it was released in late December, and we received a lot of positive feedback from the Mac community. Today, we are releasing the second public beta of Fusion, and it has some truly killer features!
One of the biggest feature requests we received from the many thousands of customers we spoke with at Macworld Expo was the ability to play games in a virtual machine. Well, I am happy to tell you that with Fusion Beta 2 you can play select DirectX 8.1 games in Windows XP virtual machines! Play Tony Hawk 3, Grand Theft Auto III, and other DirectX 8.1 games without restarting your Mac. See the release notes for a list of DirectX 8.1 games that we have tested and work well.
I am really excited about VMware Fusion’s new snapshot feature and I believe it will be a lifesaver for many customers! Have you ever had your computer working just the way you wanted only to install a new application or system update that made your computer completely unusable? This has happened to me many times, but with VMware Fusion, just take a snapshot of your virtual machine once you get it set up and working just the way you like, and if your virtual machine ever becomes unresponsive, you can roll it back to your perfect state in an instant.
We had a lot of questions about Vista support at Macworld Expo and had a great demo showing Vista side-by-side on Mac OS X. With Fusion Beta 2, we have greatly improved our Vista support so you can now copy and paste, drag and drop files, use shared folders, and have Vista’s screen resolution automatically change as the virtual machine window is resized just like you expect with all supported Fusion guest operating systems. Whether you choose Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate 32-bit or 64-bit editions, you can your choice side-by-side with Mac OS X with Fusion.
I am also excited that Mac OS X Leopard is coming later this year. If are you using the latest Mac OS X Leopard developer builds, you can now run your virtual machines side-by-side with Mac OS X Leopard.
Thanks to the great feedback from the Mac community, we have made scores of improvements, including greatly improved networking support, so virtual machines will now switch seamlessly between wired and AirPort/Wi-Fi connections as you switch between network connections. Add virtual hard drives for more storage capacity, add up to ten virtual network interfaces to support private and public networks, and keep an eye on your laptop’s battery level from inside your virtual machines.
Go to the VMware Mac portal, download Fusion beta 2 and join our Mac community in the VMware Fusion discussion forums to help us make VMware for the Mac even better!
Pat Lee
Senior Product Manager – Mac Products
VMware
