Tech Shout!

On Thursday VMWare, the renowned virtualization software provider released a public beta version of its software for Intel-based Macs, dubbed ‘Fusion’.

VMWare first announced its intention to bring a product to market at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in August. The beta, released on Thursday, is the company’s first product.

Like Parallels, the Virtualization Beta ‘Fusion’ software makes it possible for users to run a host of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, without the need to reboot.

At present, Mac OS X users running Apple’s Boot Camp must reboot their machines in order to use the Windows platform on Intel Macs. As for now, that is the only OS supported by the platform.

Though Apple says technology from Boot Camp would be incorporated into the next version of Mac OS X, code named “Leopard,” not many details have been provided as to how virtualization would play a part in it.

Thus, companies like Parallels and now VMware have stepped in to provide virtualization capabilities. The implementations have even gained an endorsement of sorts from Apple itself: Parallels’ software was highlighted in one of the company’s new “Get a Mac” commercials.

Virtualization Beta ‘Fusion’ would allow for the user to run either 32-bit or 64-bit x86 operating systems on Mac OS X without the need to reboot. In addition, support for multi-core systems would allow the user to assign multiple processors to a virtual machine for better performance.

The description of the product states, “It is built on VMware’s rock-solid and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.”

Support for USB 2.0 devices along with the ability to use devices that may not have drivers for Mac specifically are also included. Fusion additionally supports drag and drop file management between Mac OS and any of the virtual machines.

You can download Fusion from the VMware website.