Tech Shout!

Around a week back the final version of the Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 was released. Now VMware is busy deciding on the pricing structure of its forthcoming software dubbed ‘Fusion’ that will operate Windows on a Mac; which is kind of similar to competitor’s Parallel’s above mentioned software.

According to VMware, the new Fusion software for Mac systems will be available for $79.99, when the product’s general availability is announced in August end.

Now, we wouldn’t really want to make this article a comparative study between the Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 and VMware’s Fusion software, because if you want to know more about the former software then you rather click here.

Coming to VMware software Fusion, it basically is a ‘virtual machine’ through which users can run Mac, Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris-based applications in parallel on a Mac, without going through the hassle of rebooting their PCs.

Speaking about the new software Paul Harrapin, managing director for VMware Australia, said that numerous Apple users are irate about the fact that there’s an incapability to use applications that aren’t developed specifically for the Mac OS.

“You [were] limited in not being able to use the applications that were only developed for the Windows environment,” Harrapin maintained. “Now, you can run any form of application on the Mac seamlessly, without having to reboot all the time.”

There are and will always be exceptions for everything in life (now that’s Philosophy) and Happarin stated that apart from a few, on the whole any application written for the x86 environment should run on Fusion’s virtual machine.

One interesting aspect that Fusion offers is a feature called Unity that enables flawless transition from Mac to Windows applications. Icons for Windows applications will be displayed along with those of Mac applications in the dock at the bottom of the computer screen.

“Unity makes Windows apps work just like Mac apps,” said Patrick Lee, senior product manager for VMware. “The VMware Fusion Launcher allows you to search for and find Windows apps easily from your Mac without having to do anything extra. You don’t need to use the [Windows] start menu. The start menu goes away.”

The beta for Fusion, which was released in Dec. 2006 end, has been downloaded 200,000 times since the start of the year, the company said.

Apart from Parallels’ software the other competition to Fusion would be Apple’s own virtualization solution called Boot Camp. This software makes it possible for users to run Windows applications on their Mac, BUT not seamlessly–that is, only when they reboot. Apple released Boot Camp 1.3 Beta Updated Drivers just a few days back. The full-featured version of Boot Camp will be packed in Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard operating system, slated for an October launch.

When asked to comment on Boot Camp, Harrapin subtly refused to do so by stating, “I can’t really talk about what other companies are doing,” he said.

Now that’s what you mean by ‘to each his own’.