The Great Fusion Mac OS
VMware is 'a few months away' from releasing its macOS desktop hypervisor, Fusion, in a native version for Apple's new M1 silicon.
The best news is that a free version called Fusion 12 Player will also launch alongside Fusion 12 and Fusion 12 Pro. A Fusion 12 license costs $149, but users of previous versions can upgrade for $79. Crossover is an app developed by Codeweavers. It uses the Wine open source software to run Windows apps right from your Mac desktop without the need for a virtual machine. Since Crossover doesn’t create a separate desktop, you don’t need to purchase a Windows license to run Windows apps.
Product manager Michael Roy dropped the news on Twitter, after earlier saying news of the product was 'in review' and would emerge this week. That mention of news under review turned out to refer to a blog post about the product.
- VMware Fusion 5 is recommended for users who are looking for the easiest, fastest and most reliable way to run Windows programs on a Mac. With more than 70 new features, VMware Fusion 5 is optimized for OS X Mountain Lion, Windows 8 and the latest Macs.
- It’s an exciting time to be a Mac user. Everyone knows that we get to use Mac OS X Leopard, the world’s most advanced operating system. And now, if you have an Intel-based Mac and an application called VMware Fusion, you also have the option of using the world’s second and third and fourth best operating systems!
- VirtualBox is a free and open source virtual machine software from Oracle.
Dunno where you got that info from, but we're still a few months away from putting something in users' hands.
I'll be posting an update about our progress next week (which is coming along very nicely, performance is blowing our minds...), but we still have a ways to go.
VMware usually releases new versions of Fusion and its Windows sibling, Workstation, in the week before its VMworld conference. The event is scheduled for October 5th, 2021, five weeks later than its previous real-world incarnations.
Windows comes to Apple M1 silicon as Parallels delivers native desktop hypervisor
READ MOREThe Register fancies Fusion for M1 may well emerge in mid-August.
To some, this may seem like rather a while to wait and for VMware to let competitor Parallels have the market to itself. However, VMware has in recent years added hybrid cloud and Kubernetes support to its desktop hypervisors, making them less of a direct competitor to Parallels and its most-discussed use case of running Windows on a Mac. Virtzilla's desktop hypervisors can do that comfortably, but also offer developers rather more tools to enjoy.
One other thing to contemplate. VMware is working on an Arm version of its flagship hypervisor, ESXi, and that product is currently officially supported on the Intel-powered Mac Mini because VMware likes the idea of customers being able to use a small, cheap, server, that can be bought at retailers, for some roles.
The latest Mac Mini is powered by Apple's M1. While Fusion and ESXi don't share much code, the prospect of ESXi-on-Arm ending up in an M1 Mac Mini could tug the Arm server market in interesting directions. ®
June 8, 2019
Today I performed a clean install of macOS Mojave 10.14 on the fusiondrive of my Mac Mini 2014. Below I have written down my notes.
Downloading MacOS Mojave from the App Store
Get macOS Mojavein the App store. The download is just over 6GB. When the installerstarts, quit the installer. The installer will remain in theApplications folder.
Creating the USB installer
Insert a USB stick of at least 8GB. Launch Disk Utilities, select thethumb drive in the left pane and select Erase.
Name the stick 'Untitled', select 'OS X Extendend (Journaled)' as theformat and 'GUID Partition Map' as the scheme and click the Erasebutton. When finished, click Done and close Disk Utility.
Launch Terminal and paste the following two lines:
This will erase the thumb drive and copy the installer:
Install macOS Mojave 10.14
Restart your Mac and hold down the Option key as soon as you hear thestart up sound. Use the keyboard arrows to select 'Install macOSMojave'. After a short while a window is shown. Select the 'DiskUtility' option.
The Great Fusion Mac Os Catalina
Select the fusion drive of your Mac, in my case 'Macintosh HD', andselect Erase. I choose APFS for the format.
The Great Fusion Mac Os Download
When done, return to the macOS Utilities screen and select 'InstallmacOS'.