VMware Fusion 1.1 RC

Ahead of Leopard's release, VMware announced a new release candidate of its software for running Windows and other operating systems on an Intel-based Mac. Fusion 1.1 Release Candidate, the company said, has been working well on pre-release version of Leopard, but has yet to be tested on the release version of Mac OS X 10.5 (expected to be available late Friday). VMware Fusion is available through the manufacturer's website, and in stores, for $80 and is a free upgrade for all users.

Based on suggestions and recommendations from customers, VMware said it has introduced many new features as well as resolved some outstanding bugs in the software.

Version 1.1 includes preliminary support for Leopard and has been localized for English, French, German and Japanese customers. It also now features better support for Vista, both 32- and 64-bit versions.

Unity -- an interface layout mode that blends the Mac OS and Windows operating system into the Macintosh GUI -- has been significantly changed, allowing users to access most of the Windows' Start menu functions directly from the Dock, Applications menu, and the Launch Applications window. The application also improves performance when a window is resized or relocated.

Boot Camp functionality has also improved, allowing the Boot Camp partition to remount itself after the virtual machine has been shut down, and new features have been added when configuring the partition to work with Fusion.

VMware's beta release page has a complete history of bug fixes and additions to date.

by MacNN Staff