Mac Virtualization: 4 > 3
While I’m sure you’ve read all the news on Mac virtualization recently, VMWare Fusion 4 was released along with Parallels 3. I just wanted to throw out my opinion that I’m disappointed with the Parallels release (especially since I paid for the update) and feel that I’ve bought the wrong one.
VMWare Fusion’s update includes something they call ‘Unity’, which is like Parallels ‘Coherence’ but better. Why? Exposé. Pressing F9 (default) throws all your current windows out so that you can see them all. With VMWare Fusion all of the Windows apps that you currently have open respond in the same way; they seperate out and mix in with your Mac ones. In Parallels, all the Windows apps reside in one place in Exposé inside one window which looks to be given to Windows itself. Okay, that was a lot of windows and Windows but I hope you got the point. Also, VMWare Fusion completely nailed the drop-shadows on the Windows apps, making them seamlessly integrate into the Mac.
VMWare Fusion > Parallels.
Hopefully the Parallels team will take on board the fact they now have a very strong competitor and step up to take the challenge. Competition can only be a good thing, as it forces both companies to push for a better product.
I really want Parallels to create a more seamless feel to Windows apps on the Mac. I’d like them to do it in a different way to VMWare Fusion, if possible, though. In Fusion, each of the Windows apps look to be a seperate ’screenshot’ of the application itself, which has a drop-shadow applied to it. This has a slight issue that if you put one of the apps in front of another, you can sometimes see it twice. The first app appears in the screenshot of the second, which isn’t much of a problem but it ruins the illusion (see above screenshot).
I realise that I’ve not touched on features in the Parallels update or others in Fusion but that’s because they weren’t of use to me. Anyway, I love Parallels and I’m sticking with it. I’d just like to see the development beat VMWare Fusion so that I don’t feel like I’ve wasted money.
Have you used either of them? Let me know what you think.
6:52 am
I’ve had one kind of obscure problem with VMware. I’m using Visual Studio Team Foundation Server under Windows for source control, which requires mapping my Mac directory to a drive in Windows and checking out code to it from VSTS. If I use either Parallels or VMware shared folders it won’t work. I get all kinds of weird errors because they’re not NTFS file systems. However, if I use Windows sharing on the Mac side and connect to my Mac as a file server, it works just fine since Windows sees it as an NTFS file system. With Parallels I can connect to my Mac, but VMware won’t let me connect to it as a file server, I can only use a shared folder.