2 posts from 2006

What an exhilarating day!  I'm über-pleased that the public reception of VMware Fusion for Mac has been so positive.  I'm still running on adrenaline here—between making the front page of digg.com, discussing with the illuminating readers of this blog, and answering the excellent feedback from the Fusion Discussion Forums, there's just so many folks who are as excited as I am about VMware virtualization coming to the Mac.

I just wanted to point out a few of the more common issues folks have run into, and do a quick link rundown.

1. I can't use the mouse in my virtual machine!
• Folks have reported a conflict with certain Wacom tablets, as well as the Keyspan RF Front Row remote.  Try disconnecting these before using a virtual machine.  You'll know you're running into this issue if you see a message like "MKSHIDMOUSE: Failed to open mouse, result -536870206" in the vmware.log file in your virtual machine's directory (in ~/vmware/ by default).
2. I can't find my serial number!
• You can get your serial number by going through the flow at http://www.vmware.com/fusionbeta again.  Apologies—there's currently no email with your serial number.
3. I get a gray screen telling me to restart my Mac!
• As this is a beta release for a new platform, there's still some debugging code to ensure all the logic in our new Mac drivers is in top shape.  If you see a gray screen telling you to restart your Mac, this means our debugging code sensed something was out of order.  After rebooting your Mac, please open the file /Library/Logs/panic.log and post the contents on this blog, send me a private message, or email fusion-feedback (at) vmware.com.
• Some folks are reporting a panic.log with a line like "vmmon: ASSERT bora/modules/vmmon/macos/pageHiddenMap.cpp:307" .  So far, we've only seen this on a few machines, but please do report this if you run into it.
• If anything seems at all weird or unusual, please do file a support request.  Our support team is top-notch.
  
4. If I switch my virtual machine to Bridged mode, I can't access the virtual machine over the network from my host!
• This is a known issue, described in the VMware Fusion for Mac Release Notes.  We're working on it and plan to have a fix ready for the next release.  For now, you can use NAT mode and follow the Linux Workstation 5.5 NAT configuration instructions if you need a server in the virtual machine to be accessible from the outside.  (Note that nat.conf is in /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion on Mac OS hosts).

Thanks to the early adopters for sending in such valuable, detailed feedback!  Keep it coming!

Here's a few early Mac news sites' links with thoughts on Fusion:

• TUAW chips in: Interesting thoughts.
• Ars Technica readers share their comments.
• Macworld gets in on the Fusion action.
• Words from the venerable MacNN.
• MacRumors readers sound off on Fusion.

Everyone's got a joy in life.  Some folks build exquisite models of ships and shove 'em in a bottle.  Others whip up imaginative, fresh cuisine and share it with the world.  Me, I write code.  My personal joie de vivre is forging that easy, effortless bond between people and the electronic stuff they use every day to make their lives go—computers, cars, cell phones, you name it.

Over the past year, I've been crafting VMware Fusion for Mac, a killer piece of software that lets Apple-heads do the unthinkable: run Windows, Linux, orany other operating system right alongside their Mac applications.  This isn't your average Boot Camp, where youhave to restart your computer every time you need to switch between Windows and Mac OS.  VMware is way cooler, and totally changes the way you use a computer.

Fusion lets you use your Mac for all the stuff it's great at (I couldn't live without my NetNewsWire, Adium, and WriteRoom), and—just when you need it—you can pop up Windows and get to that one darned app (or game) that still doesn't run on the Mac.  Just like a laptop, you can put Windows to sleep when you don't want it chewing up memory, and you can instantly wake it up from inside your Mac when you just need access to a few apps. 

You can drag and drop files to and from your Mac and Windows to transfer stuff back and forth, and plug high-speed USB gadgets into your Mac (even ones that don't work on the Mac!) and they'll show up right in Windows: no configuration needed.  All this is built on the same rock-solid code that makes VMware's other killer products work so well, and you can take your virtual machines from Fusion and use them as-is on any of our other products.

There's a ton of great stuff built into Fusion, and I'm going to be using this blog to talk about what it was like to make it, and share thoughts about developing on the Mac.  Some of this will be a little techy, but I also like to write about non-technical subjects, so (knock on aluminum) this'll be pretty entertaining for everyone.

Be seeing you!