What's New in VMware Fusion 4 – (September 14, 2011)
VMware Fusion 4 is packed with more than 90 new features and enhancements
True Mac Installation Experience
- Drag and drop to install VMware Fusion to your folder of choice
- Double-click to upgrade from earlier versions of VMware Fusion
- New DMG / disc design
- Drag and drop to Trash to remove, no uninstaller needed
- USB key included with box product to install on Macs without optical drives
64-bit Cocoa App Top to Bottom
- 64-bit VMware Fusion app
- 64-bit VMware Fusion Start Menu app
- 64-bit VMware Fusion Services app
- 64-bit USB Arbitration tool
- 64-bit ThinPrint
- 64-bit core virtualization engine (first introduced in VMware Fusion 3.x)
Less Impact on Your Mac
- Zero impact on Mac resources when VMware Fusion & Start Menu are not running
- Completely self contained Cocoa app
- Run from any folder you choose
- Dynamically load and unload services on-demand
- Dynamically load and unload kernel modules on-demand
Get Started and Get Out of The Way – All New Virtual Machine Library
- New iTunes inspired Welcome to VMware Fusion to get you up and running quickly
- Refined experience to show only the information you care about and get out the way
- Show more virtual machines at once without needing to scroll
- Start virtual machine and virtual machine library goes away automatically
More Room To Work – All New Single Window View
- New smaller default toolbar to see more of your VM
- Remove status bar combined with smaller toolbar gives you more 44% more work space
(54 Pixels New - 20+76 = 96 Old) - Adds active device status and device settings to toolbar
- Ability to quickly show and hide active device status and device settings
- New optional “Send Ctrl-Alt-Delete” toolbar button
- New optional “Pause” toolbar button
Change Settings in a Familiar Way – All New Virtual Machine Settings
- Works like the Mac’s System Preferences
- Overlay to make it clear which virtual machine settings you are changing
- New General overview category with insight on disk space used & clean up option
- Applications Menu broken out as separate category
- Default Applications broken out as separate category
- Startup disk broken out as a separate category
- Hard Disk category simplified to put what you care about front & center and hide less relevant
- New Compatibility category for virtual machine upgrade/downgrade
Run More 3D Windows Apps and Games – Improved 2D/3D Graphics
- Greatly improved 3D graphics performance, up to 2.5X faster on OS X Lion
- Greatly improved 3D graphics reliability and performance for Windows XP virtual machines
- Support for AutoCAD 2010, 2011, 2012 for Windows XP
- Support for AutoCAD 2012 for Windows 7
- Greatly improved performance with Solidworks. Solidworks 2011 SP3 or later recommended.
- Greatly improved performance with Altium Designer
- Improved support for DOS style VGA games on Windows
Run Windows Apps Even More Like Mac Apps - Unity Gets Better
- Automatically add user installed Windows Apps to Mac Applications folder
- Automatically add user installed Windows Apps to Launchpad
- Add any selected apps to Mac Applications folder and Launchpad
- Remove specific apps from Mac Applications folder
- Search user installed and user chosen Windows apps in Spotlight
- High resolution icons up to 512x512
- Support for Mission Control
- Improved support for Spaces
- Improved support for Expose
Share More Easily - Shared & Mirrored Folders Improvements
- Downloads available as Mirrored Folder
- Movies available as Mirrored Folder
- Faster browsing of Shared and Mirrored Folders
- Updates to Mac folders now available without refresh in Windows
Lion on Lion - OS X Lion in a virtual machine
- Run OS X Lion in a virtual machine
- Run OS X Lion Server in a virtual machine
- Support for sound in OS X Lion virtual machines
- Just drag "Install Mac OS X Lion.app" onto New VM Assistant to start install
Snapshots and AutoProtect Improvements
- All new Time Machine inspired user interface to get more of snapshots
- Show snapshot trees and dependencies
- Zoom to find by date
- Resize snapshots to meet your needs
- AutoProtect defaults now optimized for optimal Time Machine compatibility
- See time of next AutoProtect snapshot in Snapshot window
- AutoProtect settings now in Snapshot window for easier setup
Virtual Disk Management Improvements
- New disk space usage break-down in General pane of Virtual Machine Settings
- Shrink Windows virtual disks with snapshots (snapshots must be created in Fusion 4 or later)
- Shrinking Windows virtual disk faster than previous versions of VMware Fusion
- Ability to resize Mac virtual disks and then update virtual partition size with Apple’s Disk Utility
PC Migration Improvements
- Fastest PC Migration solution now works when running on OS X Lion
Transition Animations All New
- Switch Full Screen to Unity
- Switch Single Windows to Full Screen
- Bring Up Settings
- Bring Up Snapshots
Networking Improvements
- NAT: Handle changes between wired and wireless networking more seamlessly
- NAT: Improved proxy detection
USB Improvements
- Option to set devices to connect to Mac by default, ask, or connect to Windows
Bluetooth All New
- Virtual Bluetooth support
- Connect phone to a virtual machine, sharing with Mac
Encrypted Virtual Machines All New
- AES encrypted virtual machines for when security is needed
- Password required to open encrypted virtual machines
Pause Your Virtual Machines All New
- Pause your full screen & single window VMs to give you more resources when you need them
Remote Disc All New
- Remote Disc drive support to install OS & software on MacBook Airs from a remote CD/DVD
Audio Improvements
- HD Audio with up to 5.1 Audio
- Improved support for audio and video conferencing applications on Windows 7
Optimized for latest multicore Macs
- Improved virtual SMP performance lets you get the most of new quad core Macs
CPU Improvements
- Optimized support for latest Intel processors including Intel Sandy Bridge
- Support for AVX multimedia instructions with Intel Sandy Bridge
Other
- Suspend virtual machines without prompt when closing virtual machines or quitting app
- Updated Quick Look plug-in for virtual machines
- Open and Run menu option to add a virtual machine to Virtual Machine Library and run it
Learning Center
- New online learning center to get the most of VMware Fusion
New Guest Operating Systems Supported
- Mac OS X 10.7
- Mac OS X Server 10.7
- CentOS 6.0
- Debian 6.0
- FreeBSD 8.2
- Mandriva 2010
- openSUSE 11.4
- SUSE Linux 11 SP1
- RHEL 6.0
- VMware ESX 5