Virtualization software gets updated for Mountain Lion


For those of you that are using virtualization software on your Mac or CustoMac we've got some good news, as VMware and VirtualBox have both been updated with official Mountain Lion support and Parallels 8 with Mountain Lion support is due early next month. Although it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to run Windows virtualized on a Mac or a CustoMac today, virtualization is still a handy tool for those who want to run software in "sandbox" mode, or who develop for various platforms.

First up, VMware has announced the release of Fusion 5 for OS X 10.8 and Windows 8 and claims that they've added over 70 new features for both the OS X and Windows versions. New features for OS X includes supports for AirPlay mirroring to stream programs and apps to large screen displays, USB 3.0 support, retina display support and improved support for large amounts of system RAM. VMware also claims to have improved performance by as much as 40 percent compared to the previous version of VMware. VMware Fusion 5 will be available for $49.99 for the standard version and $99.99 for the professional version directly from VMware.com and if you bought VMware 4 on or after the 25th of July, then you're eligible for a free upgrade to VMware 5.

Freely available VirtualBox has also added official support for OS X 10.8, although the changelog doesn't go into any specific details as to what has been done specifically to support Apple's new operating system. Beyond support for OS X 10.8, the latest release of VirtualBox also includes a range of bug fixes and additions of which most are for Linux.

For those of you that prefer Parallels, the company is preparing a new version that will arrive on the 4th of September, although so far all that is really know is that the company will offer OS X 10.8 support and that if you go ahead and buy Parallels Desktop 7 now, then you'll get a free upgrade to the next version when it arrives.

Source: 
VMWare
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VirtualBox
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Parallels