VMware Announces Fusion and Fusion Pro 8.5 With Sierra and Windows 10 Anniversary Support

Tuesday August 30, 2016 3:00 am PDT by Husain Sumra
VMware today announced Fusion 8.5, Fusion Pro 8.5, Workstation Player 12.5 and Workstation Pro 12.5, the latest versions of its visualization software for running Windows on a Mac without using Boot Camp. Fusion and Fusion Pro 8.5 come with macOS Sierra support while both Fusion and Workstation suites come with Windows 10 Anniversary support.

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Windows 10 Anniversary is a large upgrade to Microsoft's operating system, making Cortana smarter, allowing interactions with Android and Windows phones, more desktop apps and games in the Windows Store, a dark theme, Windows Edge extensions, click-to-play Flash and more.

Both Fusion 8.5 and Workstation 12.5 include Windows 10 Anniversary support and Windows 10 server support in addition to various bug fixes and performance improvements. The Fusion suite's Sierra support includes Siri integration and support for tabbed VM windows.

VMware also announced that it's giving away 20 Oculus Rift headsets to the general public. Entrants must tweet (using #FusionLove) a short video of themselves telling a story of how Fusion has helped them accomplished something. Meanwhile, registered attendees of VMworld 2016 will receive 18-months of Fusion or Workstation.

Current VMware Fusion 8.0 and Workstation 12.0 users can receive the 8.5 and 12.5 upgrades for free. However, users of pre-8.0 versions of Fusion and Fusion Pro can upgrade for $49 and $119 respectively, while users of pre-12.0 versions of Workstation Player and Workstation Pro can upgrade for $79 and $149 respectively. Upgrade pricing eligibility extends back to users of Fusion 4 and Workstation 7.

Fusion and Fusion Pro 8.5 are priced at $79.99 and $119.99 for new users while Workstation Player and Workstation Pro 12.5 have new-user prices of $149.99 and $249.99 respectively. Both Fusion and Workstation can be purchased at VMWare's online store.

Tags: Windows 10, Cortana, VMware, Fusion, Fusion Pro, Workstation
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chucker23n1
46 months ago

Nice to see I can at least upgrade for free this year with my Fusion Pro v8.


More cynical take: they let go most of the development team, so there aren't big changes coming for a while, if ever.
Rating: 6 Votes
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SandboxGeneral
46 months ago

More cynical take: they let go most of the development team, so there aren't big changes coming for a while, if ever.

That's not entirely accurate.

This was posted ('https://communities.vmware.com/message/2584420#2584420') ('https://communities.vmware.com/message/2584420#2584420')by Michael Roy on the VMware communities forum on March 23, 2016 in response to the many questions people have on the future of Fusion. Michael Roy ('http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/author/michaelroy') is the Product Line Marketing Manager for Fusion, Fusion Pro, Workstation Pro and Workstation Player at VMware. He guides product roadmap and messaging, produces and presents technical collateral, and works across teams to refine product integration strategy.


Thanks for the feedback. We hear you.

One thing to note however is that the only team affected was the UI team.

All core hypervisor, virtual device and platform layer development remains unchanged. This includes graphics, networking, USB devices, and everything that doesn't fall explicitly under 'UI'.

Further, the old UI team is actively transitioning the code knowledge to the new team directly, it's not a matter of 'go read the docs'.

Lastly, many of the key UI developers are still with VMware working on other projects and will be able to share their expertise if the new team requires it in the future.

While we're on the topic... The new team is actually twice as large as the old and more specialized in the areas where we want Fusion to grow. We have gained support for our updated roadmap the past few weeks, and while I can't get into the details yet, we (the product team) are incredibly excited about the direction that we're taking the product in, and that direction is largely drawn with feedback from users like you and everyone else who has chimed in on this thread.

Keep it coming! We're reading everything!

Rating: 5 Votes
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cau
46 months ago
Everything in this post is my own speculation. I have no VMware inside information!

I assume that VMware could not achieve a late summer delivery for whatever they have planned for VMware Fusion 9. Lacking anything to announce that could line up against Parallels 12, VMware chose to take the next point release with whatever bug fixes that their developers have managed to close, ran a round of regression testing against macOS Sierra (host and guest) and Windows 10 Anniversary (guest), called it "Version 8.5" and declared victory.

I wonder when the real VMware Fusion version 9 will be released?
Rating: 3 Votes
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chucker23n1
46 months ago
Too soon.

Rating: 2 Votes
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0958400
46 months ago
Finally, I always wanted... err. Nope. Forget about it. V6 still runs fine.
Rating: 2 Votes
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maflynn
46 months ago

This was posted ('https://communities.vmware.com/message/2584420#2584420') ('https://communities.vmware.com/message/2584420#2584420')by Michael Roy on the VMware communities forum

Isn't the new team now off shore?

It was my understand that they laid off the entire team and outsourced them. I'm no longer a fan of Vmware given how all this went down. I'll keep updating my installation, but I'll no longer give them any my money. I know its a literal drop in the bucket but its my money and I'd rather support a company that doesn't have such business practices.
Rating: 2 Votes
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netwalker
46 months ago

This is very underwhelming ... Having followed various twitter posts from VMware and associates regarding announcing "big surprises for Fusion" at VMworld, they release a point release containing the 2 features that are probably the least surprising you could possibly think of (macOS sierra support and win 10 anniv support)

Personally I don't really miss any features. It does what I expect it to do, so keeping it compatible with current host and guest operating systems and the usual bug fixes and performance improvements is all I need. Am glad we don't have to pay for the usual upgrade fee to keep it running on the next OS X version.
Rating: 2 Votes
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SandboxGeneral
46 months ago
Nice to see I can at least upgrade for free this year with my Fusion Pro v8.

I'll be curious to see if it handles macOS any better. I have a VM of El Capitan and its performance isn't as smooth as I'd expect and my Windows 10 VM on the same host runs better.
Rating: 1 Votes
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chrfr
46 months ago

Isn't the new team now off shore?

The main work is still being done in California. http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2016/07/meet-the-team.html
Rating: 1 Votes
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MagnusVonMagnum
46 months ago
No new DirectX versions supported? No sale.

Ah, I see it's a free upgrade for me, so I guess I can't really complain, but I had bought Windows 8.1 Pro here for over a year now and haven't even opened it because I found I could not install it on my RAID 0 Mac Mini without removing RAID and thus I could have used it to get a free Windows 10 upgrade, but that time has now passed. I could have installed it with VMWare Fusion, but without newer DirextX support, it defeated my entire reason for getting it which was to play certain games running newer versions of DirectX (V.11.x or newer) with Windows 8.x or newer (which I could only do with Boot Camp). Namely, I'd like the dynamic lighting effects in Pinball Arcade, which the Mac and earlier Windows versions don't support.
Rating: 1 Votes

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