VMware Fusion Brings Virtualization to Intel Macs

VMware released Fusion 1.0 for Intel-based Macs in August 2007. Boot Camp already allowed Mac owners to restart into Windows, but Fusion let Windows run inside a virtual machine while Mac OS X remained active.

The software used hardware-assisted virtualization available in Intel processors and presented virtualized devices such as disks, network adapters, and graphics hardware to the guest operating system. VMware also added integration features so Windows applications could appear alongside Mac programs instead of being trapped inside a separate desktop window.

This was useful for developers, businesses, and Mac users who depended on one or two Windows-only applications. It also illustrated an important difference between dual boot and virtualization: dual boot gives one operating system direct control of the machine, while a hypervisor trades some overhead for isolation, snapshots, portability, and the ability to run several systems at once.