Only 1 day after the release of Parallels V3 , VMWare announced the latest public beta version of their virtualisation tool for OS X, Fusion. Fusion beta 4 brings a range of new developments including Unity, VMWares answer to Parallels Coherence mode. In Parallels Coherence mode is an option for displaying a Windows machines running applications only on the OS X desktop.
Simply put it removes the Windows background making Windows applications appear side by side with OS X apps. It is fairly effective but with Parallels it suffers from number of limitations not least of which is poor support for Expose. If multiple Windows apps are on screen when you press F9 for Expose they are treated as a single Window and are not seperated out across the desktop. VMWares Unity mode does not suffer from this shortcoming and all Windows apps are spread evenly across the desktop for the user to select the appropriate one. In addition Unity adds drop shadows to all Windows apps which certainly improves the on screen appearance.
Obviously the market for OS X virtualisation is by no means wrapped up by Parallels and despite VMWares beta status there is already rumblings on the Parallels forums that V3 should have been released as a beta product and not as a final release. I have both installed and the moment and will be testing both hard to see which is the most complete. My mind is not made yet so it will be interesting to see which wins.
