Hi everyone,

(Sorry for the long post, but read on if you want to know some inside details on Fusion development =)

I'm directly responsible for pricing and packaging VMware Fusion. (as well as the feature roadmap, among other things)

I recently took on the role, so I can't speak entirely for justifications with older versions, but let me put things into perspective.





Bit of quick background: Been with VMware since 2009 (was with Apple before that), been using Fusion since 2007 or so (i.e. the very beginning).

I started as the support lead for Fusion and Workstation.

I've since moved into Product Marketing as of 2012, and for a while was working on Cloud stuff (I also have a background in systems admin and development).

I was most recently managing part of the Technical Marketing for vCloud Air.



I also wrote a book on Fusion: Getting Started with VMware Fusion: Michael Roy: 9781782177883: Amazon.com: Books



(not tooting my own horn here, just letting the community know who I am and how I got here... further reading on our career blog if anyone's interested)







So with that...





I totally get the 'upgrade cycle pains'... It's tough for both sides of the table on this topic.

When we release a new version, we obviously have to charge for it, but it can be a tough balance between adding new feature, improving on existing ones, and supporting new OS's and use-cases.

The thing most folks don't see is the volume of engineering work that has to go into supporting something like a new OS.

It's a tremendous amount of effort for that little line item in the Guest OS type dropdown.

So, we have to make decisions... Do we add a new feature, or do we support a new OS?

It doesn't always come down to such a binary choice, but we have to pick and choose carefully where we place our dev resources given they are finite.

I agree that going from 6 to 7 wasn't the biggest of upgrades from an 'exposed features' perspective.

We did a lot of performance improvements, and some interesting things for graphics pros (over-allocating vRAM is cool, but not for everyone), but much of the work happened under the hood.

Our team is pretty small compared to other groups in VMware, but we're very tightly knit, the engineers are fantastically talented, and we all care passionately about the user experience and doing things 'right'.

We don't try to cut corners or design for particular benchmarks so they run better during demos...

We try to 'do the right engineering thing' and then 'make that easy for the customer'.

So, to your points:

I'm getting to start disliking annual bug fixes; with major version number changes that require payment.

I hope what I wrote above helps clarify the tough choices we make when introducing new major versions.

so what's 8 going offer me that 7 doesn't do; other than work with my OS of choice?

While we haven't announced an '8', the Tech Preview does not contain every feature that will be released with the next major version.

don't tell me.... it's faster... it can't be any faster than the dross i'm trying to run in it...

But faster is better! We work hard to make things faster, from how we're writing to disk, suspending, snapshotting, drawing the UI, Unity mode. All stuff happening regardless of the applications you're using. (I had to google dross btw... lol)

There does come a time where we're achieving diminishing returns with respect to performance... Do you think we've hit that point?

it works with 3d games (better)... i was told the current version did that; so how can it be 'better'?

3D Games is a big deal for a huge number of our users, many of whom never bother coming to the forums.

With the 2015 Tech Preview, we added DirectX 10 support, which actually took years of development effort!

it's more reliable... if t's unreliable, fix the one i've got; it's not old, less than 12 months..

More reliable is better, yes no? We can't fix every conceivable bug before we find out about them, so work is done throughout the lifecycle of the product to improve reliability and make it crash less, and behave smarter. It's important that we continue to deliver the stability that VMware customers expect, and that's something that will be ongoing for the life of the product.





Maybe the concern is not calling this out as a feature so much, make less of a big deal about it?

I don't want to NOT say that we made it more reliable, right?









Let me ask you then... What new features would make paying for an upgrade feel more worthwhile?



I'm listening very keenly as I build out the strategy for the product's roadmap, and I really want to know what matters most to you (and all our users).

If anyone at any time needs to send me a line, you can email me directly at mroy AT vmware DOT com (I think my email in my profile is public).

It's possible I won't see it for 24 hours as our spam filters can be overly aggressive, but I check the spam report every day to make sure nothing is missed.

Sorry for the rant, but I really look forward to everyone's feedback as we take Fusion to the next level!