david sidlinger

I recently started using VMware Fusion instead of Parallels Desktop to run virtual machines on my MacBook. The main reason I switched was support for multi-processor VMs, but I also had a nagging suspicion that Parallels’ kernel extensions might be behind the sleep issues my machine has been having.

I think Fusion is a great product, but I’ve run across something that caused me huge amounts of frustration. Sometimes, it would warn me that it couldn’t write preference information. Once that happened, it was all downhill. Attempting to change the application preferences would cause the whole application to die immediately. Most of the other applications I use would start acting funky.

It turns out you should never ever launch Fusion using Quicksilver.

I don’t know what exactly VMware is doing, but Fusion has earned the dubious distinction of being the only application that I know of that won’t work with the best application in the explored universe. My first guess is something to do with changing the process identity.

I like to imagine that it does feel some shame being the only item that I’ve had to add to my dock since installing Quicksilver.