VMware has been really busy lately, first with its purchase of Nicira and redefining the data center in software defined terms and then later dealing with a new generation of malware that can spread through virtual machines. but on Thursday it returned attention to one of its most successful consumer products, releasing Fusion 5, the newest iteration of its tool for running Windows VMs within Mac OS X.

VMware's vision for data centers embraces hardware agnosticism. Fusion 5 marches to the same beat, enabling Mac users to run any Windows OS from XP onward, including not only the standard version of Windows 8 but also the pro and enterprise offerings as well. Intended to facilitate seamless integration with the host OS, Fusion allows users to launch Windows applications without exiting OS X and rebooting the system. Version 5 of the popular product includes 70 new features. Headlining these is a design built expressly for Mountain Lion, the current incarnation of OS X, that allows users to search for Windows programs in Launchpad and use "Airplay mirroring" to stream both Mac and Windows applications to an HDTV via AppleTV. Other additions include support for newer Apple hardware features, such as USB 3.0 ports and retina displays, and, in a nod to power users, the ability to harness up to 60GB of RAM.