The Prospects For Virtualizing OS X 344
seriouslywtf writes in with a look at the current state of the question: will people eventually be able to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine, either on the Mac or under Windows? Ars Technica has articles outlining the positions of two VM vendors, Parallels and VMWare. Both have told Ars unequivocally that they won't enable users to virtualize OS X until Apple explicitly gives them the thumbs up. First, Parallels: "'We won't enable this kind of functionality until Apple gives their blessing for a few reasons,' Rudolph told Ars. 'First, we're concerned about our users — we are never going to encourage illegal activity that could open our users up to compromised machines or any sort of legal action. This is the same reason why we always insist on using a fully-licensed, genuine copy of Windows in a virtual machine — it's safer, more stable, fully supported, and completely legal.'" And from VMWare: "'We're very interested in running Mac OS X in a virtual machine because it opens up a ton of interesting use cases, but until Apple changes its licensing policy, we prefer to not speculate about running Mac OS X in a virtualized environment,' Krishnamurti added."
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:5, Interesting)
Although the article does talk about the 'legality' of running OS X on non-Mac PCs, it would seem to me that there is nothing illegal about this whatsoever (as long as you've purchased your copy of OS X, you should be able to do what you like with it).
No matter how vmware & parallels dress it up, the problem here is not legality, but fear of reprisals from Apple.
I spoke to every Apple person I could... (Score:5, Interesting)
Would "virtualizable" OS X lead to piracy? Probably. But as with most piracy, it would not necessarily impact actual sales. Pirates steal things they wouldn't have ever paid for anyway...
Apple should go for it (Score:3, Interesting)
The flipside though is that people may try OSX on a Virtual Machine, not realizing that VMs cut performance significantly, decide that OSX is slow and useless, then stick with Windows. I guess I can see either way.
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:2, Interesting)
Although the article does talk about the 'legality' of running OS X on non-Mac PCs, it would seem to me that there is nothing illegal about this whatsoever (as long as you've purchased your copy of OS X, you should be able to do what you like with it).
'Should' is not the same as 'is'. There is a lot of things you should be able to do with the stuff you buy, but that doesn't stop it from still being illegal
No matter how vmware & parallels dress it up, the problem here is not legality, but fear of reprisals from Apple.
If the reprisal isn't going to be in legal form, then what are they going to do? Call you names, or stop selling Apple products to you? The fact is, people fear the legal reprisals from Apple, nothing else.
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:1, Interesting)
Leaving aside the legality of EULAs for a second.... How in hell are Vmware/Parallels bound by a license agreement between a Apple & an Apple customer?
I don't see why... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, whatever they say about wanting to virtualize OS X, at the moment, Parallels and VMWare are initially pitching their Mac products at people who need to run Windows applications on a Mac. Those people are never going to want to virtualise OS X. Wait for the equivalents of VMWare Server and VMWare Workstation - plus graphics acceleration (which both VMWare and Parallels promise Real Soon Now and which OSX will proably need).
Actually, a more Apple-y thing to happen would be for simple-to-use virtualization to crop up in a future version of OS X. "Click here to create a sandbox for your kids".
Re:Why would anyone want to do this? (Score:3, Interesting)
On a Windows PC, I have never had a driver problem that affected the core, preinstalled components of the system. Sure, I've had weird things happen when using beta-version drivers, or have had a driver go bad on some extraneous peripheral, but never on a component that was vital to the operation of the PC.
The only exception to this rule I can think of is the graphics driver, and even that's not so much of an issue now that ATI and NVidia both use a unified driver architecture, and Intel graphics are so generic that they're supported on just about everything. Likewise, Apple users are in pretty much the same boat, as Apple doesn't make their own video hardware.
The only difference I can think of is that Apple's dev team spends less time on compatibility testing, because unless you're mucking about with the internals of your operating system, to the end uer, Windows' driver support is excellent. Given the various firmware and AirPort driver problems Apple's had in the past, I would call it about a draw.
VMWare "appliance" of OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
They could work with VMWare to create an appropriately DRMed player if they are that paranoid about piracy. VMWare already has their ACE platform that could probably be extended to include some sort of virtual TPM.
Offer OS X as a bundle with a specially modified VMWare player. Let 90% of PC users see what they've been missing. I bet any piracy will be dwarfed by the gains in market share.
The best case scenario I see for Apple would be for some smart cookie to write a minimal Linux distro that boots up VMWare and OS X inside--a poor man's OS X if you will. Users of such a configuration are likely to be the geeks. They'll start learning ObjC and Cocoa and maybe increase the platform's worth. Even if some geeks are content to run an unsupported configuration like this, and *never* purchase a proper Mac, they'll be a force for conversion and software development.
-Peter
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:5, Interesting)
When you buy a book, you own a copy of the story; when you buy an audio CD, you own a copy of the songs stored on it; when you buy a data CD, you own a copy of the programs stored on it. "Copy" refers to a tangible medium on which the information is stored. Whether or not you have the rights to make any further copies (which would be governed by the EULA, or in this case by an exemption to copyright law), you still own a copy.
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it.
If I run Firefox on an XP virtual machine running on Apple hardware, then that instance of Firefox *IS* running on Apple hardware; it uses Apple memory and CPU in order to do its thing.
If I run OSX in a virtual machine running on Apple hardware then OSX *IS* running on Apple hardware, surely this is the end of the story?
Unless Apple *specifically* exclude virtualisation, I think its a red herring.
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:2, Interesting)
However, this time you've outdone yourself. Not content with ignoring just the article, you've commented without even reading the slashdot summary.
You said: thats nice fucktard but this isn't just about parallels it's about vmware as well. thank you for tackling a complete non issue with regards to parallels.
TFS states:[emph mine]
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OS X is already virtualised. (Score:3, Interesting)
Can we have it *supported* ? (Score:2, Interesting)
For a start it runs pretty slowly (especially past 10.4.1) even with the little speed fixes, probably as there are no VMWare Tools to speed up disk, network, sound and graphics; and that it doesn't seem to work at all if you have Intel-VT enabled.
Then as VMWare doesn't have a guest option for it so you have to use Other/Linux/FreeBSD/WinNT and manually edit the
Then there are the patches you need to actually get it working, which equally apply to getting it working on bare metal PC's - AMD fixes, SSE3 emulators and various kernels, thus ruling out actually using a legit copy of OSX.
Also 10.4.8 won't even boot to the installer so you have to boot and run the disk utility from a previous version of OSX. If it was supported by Apple, then these last two points wouldn't be an issue.
Personally I don't think Apple will ever allow virtualisation or non-Mac hardware - unless they turn completely into a software/iPod shop, which seems likely I guess - hey it's not "Apple Computer" anymore!
It seems if you want to run whatever OS you want on your computer, you have to buy a Mac and Parallels (or VMWare Fusion) but personally I'd prefer a Linux host and OSX guest. Actually that's a thought, would it be against EULA to run a virtualised OSX on a Mac running Linux, it's still Apple hardware.....?
Already done with no repercussions (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have an old PPC powerbook around I highly recommend it.