VirtualBox Beta Supports OS X As Guest OS On Macs 154
milesw writes "In addition to a slew of new features, VirtualBox 3.2.0 Beta 1 offers experimental support for Mac OS X guests running on Apple hardware. Got to wonder whether Larry Ellison discussed this with Steve Jobs beforehand, given Apple's refusal to allow virtualizing their (non-server) OS."
Re:With what host? (Score:3, Informative)
The title states OS X as the guest, Mac as the platform, but does not name the host OS. It doesn't state the host OS in the stub, either.
Improve your reading comprehension before you start slating others for theirs.
Re:With what host? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. You can virtualize OS X Server starting with Leopard as long as it's on Apple hardware (host does not need to be OS X, in fact Parallels has a bare metal version for XServes). They've never let you virtualize OS X, just the last 2 versions of Server.
Re:OSX on Vmware (Score:5, Informative)
A bit offtopic, but yesterday I realized that while quicktime pro can export to MP4 as well as MOV, if you want to use H264, you need to use the MOV container. Why?
That's not true at all. I have QuickTime Pro right here. When I choose "export" from the file menu, you can choose to export to an MP4 file. When you click "options", you can set the codec to H264. Here's a screenshot [kicks-ass.org].
Re:With what host? (Score:5, Informative)
The host doesn't matter, what matters is the underlying hardware. Mac OS X unmodified will only be able to start if it runs on Mac hardware.
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=134642&sid=e4351fbfef3e3c91d57db22fc2af2cb9#p134642
Re:OSX on Vmware (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't work for me in Windows... sorry, I really didn't mean to sound trollish.
VMWare and OS X (Score:2, Informative)
I have been running OS X virtualized in VMWare for the last 6 months now. Unfortunately Apple won't release their SDK for Windows, so I had to look into it. Oh and its running on an AMD host as well. Heres the (30 minute) guide:
http://adbge.org/installing-snow-leopard-as-a-virtual-machine/
Re:With what host? (Score:2, Informative)
windows 7 is better/an improvement/what vista should have been. Doesn't mean any of us care or intend to use it other than it being practically required for enterprise employees at the moment.
Re:OSX on Vmware (Score:3, Informative)
QuickTime in Windows is an exercise in masochism.
Re:With what host? (Score:2, Informative)
The actual change log for 3.2.0 beta (http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30287) merely states:
> Experimental support for Mac OS X guests
There's nowt about running the OSX guest on Apple hardware but maybe this is stated somewhere else.
Re:With what host? (Score:3, Informative)
The other question, of course, is whether the "On Macs" requirement is technical in some serious sense(any one of the modern virtualization tricks where you pass as much as possible through to the hardware, rather than trapping it and crunching it in software emulation depending somehow on EFI, or the particular chipsets of Macs, or something of that nature), or whether it is a purely artificial constraint, that exists to keep Oracle out of range of Steve Jobs' eye lasers...
There is the license, the hardware, and the DMCA.
The license says you can run _one_ copy of MacOS X on one _Apple branded_ computer. I think it is quite clear that "Apple branded computer" means the actual physical hardware. The Macintosh hardware contains one chip containing a key, and MacOS X checks for the existence of the key. Now with virtualisation, the virtualisation level _must_ pass access to this chip down to the real hardware, otherwise MacOS X won't install. Passing the access through to the real chip is legal, because it only allows the end user what the license allowed him or her to do anyway.
It is obviously not difficult at all for the virtualisation software to emulate the presence of this chip. If they did that, then you could run MacOS X on _any_ computer. Putting that capability into the virtualisation software would be circumventing Apple's copy protection and fall straight under the DMCA and gets charged, as Psystar found out, at $2500 per case. I don't think any company with money that makes virtual machines will try that.
Re:With what host? (Score:3, Informative)
OS X is a thin BSD compatibility layer on top a heavily hacked Mach microkernel. It's about as much "UNIX" as Microsoft Windows is UNIX, "UNIX 03" brand name shenanigans notwithstanding.