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VMWare Announces Version for OS X In Development 147

Posted by Hemos from the competing-with-parallels-and-bootcamp dept.
pdscomp writes "VMware has just announced at today's Apple WWDC 2006 Conference that they are developing a port of VMware to Mac OS X. People interested in beta testing the product later this year can visit this link to sign up for the public test. It will be interesting to see how things play out between VMware and Parallels. Will Microsoft bother porting Virtual PC now that there will be two other Intel OS X virtualization solutions available? Now all we need is to get Mac OS X running under Xen."
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VMWare Announces Version for OS X In Development More

VMWare Announces Version for OS X In Development

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  • One Way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nastard ( 124180 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:03PM (#15859372)
    I find it interesting that nobody is making a move in the other direction. OS X virtualized in Windows, anyone?

    Then again, the market would mostly be curious PC users who end up switching, and I don't know how much money there is to be made there.

    • Re:One Way (Score:5, Funny)

      by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:06PM (#15859390)
      So you want to run one of finest operating systems in a virtual machine on one of the worst operating system available? You must be smoking something good.

      • Re:One Way (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Nastard ( 124180 )
        As a Mac user, no. What I would like, however, is another path for converting friends and family to a platform I don't mind supporting on the rare occasions something goes wrong.

        • Re:One Way (Score:3, Insightful)

          by IAmTheDave ( 746256 )
          Agreed - people like "try before you buy" and allowing a person to try out OSX first would be a good thing, methinks.

      • Re:One Way (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LurkerXXX ( 667952 )
        Let's see, I and many others play games and run other applications that they only write for Windows and that requires direct hardware access. And I and many others rarely use OSX, but need/like to use it occasionally.

        So yes troll, lots of us would like to run OSX in a VMWare session on windows machines. And we don't need to be smoking anything to have a legitimate need.

    • Re:One Way (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Um, I have OSX running in Windows right now. It's called PearPC. I can run the same image from windows or linux.

    • Re:One Way (Score:5, Informative)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:13PM (#15859440)

      The OSX License [apple.com] says the following:

      2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
      A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

      Unless Apple relent, a virtualisation solution by a third party is not an 'Apple-labeled computer'. Anyone care to test this in a court of law? Thought not.

      • Re:One Way (Score:5, Funny)

        by andrewman327 ( 635952 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:17PM (#15859472) Homepage Journal
        Darn license agreements. Always getting in the way of things that are fun.

      • Re:One Way (Score:5, Funny)

        by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:19PM (#15859486)
        Not a problem. I'll just get an Apple label and stick it on my PC :).

        • Will the Golden delicious lable I picked up the the green grocers do?
        • Not a problem. I'll just get an Apple label and stick it on my PC :)
          I think that is what the Apple stickers that come with the computers are for. :-) Buy one Apple computer and get the right to run Apple software on two non-Apple ones, wish I'd known before.
        • Not a problem. I'll just get an Apple label and stick it on my PC :).

          You even get a choice between single-color [ebay.com] and old-school six-color [ebay.com] stickers like the ones that came with my IIe back in the day. :-)

      • Re:One Way (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bogado ( 25959 ) <bogado.bogado@net> on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:39PM (#15859639) Homepage Journal
        Now that OSX runs in intel, why not start a Wine like project to emulate the closed source API that apple offers?

        • Re:One Way (Score:3, Informative)

          by maztuhblastah ( 745586 )
          You mean GNUStep, right?
        • Not enough apps. The only people who will be part of this are the people who want to see apple software run on non apple OSs. That must be a massively small minority.

        • Re:One Way (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
          As others have pointed out, GNUstep implements some of the OS X APIs.

          Both GNUstep and Cocoa implement the OpenStep specification, and GNUstep implements a number of Cocoa-specific extensions as well. It does not, however, implement any of Carbon (an updated version of the old MacOS toolkit) and it does not implement things like Core{Audio,Image,Video}. Most importantly, it is only an API, not ABI, re-implementation. A lot of Cocoa apps can be easily ported to GNUstep, but it can not be used to just run

          • So let's develop a compatibility layer between Apple's ABI and GNUstep's ABI.
            And let's call it PineApple (Pine Is Not an Emolator for APPLE)

            (runs fast and ducks)
            • I considered doing this a while ago, but it's not really practical. There are a few things missing from the GNU Objective-C runtime, but they can be added quite easily (I just haven't got around to it yet). The C structures used to represent Objective-C objects are also slightly different but, again, relatively easy to fix. The problem is that most OS X applications use random bits of Carbon, QuickTime, etc. The big apps all began life as Classic apps and are now Carbonised and gradually having bits of
        • Why? Most OS X software that people might want to run on Linux or BSD is available on Windows, and Wine is already fairly mature. The "OS X wine" would be behind by a long shot.
          • It seems to me that OSx is much closer to linux then windows, since it has a similar 'unix like' base OS and as many have stated there is GNUStep that already done some of the work. There are still some problems, since there is a diferent ABI to handle and so, but in the end I would believe that a program running throgh this macoswine would be more stable then the same program runing through wine.

            But this is all suposition.
      • "A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time."

        I got some Apple stickers with my PowerBook. If I slap that on my Windows PC, is it now an 'Apple-labeled computer'?

      • So don't license it. Just buy a copy instead.

        There are copies of OS X for sale at my nearest CompUSA (i.e. I can give them money and they will give me a copy, the exact same type of transaction as when I buy a book or music CD). Or if you have a Mac around (though if you do, you probably are less interested in virtualizing) it probably came with a bundled copy of OS X.

        I realize that large companies can sometimes save money by buying OS licenses rather than copies, but for most of us "little people" that

        • They don't call it an End User License Agreement for nothing.

          • I know. They include the word "Agreement" to try to suggest that it was something that both parties agreed to. It's a bluff. Study the transaction and you'll see that ownership changes prior to the license being offered.

            Maybe some people go ahead and agree to the license being offered (permission to use the software copy that they already own) but most people don't. Why would they? After you buy a copy of some software, you obviously already are allowed to use it, whether you have permission or not.

          • Key word: End User License Agreement. None of those terms in that EULA have any effect on you unless you agree to be bound by them. EULAs are not laws.
      • Windows runs on intel Macs.
        QED.
      • 2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
        A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

        OK let us do some legal parsing of the requirement "on a single Apple-labeled computer"
        Let us assume you have an Apple purchased PC, running Windows. Can you run OSX in a VM under a Windows host.
        1) Well, the license requires "on", not "under", not "within" and most damning not "as the operating system of" so as long as the underlying PC is runn
      • The irony here is - I have a G5 - nowhere visably on the machine does it say "Apple" or "Macintosh" or anything in fact - its just a grey mass of computer.

        I guess labels are uncool.
      • Anyone care to test this in a court of law? Thought not.

        Anyone care to be an asinine troll? Oh wait, you already are.

    • Re:One Way (Score:5, Interesting)

      by znu ( 31198 ) <znu.public@gmail.com> on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:17PM (#15859468)
      Third parties can't really do this, as it would require cracking OS X's copy protection and violating OS X's license agreement.

      It might be interesting if Apple licensed someone's virtualization tech and used it to create a sort of downloadable "demo" version of OS X that Windows users could play around with, though. Can virtualized operating systems take advantage of GPU acceleration? Seems like that would be necessary for such an application, as OS X is somewhat less impressive for demo purposes without its GPU-accellerated eye candy.

      • Re:One Way (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Jahz ( 831343 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:38PM (#15859626) Homepage Journal
        Third parties can't really do this, as it would require cracking OS X's copy protection and violating OS X's license agreement.


        Unless something has changed, I don't believe there is any copy-protection for OSX. The last few times i've installed/upgraded OSX, there was never any key required, nor did the DVD ever resist duplication.


        To be honest, I would be suprised if Apple did NOT turn a blind eye to pirating of OSX. It happens to be a great way to get Windows users to *try* OSX. Assuming Windows-to-Mac converts will buy at least one Mac computer after trying OSX, the payoff would be substantial. (not to mention that it could be made into a bait-and-switch scenario, in which Apple hooks people with the OS and then forces them to get a Mac or license).

        • Re:One Way (Score:3, Informative)

          by sqlrob ( 173498 )
          There is a dongle. The Mac itself. The intel one has a TPM module.

        • To be honest, I would be suprised if Apple did NOT turn a blind eye to pirating of OSX

          No way will Apple allow that to happen.

          I'm one of those people who wanted to see OSX running in VMWare (under Linux, in my case). Have you heard of Maxxuss? He had actually done quite a lot to get Tiger running under VMWare. Even got networking to run fine. And it was easy enough for me to get running in VMWare. About the only thing left for him to accomplish, to my knowledge, was to get sound working. Apple s

        • I doubt Jobs would ever see it this way. But turning a blind eye to piracy is away to get huge market share. Did you hear MS complain loudly about piracy during their climb to monopoly status? Not really, it worked to their advantage.

          • I doubt Jobs would ever see it this way. But turning a blind eye to piracy is away to get huge market share. Did you hear MS complain loudly about piracy during their climb to monopoly status? Not really, it worked to their advantage.

            Exactly. Microsoft just has too much money now. Maybe they should forget about tightening XP against pirates and concentrate on Vista... Seriously, its the nature of the industry. Any security they can think of can and will be cracked (and fast).

            Anyway many other posters see

      • FYI, this project has had great activity though it is not open source. It is called "iTunes" and can be acquired directly from the apple website.

      • It might be interesting if Apple licensed someone's virtualization tech and used it to create a sort of downloadable "demo" version of OS X that Windows users could play around with, though. Can virtualized operating systems take advantage of GPU acceleration? Seems like that would be necessary for such an application, as OS X is somewhat less impressive for demo purposes without its GPU-accellerated eye candy.

        A friend of mine got OS X running inside VMWare on a PC. He said it was not very usable. Accessing

      • Can virtualized operating systems take advantage of GPU acceleration? Seems like that would be necessary for such an application, as OS X is somewhat less impressive for demo purposes without its GPU-accellerated eye candy.

        As per misleb, yes, it would be possible to allow a virtualized operating system to take advantage of GPU acceleration. It would require a graphics driver for the guest operating system that could pass OpenGL calls up to the host operating system. In a host OS w/ buffered graphics, the vi

    • As it's been said, Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. They don't want you running OSX on anything but an Apple box.
    • The "OS X experience" on Windows? Or "iTools for Windows"? That would be the time to sell the Mac on eBay without doubt, without any low limit.

      I hope I am too pessimist but these news and mac users jumping up and down since they can run windows apps/games makes you wonder...

    • Mac users would benefit if PC users were able to run a virtualised OS X.

      VMware says "software developers" [vmware.com] are one of the primary targets of their Workstation product, and web developers are a part of that. Web sites are naturally quite portable, so you can test in IE and Firefox and Opera under Windows and just hope that it is good enough in Safari. There's not enough reason to go out and buy a Mac to test your web site, because it's expensive and your site probably works 'okay' anyway. But that means Mac

    • Re:One Way (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DarkSarin ( 651985 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @01:18PM (#15859883) Homepage Journal
      The arguments about why you can't do this legally are interesting, but I've yet to hear an argument about WHY you would even WANT to.

      Someone please help.

      • Why? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by itsdapead ( 734413 )
        1. Geek techno-pr0n value - Apple is actually doing a service here by using TPM and ensuring only uber-Geeks who are 1337 crax0rz can play this game :-)
        2. Developers testing on multiple systems - but then why not use the Mac as your host system, since it can do most of the stuff that Linux can do AND run Windows in a VM.
        3. As a "live CD" demo to woo people to Mac. Danger here is (a) it could get cracked and (b) if there are gliches with graphics, device support etc. it could backfire. Also - switching OSs is alwa

  • Awesome! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:04PM (#15859383) Homepage
    Finally announced.

    Now all of our textbooks will get to look like this:
    +---------+
    | OS X |
    +---------+
    | VMWare |
    +---------+
    | Rootkit |
    +---------+
    • I just checked my Algorithms: Sequential, Parallel, and Distributed textbook, and *every single page* now holds that ascii diagram! Thanks alot for ruining my $60 textbook, I hate you VMWare. ;(

  • Other way round please (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd much rather be able to use OS X on another platform. I already have have vmware on a linux host. Being able to move my powerbook apps to an existing and much faster machines would be very nice indeed.
    • Doesn't QEMU allow you to do this? I think QEMU running in Linux/X86 will boot OSX/PPC. Of course running PPC in a Intel would not be fast unless you have a very fast Linux/X86 system.

    • Already done (Score:4, Informative)

      by flithm ( 756019 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @01:15PM (#15859866) Homepage
      Just so you know, since even before OSX Intel was publically released, you've been able to run OSX on most standard PCs supporting SSE2 (SSE3 is much better as Rosetta apps will actually run).

      You can run it natively, or inside VMWare either under Windows, or Linux. This should get you started: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Vmware _how_to [osx86project.org]

      In my opinion, moving to intel hardware is the smartest move Apple has made since... well... the Apple IIe. Yes even smarter than the iPod IMO.

      I think a lot of what keeps people stuck using Windows, is not an inherent love for Windows itself, but rather a reliance on the software base, and ease of use / maintenance. I also believe that a lot of Windows success is directly related to software piracy. I can see piracy really helping Apple.

      I would never pay the extra money for an Apple... but if I am given a choice between using OS X and Windows without having to pay extra money for one over the other, I'll choose OS X any day.
    • Solution:

      1) Quit bitching.

      2) Buy a new Apple Intel computer.

      3) Rewrite/recompile Universal Binaries of your applications.
  • What about running OS X under VMWare on windows?

    • Re:What about.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by the linux geek ( 799780 )
      It can be done. If you know where to look, you can find premade OSX VMWare images.
    • Isn't the whole idea to have the more robust OS host the other OS?
      (e.g. rely on OS X for general stuff, use windows for windows-only stuff and be able to rebuild a corrupted windows instance on the fly without being affected in the host OS)
  • That beta link has been up for some time (at least a few hours.) I signed up at 6AM EST.

  • This is good... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cavtroop ( 859432 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:15PM (#15859456)
    ...I've been using Parallels for now, and while it works, I've had some problems with it I haven't been able to figure out. I've submitted several support tickets to Parallels, with zero response (Yes, I paid for the software.)

    Competition like this is good for the market - now I can try out VMWare, and if it works better than Parallels, I can use it. Choice is good.

  • Strange new world... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jthill ( 303417 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:16PM (#15859464)

    So, VMWare's gonna host on OS X, and Microsoft likes Xen? And the Xen guys are getting dinged for their proprietary attitude [infoworld.com]?

    Ok. We've arrived. All ashore that's going ashore!

  • Did anyone not expect this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:17PM (#15859475)

    A week or so after the Intel switch announcement I went to VMWare's forums. The most requested feature was an OS X version of the workstation product. It is pretty foolish to ignore that kind of demand in that particular market. Parallels beat them to market, but with a lot of missing functionality that may or may not be important to the customer base. So we have VMWare and Parallels with VMs using the Intel processor's emulation hardware. We have two WINE Windows API re-implementations, and we have Xen and MS with potential solutions as well. The only real unknown quantity is Apple themselves. If they release VMs built into OS X the market segment will adopt that standard. If they do it using a cross-platform standard, it will boost that standard considerably. If they don't release a built-in VM, the market segment will fragment with some companies using the re-implementation technologies to make quick ports and some users using each of the VM solutions and dual booting to cater to their own needs for running other OS's

    • Hmmm... I wonder if this will lead to the same kind of fragmentation that hurt Unix in the 80s and 90s. Everyone wanting to hold onto their piece of the virtualization puzzle because THEY want to own virtualization entirely and therefore hamstringing any benefit that could be had if they cooperated. Frightening since hypervisor based virutalization can actually have VMs that perform FASTER than if they were on the iron itself.
    • Well they have also been asked to support Solaris x86 as a host platform since it's also a supported guest but it seems like thats not going to happen. So having a OS X client just because OS X is now on Intel was not a foregone conclusion.

      • Well they have also been asked to support Solaris x86 as a host platform since it's also a supported guest but it seems like thats not going to happen. So having a OS X client just because OS X is now on Intel was not a foregone conclusion.

        The OS X market is much bigger than the Solaris market. Also, there were plenty of comments from the developers that they were working on an OS X version, even months ago. Finally, While Solaris is a pretty cool workstation OS, a whole lot of the more influential peopl

  • I'd also like to see them support the standard VirtualCenter app on OS X. We've got a number of VM linux boxes under VMWare and I have to use windows to control when they're running/suspended/etc. A single control app on all platforms would be great.
  • First, Mac OS X running under XEN isn't going to happen without a lot of help from Apple. I don't see Apple participating on.

    Second, I welcome VMWare for it's advanced features (snapshots, etc) over Parallels. That being said, I bought Parallels and it works well. It doesn't do everything, but it does work well and I got it long before the price increase.

    Competition is good. I can't wait to play with VMWare on Mac OS X.

  • Any news about VMWare Console? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dschuetz ( 10924 ) <.gro.tensad. .ta. .divad.> on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:52PM (#15859721)
    All the Macs I have are PowerPC, so the announcement doesn't really help me any. But does anyone know if VMWare has considered a fat-binary OSX version of the VMWare Console program? So I can run VMWare Server on my Linux server, and use my older iMac and Minis as consoles with it?

    The last time I tried anything like this, having no Console program, I logged directly into a GSX server and tried to run the console there, sending it back to the Mac over X-Windows, but could never get it to work (and it was a couple years ago so I forget the problem, but I seem to recall that I thought it was something endian-related.)
    • I actually do that (X11 VMware console) from my G5 desktop. The trick is that you need to enable trusted X11 forwarding. Either have "ForwardX11Trusted yes" in your ssh configuration (~/.ssh/config), or use 'ssh -Y hostname' to connect to the remote host and have vmware work.
    • [Disclaimer: I work at VMware]

      It should be possible to do what you described, i.e. to remote your X session over to your Mac and run the console. You might see screwed up colors on your display. If you don't care about actually running the full VMware Remote Console and you just want remote access to the guest's display, however, it's much easier to just activate the VNC server for the VM by adding:

      RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = TRUE
      RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = xxxx ... to your config file and then using an off-th

  • Need for Virtual PC? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bjb ( 3050 ) * on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:57PM (#15859760) Homepage Journal
    Only thing I can think of is that they'll bundle Virtual PC with a cheaper copy of Windows than the other players.

    If I remember correctly, the standard Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is about $399 and the "professional" version is $499. Only difference? It includes Virtual PC with a copy of Windows XP Home. Now, how much is Virtual PC by itself, and how much do they charge for off-the-shelf copies?

  • ...if this is VMWare's subtle riposte to Transgaming's 'Cider' engine [slashdot.org] for the world of Mac gaming? It's a bit of a stretch, I know, but the timing is a little too convenient.

    • Actually, the real competitor to Transgaming is this [codeweavers.com] (and Codeweavers actually releases its changes back to WINE!).

    • "if this is VMWare's subtle riposte to Transgaming's 'Cider' engine [slashdot.org] for the world of Mac gaming? It's a bit of a stretch, I know, but the timing is a little too convenient."

      A) VMWare doesn't care about Mac gamers, they mostly care about business and technical users.

      B) They've been working on this for a while, and running job ads for Mac developers for a couple of months. If they were responding to the Cider announcement they would be just starting development, not announcing a public beta.
  • The usability of this over, say, using WINE? I find that thanks to Darwine, and the new WINE release, I can run pretty much everything (save some games) on my mac. What benifits would all these programs have over WINE?

    Not meaning to sound a troll, but if someone can explain to me the value of the program, then I may buy it. I am currently considering in investing in a copy of Crossover Mac. Would this be a better program?
  • Now all we need is to get Mac OS X running under Xen. Oh besides the fun and excitement of violating Apple's EULA, why would this be desirable?
  • Unless I'm missing something, virtualization still is not sufficient for running a decent game, due to DX9. So if your big reason for keeping windows is MS Office or Outlook, then virtualization sounds wonderfull to me. But if you're a gamer looking to consolidate to one machine, you still need to dual-boot as far as I can see.

    -Jeff

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