Does OSX run on VMware (Win32) ?
22 January 2007, 05:58 PM
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The EULA for OS X specifically prohibts you from installing OS X on non Apple hardware, and to back this up there is something in the OS, TPM I think it's called that does hardware checking. You can find a torrent here. Not sure how much work is needed to get it running though.
There has been discussion on the Parallels forum about running OS X within a VM, and the answer is NO for the above mentioned legal reasons.
If you are wanting to run OS X on a non Apple intel machine then ignoring the legal side of things, I believe it is possible to do so, and you'd probably see better performance than running it via a VM solution.
Out of curiousity, what's the reason for wanting to run OS X on a non Apple platform?
There has been discussion on the Parallels forum about running OS X within a VM, and the answer is NO for the above mentioned legal reasons.
If you are wanting to run OS X on a non Apple intel machine then ignoring the legal side of things, I believe it is possible to do so, and you'd probably see better performance than running it via a VM solution.
Out of curiousity, what's the reason for wanting to run OS X on a non Apple platform?
23 January 2007, 03:13 PM
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Nothing wrong with curiosity at all, not that i'd ever condone breaking a EULA 
As others have said, it is possible to do it, just have a little look on google for info.
Apple's lineup of computers is now solely using the Intel processor, and I'm typing this on an Intel based iMac.
There has always been talk of an intel based version of OS X, and it has been around for quite some time. When more rumors surfaced about OS X for intel people started to wonder if Apple was going to licence the OS to someone like Dell, so they would not have to deal with the hardware side of things, but thankfully that never came to pass.
Apart from iPods, Apple's main profit comes from hardware, not software, and that is one reason why you won't see an official release of OS X for generic PC's. They control the hardware and the software, makes it so much easier from a support viewpoint.
Another reason is that the intel macs are basically just PC's in a fancy case. You can pop an XPSP2 CD into any intel based mac and it will boot and it will install XP onto the machine. This is all without Apple's boot camp software. The thing is a PC after all.
OK so you do not get the nice drivers for networking and displays and other things (you do if you use bootcamp) and you also don't have OS X on the machine as it's a pure PC, but it does work.
Then you chuck BootCamp into the mix. Dual boot between XP (Vista will no doubt appear when BootCamp goes final in June) and OS X. Best of both worlds.
If you don't want BootCamp then Parallels does a VM solution (there's also a Wine based solution from Codeweavers called CrossOver) and VMWare has Fusion in beta, which is a Mac version of their VM solution.
If Apple did release OS X for generic PC's they would be opening the flood gates for people contacting support. Anyone in IT knows what "fun" supporting PC's is. I'm not saying Macs are perfect, far from it, but compared to PC's they are generally a bit easier as the hardware is usually pretty fixed, whereas with PC's well, just look at how many different motherboard types there are. People would scream that OS X is **** because it won't work on their PC, which has some obscure motherboard, graphics card, sound card and modem in it, which is causing all kinds of conflicts.
Then again, it is unix based so if unix would work on the PC then OS X should in theory.
As others have said, it is possible to do it, just have a little look on google for info.
Apple's lineup of computers is now solely using the Intel processor, and I'm typing this on an Intel based iMac.
There has always been talk of an intel based version of OS X, and it has been around for quite some time. When more rumors surfaced about OS X for intel people started to wonder if Apple was going to licence the OS to someone like Dell, so they would not have to deal with the hardware side of things, but thankfully that never came to pass.
Apart from iPods, Apple's main profit comes from hardware, not software, and that is one reason why you won't see an official release of OS X for generic PC's. They control the hardware and the software, makes it so much easier from a support viewpoint.
Another reason is that the intel macs are basically just PC's in a fancy case. You can pop an XPSP2 CD into any intel based mac and it will boot and it will install XP onto the machine. This is all without Apple's boot camp software. The thing is a PC after all.
OK so you do not get the nice drivers for networking and displays and other things (you do if you use bootcamp) and you also don't have OS X on the machine as it's a pure PC, but it does work.
Then you chuck BootCamp into the mix. Dual boot between XP (Vista will no doubt appear when BootCamp goes final in June) and OS X. Best of both worlds.
If you don't want BootCamp then Parallels does a VM solution (there's also a Wine based solution from Codeweavers called CrossOver) and VMWare has Fusion in beta, which is a Mac version of their VM solution.
If Apple did release OS X for generic PC's they would be opening the flood gates for people contacting support. Anyone in IT knows what "fun" supporting PC's is. I'm not saying Macs are perfect, far from it, but compared to PC's they are generally a bit easier as the hardware is usually pretty fixed, whereas with PC's well, just look at how many different motherboard types there are. People would scream that OS X is **** because it won't work on their PC, which has some obscure motherboard, graphics card, sound card and modem in it, which is causing all kinds of conflicts.
Then again, it is unix based so if unix would work on the PC then OS X should in theory.
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23 January 2007, 04:14 PM
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Not sure how that sits with the anti-competetive laws, (after all MS gets sued just for including media player with the OS), but somehow Apple seem to get away with it...
23 January 2007, 04:49 PM
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I just found this on macrumors, might be worth a read. There is also a post by Dave Schroeder here on the macrumors forum that makes for an interesting read, and does correct me on my point about running OS X/OS X Server via VM on Apple Hardware (would be handy for me for testing purposes to do that, especially if it supported 10.2 thru 10.4.8)
Last edited by Markus; 23 January 2007 at 04:55 PM.
23 January 2007, 08:25 PM
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TUAW has a piece on this today. Maybe some useful links there..
Welcome to Bizarro World: Parallels and VMware running Mac OS X on XP? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Welcome to Bizarro World: Parallels and VMware running Mac OS X on XP? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
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