macnews said:
I don't know what your issue is but this topic seems to have put a burr in your saddle.
Apple has the right to not ship certain features in their OS. And I'm not denying that. I just think that it's retarded for them to NOT ship this feature. Virtualization is the next big think in computers and OS'es, and Apple is going to miss the boat. So they offer us dual-booting. Well, whoop-de-doo! 1994 called, it wants it's technology back.
Would I like to see virtualization in OSX native - yes. But I am not sure what your complaint is about having a third party support it?
Because the feature is important, and it's dumb to not offer native support for it? And because having to rely on third-parties means spending even more money?
You claim OSX will fall behind when all the other OS's will support virtualization. Frankly, I don't see Windows ever supporting running a different OS - be it OSX, Linux, Unix, etc.
MS has stated that Linux can run virtualized on top of Windows.
And when doesn't Linux do something third party? Linux is the epitomy of the third party type of stuff - basically open source being all the third parties.
The Linux-kernel is lined up for having native support for virtualization. And there are several distros already shipping with virtualization built in(SUSE for example).
Please, what ever that burr is - don't get pissed at me, I'm just asking questions admitting I don't know everything there is to know about virtualization. If you know more, please inform me how this would work vs repeating your same arguement.
I don't really understand the issue of "how this would work?".
I just don't see why MS, Apple or Linux will support this. Linux may be the only one as the open source community drive much of what is Linux. If they want it I'm sure someone will develop it but for a corporate driven product, why encourage people to buy your competition?
Because some people need other OS'es besides OS X. While OS X is a fine OS, it's not a perfect OS for all users and in all situations. Take my household for example: I'm running Tiger as we speak. But my wife prefers Ubuntu Linux to OS X (really!). So I promised her that when I get a new computer (a Macintel) she will get Linux back (I don't want to run it on my PPC-Mini). Now, when that happens, what would my options be?
a) Run dual-boot solution. Every time my wife wants to use the computer, the computer needs to be rebooted in to Linux. Can you say "tedious"? Why yes, you can
b) Virtualized OS. Whenever my wife wants to use the computer, she just clicks on an icon on her Dock (or whatever) that will load Linux for her. Elegant and convenient.
Besides elegance, what other differences would there be between those two? Well, in the first user-case, my wife would not be exposed to OS X, since she would just reboot to Linux. In the latter case, my wife would be exposed to OS X quite often. And I might come fed up with constant dual-booting that I might switch back to Linux (I have moved back and forth between OS X and Linux, so I could do it quite easily).
Maybe Apple is dropping this feature because they are afraid that no-one would use OS X anymore. That argument brings two comments to my mind:
A) Apple doesn't seem to have much faith in their OS. If OS X is truly that good (and it IS very good), why are they so afraid of people dropping it for Windows (or Linux)?
B) Are we, the users, being screwed over because of Apple's corporate-interests? Users would love this feature. True, not everyone would use it, but some would. And those who don't want it, would not be forced to use it. But those that do need it would love Apple for offering this feature. Are they being screwed over because of point A?
This wouldn't be the first time either. Take syncing for example. Apple offers a very nice method of syncing data between different computers. But the user needs to have a .Mac-account for it. Isn't that quite retarded if the user has (for example) just a laptop and a desktop that are sitting swide by side in his study? Why couldn't he sync locally over his own LAN, why does he need to send that data to .mac-servers, where they are then re-send back to the other machine? Why couldn't that be handled locally through Bonjour for example?
Linux has
iFolder for something like this, whereas Apple is pushing their $99/year .Mac-subscribtion. Do the users really want to pay for something like syncing? There are no real technical reasons why local syncing would not work, this is just another way of extracting more money from the users.
Yes, iFolder runs on Mac. But only as a client not as a server. And this is (again) a feature that should come with OS X as standard.
