No Virtualization in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)?

[macnews]

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?

Agreed, we all don't want to spend more money than we have to.

MS has stated that Linux can run virtualized on top of Windows.

Apple has stated and advertised on national TV that Windows can run virtualized on top of OSX - via Parallels. I'm not sure if this is the same with Windows but I don't recall hearing XP supporting virtualization but I certainly could be wrong as I don't stay up on XP stuff.

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).

I wasn't aware of this. And much like you pointed out in another post, Linux does have a similar market share to OSX, and even more so on the server side of things.

I don't really understand the issue of "how this would work?".

My question here was do you expect them to include a version of the OS as well. You mentioned in your example your wife being able to run Linux within OSX, and I certainly agree getting more exposure to OSX to Win and Linux users would be a much better answer for Apple than a dual boot scenario. But, in order to run Lunx she would need a Linux distro - I'm assuming you would expect Apple to just leave that out and allow the user to select/pay for what ever OS they want to run. I can understand this but think other users/switchers would expect to get a copy of windows.

I guess we just have to disagree on this as I don't see why this is so important to include as a part of the OS. I will grant you very well may be far ahead of the curve and in a year or two could be agreeing with you. Right now, I think a third party solution is fine for those who need it.

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?

Well I agree with you about the whole .mac syncing thing. It is rediculous for me to need something like .mac to keep two computers synced up in terms of a calendar and file system. Again, I wouldn't mind a third party coming up with a one time solution (vs Apple's $99/year solution) to allow these kind of features. It would be nice to see in the OS itself but so long as Apple doesn't prevent a third party from developing that feature I have no issue with it. Only when even a third party can't do it because Apple prohibits it and I am forced to go with Apple does it really piss me off.

BTW - good discussion

 

[BrianMojo]

Personally I wonder that Apple won't integrate something more along the lines of current quick user switching feature -- this would likely appease those who are against dual booting because it requires you to log out and quit all apps. I imagine this stasis would be possible within the windows environment as well using the sleep feature.

 

[JGowan]

I gotta say that I'm getting pretty tired of hearing about virtualization and accomodating Windows on a Mac. I mean, talk about lowering the bar. Less Apple employees working on this means more working on something that actually matters. Yes, I know it's all about sales, but the focus lately seems to be Windows on a Mac ("Hello, I'm a PC" campaign) Windows vs. a Mac or whatever. How about just let the machine and program speak for themselves and let the Windows users just suffer in ignorance.

Well put. I couldn't agree with you more.

I couldn't agree with you less.

You say "I know it's all about sales" and you leave it at that, like that's a bad thing. If you haven't noticed, Apple is a business. They are in the business of selling. They sell to those who KNOW that Apple hardware/software is superior and they want to sell to those who need to be convinced. They've tried for years to bring the masses over from the PC side and have been virtually unsuccessful. I'm sure this is a last-resort-type-of-thing but it's important because the majority of users will NOT buy two computers. They will buy the one that fits their needs the most, even if it means not buying the Mac they'd really want. Now, Apple is accomodating them so they have no excuse not to buy a Mac.

As far as your idea of taking away Apple employees from one project to work on another, perhaps you haven't considered that they've hired Window software experts who were hired specifically for the purpose of the Boot Camp/Windows Intergration project at hand. That's actually a whole lot more likely.

 

[brianus]

Try using windows ... now that WILL kill your uptime.

I realize this is an "unpopular" opinion on a Mac forum, but somebody has to say it -- someone has to point out that this nonsense about Windows being a crash-machine is just that; nonsense. It's ashame even Apple parrots this ignorant belief while trying to appeal to would-be switchers in their ad campaign, as it only makes them look like they haven't used a PC in 5 years and have no idea what they're talking about.

Sure, back in the Windows 98 days crashes were fairly commonplace (then again, this can also be said of OS 8 -- remember that little bomb popup that used to come up all the time?), but I have found -- as have most users of each OS -- that both XP and OS X have been pretty damned stable and neither crashes more than once in a blue moon. If anything, actually, I've found Tiger to be just slightly *less* stable than XP SP2. But only just.

Criticize the security issues, the lame user interface, the lack of innovation for half a decade -- sure. Those are legitimate criticisms. But at least know what it is you're criticizing.

 

[peharri]

I really don't know what to think. I'm surprised people are describing virtualization as something new and revolutionary, many of my collegues have been using VMWare and similar tools for the last few years to run Windows under GNU/Linux and vice-versa. Then there's VM86, built-in to Linux in the mid-nineties and capable of running Windows 3.1 (with the right patches.) Not ideal, because it relied upon the 80386's 8086 virtualization mode, but it worked. One of the major changes between the 68000 and 68010 was to do with the handling of supervisor flags, making it easier for a program to "fool" another into thinking it was running in supervisor mode. That was back in 1982.

Anyway, virtualization is not a panacea by a long shot. Of the three options:

- dual boot guarantees compatibility, but means losing your environment between sessions. It's ugly.
- virtualization runs a subset of Windows applications in practice.
- native API support is hard to do, but when done correctly provides strong compatibility without the need to reboot.

If Apple is working on any of the three, I'd prefer dual boot and native API support. Virtualization is horrible. Native API support has a bad name, but that's largely because the main proponent is WINE, and WINE has a number of issues, notably the fact it has to run under a variety of different GNU/Linux systems, built very differently, with very little desire by either the authors of Linux or the distro maintainers to modify their systems to make WINE run a little better. By comparison, Apple can do whatever they want to make such a system run well under OS X, because OS X is entirely under their control.

But I think there's a fourth option, and that's to go the other way. Make it easy to run (albeit, if necessary, specially compiled) OS X applications under Windows and GNU/Linux.

Yellow Box isn't a myth or legend (unlike Red box.) Carbon also already exists for Windows (it actually originated there, it was the original compatibility layer for Quicktime, and supposedly many critical Carbon headers exist in the QT for Windows SDK.) Bring back Windows as a target for universal binaries. Support Java, and bring back full support for Cocoa under Java and make that available for Windows and GNU/Linux too. Hell, port over Mono and put the Cocoa and Carbon APIs on that too, together with Windows and GNU stubs. And make a genuinely kick-ass gaming development API, seeing as the lack of games are of the biggest reasons many Mac users feel obliged to run Windows.

Tackle the fears many Mac users have about developers concentrating on Windows apps exclusively if Apples can run Windows head on, and make developers want to develop cross platform tools and applications that look good and run well regardless of which platform they're running on. It's time Jobs, not Balmer, screamed "Developers, Developers, Developers!"

 

[brianus]

I really don't know what to think. I'm surprised people are describing virtualization as something new and revolutionary, many of my collegues have been using VMWare and similar tools for the last few years to run Windows under GNU/Linux and vice-versa. Then there's VM86, built-in to Linux in the mid-nineties and capable of running Windows 3.1 (with the right patches.) Not ideal, because it relied upon the 80386's 8086 virtualization mode, but it worked. One of the major changes between the 68000 and 68010 was to do with the handling of supervisor flags, making it easier for a program to "fool" another into thinking it was running in supervisor mode. That was back in 1982.

Uh.. you just answered your own question. How many Mac folk would have had any clue about any of the above? When you're pretty much the only OS of any significance running on your particular architecture, virtualization is a foreign concept..

- dual boot guarantees compatibility, but means losing your environment between sessions. It's ugly.
- virtualization runs a subset of Windows applications in practice.
- native API support is hard to do, but when done correctly provides strong compatibility without the need to reboot.

If Apple is working on any of the three, I'd prefer dual boot and native API support. Virtualization is horrible. Native API support has a bad name, but... <snip>

Hold up, hold up. You totally glossed over your dismissal of virtualization. Why is it "horrible" and why does it only run a "subset" of apps in practice? And how does this last point make it any different from native API support? I should think it can be pretty much guaranteed that there are some programs which simply *will not* run under anything other than Windows, sometimes a particular version thereof, regardless of how extensively another OS has managed to port the Windows API.

 

[Peace]

Visualize...

When Steve Jobs starts to show off Leopard it's going to be a full screen Microsoft software product..People will be saying WHA?..Jobs will look at the big screen and say "Oh crap I forgot" and switch back to the Leopard desktop.
He will then say "remember when Microsoft and Apple had that settlement in 1997 ?.Well we've not only been running OS X on Intel since 10.0 but we've also been running the Win32 API on it too.Yup..Mac's really do do Windows.Natively.On your desktop.OS X Leopard now has a new Kernel that includes the Win32 API built in..It's called the Universal File system or UFS.You can see it over in the labs after this presentation.It allows you to not only native OS X apps but it also allows you to seemlessly port your OS X app to the UFS using XCode 3.0 and Intels compiler.So if your customer base is PPC they have their apps.If your customer base is Intel they have their apps.Not only that but customers that want to use say...MS Office XP all they need to do is install it.Period.Now if customers want to install the latest software from Microsoft like Office 2007 we have Boot Camp for those people..When Vista comes out next March it will have the efi in it's boot loader just for this purpose.."

Jobs goes on to show off all the new nifty stuff in OS 10.5 etc..

"And..Leopard will be loaded on every new Mac starting Nov.21st."

 

[peharri]

Uh.. you just answered your own question. How many Mac folk would have had any clue about any of the above? When you're pretty much the only OS of any significance running on your particular architecture, virtualization is a foreign concept..

That doesn't really answer my question. Yes, many Mac users have never heard of it, but to argue that Mac users suddenly hearing about it means that it's an amazing new phenominem is taking things a little far. It's widely used, already, in personal computing. Just not on the Mac.

Hold up, hold up. You totally glossed over your dismissal of virtualization. Why is it "horrible" and why does it only run a "subset" of apps in practice?

Have you tried it? Do I seriously need to make a list of the types of program virtualization does badly with (including multimedia and games primarily, with other types, such as many types of network based software, generally requiring convoluted and very un-Mac like setting up.)

Like I said, it's not a panacea. If you're arguing it is a panacea, then I'd like you to justify that claim. If you're just after lists of the types of app that fare badly under virtualization, I'm not sure why you're asking because they're pretty widely known. And if you're arguing my complaint that it's horrible and runs a subset of applications in practice amounts to a complete, irrational, total, dismissal, then that's simply not what was said.

And how does this last point make it any different from native API support? I should think it can be pretty much guaranteed that there are some programs which simply *will not* run under anything other than Windows, sometimes a particular version thereof, regardless of how extensively another OS has managed to port the Windows API.

I already answered that in the comment you're responding to.

Native API support has a bad name, but that's largely because the main proponent is WINE, and WINE has a number of issues, notably the fact it has to run under a variety of different GNU/Linux systems, built very differently, with very little desire by either the authors of Linux or the distro maintainers to modify their systems to make WINE run a little better. By comparison, Apple can do whatever they want to make such a system run well under OS X, because OS X is entirely under their control.

Most of the multimedia stuff (and games) that run under GNU/Linux end up using either native binaries compiled for GNU or Wine-based native Windows API support, to get going. THE problem with Wine isn't that it's hard to do, it's that the Wine people don't have the cooperation of the distro maintainers or kernel developers. Apple wouldn't have that problem.

 

[brianus]

That doesn't really answer my question. Yes, many Mac users have never heard of it, but to argue that Mac users suddenly hearing about it means that it's an amazing new phenominem is taking things a little far. It's widely used, already, in personal computing. Just not on the Mac.

Which is precisely why it is an amazing new phenomenon - on the Mac. This is a Mac forum, dude. What do you expect? Having to cite obscure examples from 1982 *does* answer your own question. As for "widely used" -- maybe if you're a Linux guy. The vast majority of even Windows users are unaware of and have no use for it. And it's suddenly become appealing because it's now possible to use it with the other major consumer-centric OS on the market. Most people only know that there are Macs, and there are PCs, and now for the first time it's possible to run both systems natively on the same machine in a standard, supported way.

Outside of the Mac world, there is also the fact that part of the renewed interest in virtualization comes from the fact that it's now been given hardware support by Intel (and AMD has a solution, too, right? correct me if I'm wrong).

Have you tried it? Do I seriously need to make a list of the types of program virtualization does badly with (including multimedia and games primarily, with other types, such as many types of network based software, generally requiring convoluted and very un-Mac like setting up.)

The question wasn't why is the performance not always great (you have yet to justify your "horrible" comment, as if multimedia and games were the most important things in the universe), but how you can state that it only works with a subset of apps when that's just of true of native API support. As in literally, program-will-not-run, not program-is-sluggish. And as for the performance, Parallels has been out for a few months, and who knows if Apple has *really* decided not to implement its own virtualization solution or not, so we'll see if these issues don't improve a little.

And if you're arguing my complaint that it's horrible and runs a subset of applications in practice amounts to a complete, irrational, total, dismissal, then that's simply not what was said.

No, it just amounted to a comment that was not backed up with any other statements. "Horrible" is pretty harsh just because you can't play some 3D game. Plenty of people find Parallels perfectly usable. Not being a "panacea" does not make it horrible anymore than having to reboot to play said game makes Boot Camp horrible.

I already answered that in the comment you're responding to.

No, droning on about WINE, which has nothing to do with any possible future Apple implementation, does not answer the comment that even the best implementation will, literally, "only support a subset" of Windows programs. I'm sure anything Apple comes up with in this area will be superior to the efforts of these linux people you describe; that doesn't mean it will run everything.

 

[Evangelion]

Apple has stated and advertised on national TV that Windows can run virtualized on top of OSX - via Parallels. I'm not sure if this is the same with Windows but I don't recall hearing XP supporting virtualization but I certainly could be wrong as I don't stay up on XP stuff.

XP has no native support for virtualization, but you could use something like VMWare with it. Post-XP Windows will support Virtualization (I'm not 100% sure about desktops though).

My question here was do you expect them to include a version of the OS as well.

Do I expect Apple to include a version of Windows or Linux? Absolutely not. They would only support and ship OS X. They would provided the needed tools to run virtualized OS'es. Hell, the user could run other OS X's on top of OS X!

You mentioned in your example your wife being able to run Linux within OSX, and I certainly agree getting more exposure to OSX to Win and Linux users would be a much better answer for Apple than a dual boot scenario. But, in order to run Lunx she would need a Linux distro - I'm assuming you would expect Apple to just leave that out and allow the user to select/pay for what ever OS they want to run. I can understand this but think other users/switchers would expect to get a copy of windows.

I don't think that anyone would expect Apple to ship copy of non-Apple OS. If the user wants to run some other OS, they would have to provide their own copy of the OS.

I guess we just have to disagree on this as I don't see why this is so important to include as a part of the OS.

On servers this is becoming an absolutely essential feature. It's going to be HUGE on servers. I can't really over-emphasize it's importance here. And it it becoming very important on desktops as well.

 

[Evangelion]

Virtualization is horrible.

I think that you are quite mistaken. Not only is the software-stack (VMWare, Xen etc.) maturing, but we are now getting built-in support for virtualization in the CPU's. True, 3D-acceleration has been tricky to implement, but it's coming up. And besides desktops, you need to think about servers as well. Take a look at Xen one day, their tech is VERY impressive. You could basically move servers from one hardware to another in a fraction of a second, thanks to virtualization.

 

[schatten]

What a relief.

Including virtualization in Mac OS X would be a huge mistake.

Let's keep Mac Software developers in business & NOT include Windows compatibility in the core OS.

Besides, Mac OS X is bloated enough without lumping all that virtualization junk in there.

 

[Evangelion]

Besides, Mac OS X is bloated enough without lumping all that virtualization junk in there.

Well, it would only increase "bloat" if it were running all the time. Which it's not. It would not make the system slower on anything, unless the user specificly starts virtualization. Only "bloat" it would add is hard-drive space, and that's irrelevant.

 

[CommodityFetish]

But I think there's a fourth option, and that's to go the other way. Make it easy to run (albeit, if necessary, specially compiled) OS X applications under Windows and GNU/Linux.

Yellow Box isn't a myth or legend (unlike Red box.) Carbon also already exists for Windows (it actually originated there, it was the original compatibility layer for Quicktime, and supposedly many critical Carbon headers exist in the QT for Windows SDK.) Bring back Windows as a target for universal binaries. Support Java, and bring back full support for Cocoa under Java and make that available for Windows and GNU/Linux too. Hell, port over Mono and put the Cocoa and Carbon APIs on that too, together with Windows and GNU stubs. And make a genuinely kick-ass gaming development API, seeing as the lack of games are of the biggest reasons many Mac users feel obliged to run Windows.

Tackle the fears many Mac users have about developers concentrating on Windows apps exclusively if Apples can run Windows head on, and make developers want to develop cross platform tools and applications that look good and run well regardless of which platform they're running on. It's time Jobs, not Balmer, screamed "Developers, Developers, Developers!"

Well said! Strategically for the long haul Apple needs an Xcode that will compile for windows / linux before it makes using windows apps on the mac any easier.

I bet we wouldn't even have Bootcamp beta before 10.5 - except for the contest that hacked a way to dual-boot. Funny how Bootcamp came out right after that. Apple was saving it for 10.5, letting developers make their universal binaries in peace, giving them time to make the intel transition. They decided to release it only to avoid all the user headaches of the hacked open-source solution and its missing drivers.

Once bootcamp is out of course they're going to promote it. But when was the last beta product that was advertised by apple? I'm sure it wasn't in the original gameplan to release it before 10.5

So I wouldn't be surprised if we simply get bootcamp with 10.5 -- and a new version of Xcode that compiles truly universal binaries that run on Windows and maybe Linux. If you want virtualization, there's Parallels...

 

[hyperpasta]

Seems Apple is shooting themselves in the foot. Why not?

 

[Bern]

Dual boot for me is far more useful than virtualisation software that is ram dependent and doesn't totally support all the native hardware. I'm relieved to hear Apple are sticking with dual boot .

 

[freeny]

That quote only solidifies the fact that Apple IS working virtualization into leopard.

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

Dual boot makes the most sense from Apple's point of view

Dual boot allows apple to say you can run windows and windows programs. An excellent marketing point.

Dual boot allows apple to avoid having to support windows and all the mayhem it and it's programs will cause if run within osx. A major advantage because supporting windows problems may (will!) be a big pain in the butt if the operating systems are commingled.

Dual boot allows others to develop AND SUPPORT the mayhem that windows and it's programs will cause. Keeping apple from looking like a spoiler if it came out with virtualization or whatever others can come up with.

Dual boot encourages outside development of ways of programing different features of various sorts that apple does not have to support. Expanding the influence of OSX and keeping some excitement amoung techie types (of which I am not one.)

Dual boot prevents a lot of bad feelings/press if the osx / windows combination turns out to be a mess. Imagine the howling!

Dual boot allows apple to make it easier to use both with rapid switching, without the comingling nastiness.

 

[bankshot]

When you dual-boot, you're providing a nice, clean "sandbox" for Windows to play in. There's really no concern about OS-OS interaction.

What? You've got it exactly backwards.

With dual-boot, Windows has direct access to the hardware. Which means that malware could easily destroy or corrupt your OS X partition. It doesn't need to know how to read the HFS+ filesystem, it just needs to write random data to that partition, or simply delete it altogether. Poof! All your data is gone.

Parallels is the solution that provides the clean sandbox. Within Parallels, Windows can't see any of your actual hardware. All it sees is the virtual hard disk file you created for it. Malware can trash your virtual machine to its heart's content, and that will not affect OS X at all.

Would you trust your data to Windows with access to bare hardware? I don't. Virtualization is the only "safe" way to do Windows.

 

[bankshot]

As far as the actual story goes, I have to wonder what was actually said in this purported conversation. Did the guy really ask about general virtualization, or was he asking about running Windows apps on OS X? Lately it seems that many people think of virtualization as synonymous with running Windows stuff, when in fact it is quite different. If either party misinterpreted the meaning of the question, that could change things quite a bit.

I agree with someone earlier on this thread who suggested that virtualizing OS X Server would be a fantastic feature. That would be something that's very much worthwhile to support, while it needn't have anything to do with Windows at all. Of course, this would require many changes at the base level of the OS, and I can't imagine some of that not trickling into OS X Client. Generally, Server is different from Client only in that it includes extra software on top of the same base system. Adding virtualization to Server and not Client would seem to break that paradigm.

So who knows?

Personally, I'm quite happy with Parallels. Runs great. Don't care about games.

 

[gh0sted]

It's amazing that with a working solution already out there that so many people want Apple to recreate that solution. The argument that forking out extra cash for the ability to virtualize Windows is a bit absurd. First I'd rather see a Mac developer make some extra cash. Second if you're going to fork over 199.99 for XP SP2 to Microsoft of all people, you should be taxed

I think Apple's biggest potential for growth is in the gamer's market. Gamer's would also fork out for their yet to be announced Mac Pro. The best solution for gamers would be dual boot integration.

Personally, either way I am not paying 199.99 for security threats and paranoia

 

[exabytes18]

I'm pretty confident in my PC running Windows XP. There is absolutely no reason why Windows should crash while using it. The only people that this happens to are morons who don't know what they are doing and their computers are loaded with viruses and spyware.

Running two OSs simultaneously would be excellent. I wouldn't mind having Windows get full priviledges. Have it like dashboard, but instead of dashboard, it is a Windows desktop.

 

[Evangelion]

Dual boot for me is far more useful than virtualisation software that is ram dependent and doesn't totally support all the native hardware. I'm relieved to hear Apple are sticking with dual boot .

I fail to see how having virtualization means that you can't have dual-boot. While the two do overlap, one is not 1:1 alternative to the other. You want the absolute best performance from the "other" OS and don't care for disrupting your workflow? Then dual-boot. You want a quick and convenient access to the other OS, with small performance-hit(*? Virtualization is for you.

* = The performance-hit doesn't have to be that big. Xen runs virtualized OS'es close to native speeds. I believe the speed is about 98% of the native speed.

 

[glassbathroom]

This probably clutching at straws a bit. Is there a way that they can improve Boot Camp so that it is nearer to Fast User Switching? I know that parallels can do this with virtualisation. Is there a way that Boot Camp can do it that Phil Schiller would not describe as "virtualisation"?

If this is possible then I think that this might be the way Apple are heading. Keep windows and OSX completely separate, but increase the speed that we can swap between them.

Ideally the two OS's would need to work as if they were connected on a network. I am not sure that this is possible as only one OS would be running at a time.

I am guessing that Apple are planning on improving Boot Camp in some ways when it is out of Beta and incorporated into Leopard. In what other ways, can it be improved?

 

[XForge]

attempting to run specific Windows applications under Mac OS X without requiring Windows to be loaded at all

Woop!!!! Outlook first, please.

No seriously. PLEASE.