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Virtualization for the (Intel) Mac?

yac_moda said:
Apple has been eating Dell's lunch ever since there stock charts crossed paths ...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&s=DELL&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=aapl

WOW !!! DELL's chart is DOWN 50% in the last few months that is one NASTY UGLY CHART !!

I wonder how much longer they will be in business !
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Correlation does not prove causality. Yes, the charts show Apple going up and Dell going down. But half of the upswing in the last 12 months - before Intel transition - was based on expectations built on Apple's iPod and not the computer line. General investor excitement over the personal computing part of Apple's business only started with the MacTel announcements. In fact, the stock doubled before the Intel transition announcement; since the Intel transition announcement, the stock has dropped 25%. Does that mean that Intel Macs have caused the company's financial downturn? I don't think so - more likely investors were just cashing in on a big announcement and the market evened out.

But all of this certainly proves that drawing vague correlations between stock prices proves nothing about the business models and there is no logic behind drawing conclusions retroactively based on the stock price. There are a lot more factors than just competition between the two - and a lot more competition than just Dell and Apple in the consumer-PC market.

But you're right, there's a feud in ideologies. There's a feud in marketing, in getting into the minds of individual consumers. Dell wants to get as much space in the heart and soul of people as Apple does. But is there a battle for market supremacy? Not really. When the average American Mom and Dad are forced to look at laptops for their kids in high school or college - and by average, I mean average per capita income - they're going to go with Dell. Mac still represents a small fraction of the volume Dell pushes.
 
esaleris said:
Correlation does not prove causality. Yes, the charts show Apple going up and Dell going down. But half of the upswing in the last 12 months was based on expectations built on Apple's iPod and not the computer line. General investor excitement over the personal computing part of Apple's business only started with the MacTel announcements. In fact, the stock doubled before the Intel transition announcement; since the Intel transition announcement, the stock has dropped 25%. Does that mean that Intel Macs have caused the company's financial downturn? I don't think so - more likely investors were just cashing in on a big announcement and the market evened out.

But all of this certainly proves that drawing vague correlations between stock prices proves nothing about the business models and there is no logic behind drawing conclusions retroactively based on the stock price. There are a lot more factors than just competition between the two - and a lot more competition than just Dell and Apple in the consumer-PC market.

But you're right, there's a feud in ideologies. There's a feud in marketing, in getting into the minds of individual consumers. Dell wants to get as much space in the heart and soul of people as Apple does. But is there a battle for market supremacy? Not really. When the average American Mom and Dad are forced to look at laptops for their kids in high school or college - and by average, I mean average per capita income - they're going to go with Dell. Mac still represents a small fraction of the volume Dell pushes.
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Yah, right, and Dell bought Alien because Apple is bought to kick their butt into the weeds and Dell is shaking in his boots !!!

Your arguments have NOT convinced me, persuaded me, or told me anything NEW although did not previously know Dell's chart looked so sickly.

Some guy was telling me about Dell support the other day, and he now HATES Dell, and would do ANYTHING to get away from them !!!
 
bcsmith said:
Wouldn't this weaken the security of Mac OS? If some form of Windows is running on the computer, wouldn't the holes that are in Windows be there as well? I feel that Windows on Mac OS would probably be more secure than Windows on Windows, I just worry about the backlash about security holes that culd be opened...
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Windows on Windows...Actually, all those security holes may be thought of as virtual black holes...if the string layer were to collide in such a way that any 2 of countless millions of such holes were to come within 70 nm (width of a hair) of each other, which is inevitable, it may create an artificial wormhole. At that point you will want to quickly cover the hole (on your end) with some marshmallows and some sticky goop. Otherwise, the demons from Hell will crawl out of Windows and the Gates will open for your entry.
 
FoxyKaye said:
In order: probably yes, since OS X uses OpenGL and Windows uses Direct X, and, probably not.
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Well, no, Direct3D/OpenGL has nothing to do with anything in this case. Windows runs OpenGL too, after all. The problem is direct access to graphics card hardware...even if OS X used Direct3D, that issue wouldn't change. It's a pretty tricky problem to solve, actually.

--Eric
 
(L) said:
Windows on Windows...Actually, all those security holes may be thought of as virtual black holes...if the string layer were to collide in such a way that any 2 of countless millions of such holes were to come within 70 nm (width of a hair) of each other, which is inevitable, it may create an artificial wormhole. At that point you will want to quickly cover the hole (on your end) with some marshmallows and some sticky goop. Otherwise, the demons from Hell will crawl out of Windows and the Gates will open for your entry.
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So it'll be like Doom but for real?

Excellent 😀
 
FWIW, I was just informed that MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 is being released as a free download (requires XP or 2003 as the host OS). This after the VMWare Player became free, makes it seem like things are really finally heating up in the realm of virtualization.

Built-in virtualization in Leopard doesn't seem so far fetched.

B
 
It sounds promising, to say the least. I am waiting for the backlash and the doomsayers who will try to convince me that this is the first step in the degradation of OS X...

Looking at the requirements for the Bar Exam in my state, I found that it explicitly forbids virtualization software to run the Windows only software during the test. I think that might be the only reason I would have to dual boot--but I think new blood in the virtualization arena is more than welcome.
 
This seems like pretty good news for Apple, I wonder why the stock has stayed down as long as it has. Are new products the only thing the market can get excited about (in terms of AAPL)?
 
yac_moda said:
Yah, right, and Dell bought Alien because Apple is bought to kick their butt into the weeds and Dell is shaking in his boots !!!

Your arguments have NOT convinced me, persuaded me, or told me anything NEW although did not previously know Dell's chart looked so sickly.

Some guy was telling me about Dell support the other day, and he now HATES Dell, and would do ANYTHING to get away from them !!!
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And the angry customers at Apple mean that we won't see new MacBooks?😎

Dell isn't going anywhere...
 
Jesus said:
I cant wait, I would love to be able to run C&C Generals at a reasonable speed. This will be awesome. Any word on the price??😕 😕
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That can be done anyway...it was ported from Windows to Mac by some game porting company (although I can't remember which one). If you have a decent GFX card you'll be able to run C&C G at a reasonable speed (aslong as it isnt Intel...)
 
pavetheforest said:
that is a great question....anyone???
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Somebody jump in if I'm not entirely correct, but from what I've read virtualization technology does not open the system architecture up to the same vulnerabilities as there would be if Windows was running natively. I believe the technology contains the virtualized OS to a "box" so that it cannot run wild all over your machine, as it were.

I'm not an engineer, as if you couldn't tell. Somebody feel free to clarify or correct me.
 
What about QEMU?

QEMU does the same thing. It allows you to run a virtual machine under Mac OS. You can run just about any OS on that VM. Linux, Windows oe something else.

QEMU has one more advantage over the others too. It can emulate not only X86 but PPC, SPARC and ARM. SO in theory you could run Windows XP and Mac OS 9 both on your Intel Mac.

QEMU will run VM images built by itself or built by VMWare or others

THis has been available for a long time now at http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
 
boncellis said:
Somebody jump in if I'm not entirely correct, but from what I've read virtualization technology does not open the system architecture up to the same vulnerabilities as there would be if Windows was running natively. I believe the technology contains the virtualized OS to a "box" so that it cannot run wild all over your machine, as it were.
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There is some degree of sandboxing with most VM products, and it does help some, but it is not a panacea. First, the guest operating system still has all the same vulnerabilities it would if running solo on a computer. Any data you keep in that virtual disk image can be vulnerable (and some of it you probably want, otherwise why are you hosting another operating system?), and it's possible for that VM to be infected/pwned/etc. if you aren't careful. If you map in important directories or disks from the host OS (at least some of that is often necessary if you are trying to get actual work done), all that data would be vulnerable too.
 
boncellis said:
Somebody jump in if I'm not entirely correct, but from what I've read virtualization technology does not open the system architecture up to the same vulnerabilities as there would be if Windows was running natively. I believe the technology contains the virtualized OS to a "box" so that it cannot run wild all over your machine, as it were..
Click to expand...

Yes you are right. But the "virtual machine" can still get junked up with spyware and the lke. Cleanning up a VM is easy. Simply delete it. The VM looks like a file to Mac OS. If you have saved a copy of the file from before it was "gunkked up" you are set.

The best way to run Windows XP in a VM is to "share" some files from the Mac to the virtual PC. That way when you periodically trash the VM image your PC files are safe in the Mac's HFS+ system

It's really no differnt then having a real PC, only that periodic full reinstall takes second rather then hours.
 
ChrisA said:
QEMU does the same thing. It allows you to run a virtual machine under Mac OS. You can run just about any OS on that VM. Linux, Windows oe something else.

QEMU has one more advantage over the others too. It can emulate not only X86 but PPC, SPARC and ARM. SO in theory you could run Windows XP and Mac OS 9 both on your Intel Mac.

QEMU will run VM images built by itself or built by VMWare or others

THis has been available for a long time now at http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
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Yes, QEMU is great, and Q (the Mac OS X/Cocoa wrapper for QEMU) looks very good as well. And, it's free.

However, QEMU/Q does not yet have virtualization on Mac OS X, making it very slow for modern OSes (like Windows XP, RHEL, Fedora Core 5, and so on).

At some point, we can expect QEMU/Q to support hardware virtualization, instead of emulation for x86 platforms, on Intel-based Macs. Then it can be considered a competitor in the virtual machine space. Until then, it won't come *close* to the performance and speed of a virtualization product on Mac OS X.

Also, some customers will always want a commercially vendor-supported product for enterprise/business/institutional deployments. This is something that QEMU/Q will never be able to be; that's not to say that once QEMU/Q supports virtualization on Intel-based Macs it won't be very useful and functional for a great many people, just that some people still prefer a commercially developed solution with support. It's also unlikely that the QEMU solution will support Intel VT anytime soon.

And for $50 for Parallels Workstation, that's quite a deal, considering the nature of the product.

---
Dave Schroeder
University of Wisconsin - Madison
das@doit.wisc.edu
http://das.doit.wisc.edu
 
Run OS X as guest OS?

So I don't know if anyone has tried this yet...or if it's even been discussed in this thread. But with Windows running on Macs, has anyone considered running Virtual PC (for Windows) or VMWare under Windows and installing OS X as a guest OS?

Originally I thought it would depend on how the guest OS supports EFI or other requirements that OS X Intel has, but since it's not actually emulating the hardware, could it possibly work?

Anyway, perhaps that's one approach to the problem.
 
cmoney said:
So I don't know if anyone has tried this yet...or if it's even been discussed in this thread. But with Windows running on Macs, has anyone considered running Virtual PC (for Windows) or VMWare under Windows and installing OS X as a guest OS?

Originally I thought it would depend on how the guest OS supports EFI or other requirements that OS X Intel has, but since it's not actually emulating the hardware, could it possibly work?

Anyway, perhaps that's one approach to the problem.
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Virtual PC for windows doesn't currently support the Intel OS X
 
Peace said:
Virtual PC for windows doesn't currently support the Intel OS X
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Official support for it doesn't mean it won't or can't work. Witness Windows running on Intel Macs.
 
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