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VMware's New Virtualization of Snow Leopard and Leopard Allowed in Error

CrosbyFC said:
Great mistake for all those 10.7 business users who need Rosetta!!! C'mon Apple, let it stay!!!
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Stating the obvious... but if you're dependent upon software for business, why would you upgrade in the first place?

Business users are normally the last people to upgrade an OS (and the reason MS and other start marketing to you first).

I can't imagine Rosetta would run well in a VM though. Has anyone tried it?
It's performance was sketchy before on any heavy apps. I sure wouldn't want to run any Adobe product under Rosetta... much less in a VM under Rosetta.

If anyone upgraded and has a dire need of anything software that isn't light on resource uses, you're just screwed. And not in the good way. No offense.
 
Rafterman said:
Microsoft allows it. And they own almost all the corporate world and 90 percent of the commercial word. So that "sell less machines" argument doesn't hold. Apple is being short-sighted.
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MS owns the corporate world because IBM virtually gave it to them. They have had a Monopoly since the mid 90’s - something that Apple never even got close to having and I dare say doesn’t want to have.

Your comparing Apples and pineapples The two things are not related at all.
 
Rafterman said:
Microsoft allows it. And they own almost all the corporate world and 90 percent of the commercial word. So that "sell less machines" argument doesn't hold. Apple is being short-sighted.
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MS also doesn't sell the hardware, they only sell the OS license. So if it is a physical machine or virtual machine MS gets the same amount of money. Apple on the other hand makes their money from hardware.
 
MacAddict1978 said:
Stating the obvious... but if you're dependent upon software for business, why would you upgrade in the first place?

Business users are normally the last people to upgrade an OS (and the reason MS and other start marketing to you first).

I can't imagine Rosetta would run well in a VM though. Has anyone tried it?
It's performance was sketchy before on any heavy apps. I sure wouldn't want to run any Adobe product under Rosetta... much less in a VM under Rosetta.

If anyone upgraded and has a dire need of anything software that isn't light on resource uses, you're just screwed. And not in the good way. No offense.
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If your machines have to be renewed due to expired service agreements you don't have much choice... Many large organisations buy machines with 3 year warranties and when the those expire, even though the machines may still work, they are replaced with new machines that are covered by AppleCare.
 
I've run Illustrator and Photoshop under Rosetta without any problem. I was looking forward to to being able to move forward with Lion etc using VMware since Apple has decided to drop support. I can't think of any good reason they should oppose people using their own copy of SL running in Fusion on their own macs. What exactly is the issue? It would seem to be a no-brainer that requires no effort on Apples part.

As someone pointed out, I can run Windows XP on my mac in VMware but not OS X 10.5 or .6. That's pretty messed up!
 
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As someone else pointed out, this is about control. Despite the assumption that when you buy something, you own it and can do whatever you want to / with it, with software this concept doesn't fly most of the time because of the licensing model. One day when open source software rocks enough, it's going to kick the licensed software model's backside & hard.

Also, be warned that Quartz Extreme isn't supported so plenty of things won't run or install. Personally, I think OS X visualization is a bit weak and if you want even moderate performance, you'll have to stick with a Snow Leopard boot partition.
 
Eula

So which part of the SL EULA prohibits virtualising SL in a Lion host then?

Here is the relevant section of the EULA. Since this text is taken from the SL client EULA, it is logical that the "Apple Software" implicitly means "SL client". In which case, virtualising SL client inside Lion does not contravene this SL EULA.

QUOTE:
2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time.
 
Spectrum said:
So which part of the SL EULA prohibits virtualising SL in a Lion host then?
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The Lion EULA has nothing to do with Snow Leopard installs, but there is a clause that says that Apple reserves all rights not mentioned in the EULA. That would probably cover virtualization


ethyleneguy2003 said:
As someone pointed out, I can run Windows XP on my mac in VMware but not OS X 10.5 or .6. That's pretty messed up!
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Apple and MS sell their operating systems differently. As it was pointed out earlier, their business methods are different. MS doesn’t base their business on Hardware sales. It is based on selling licenses - something that works with the business of virtualization.
 
CrosbyFC said:
Great mistake for all those 10.7 business users who need Rosetta!!! C'mon Apple, let it stay!!!
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I agree, actually that is why I thought Apple allowed it since it is the only way to run old PowerPC apps. Apple should do the right thing and allow it.
 
Honestly if Apple had allowed such a thing, we would had seen a press announcement from Apple, an update to the EULA to reflect the changes like did with Lion. We would have seen this as an advertised feature by VMWare and we would be seeing patches from the other Virtualization companies (or at the least blog posts stating their intentions to add this down the line).

We didn’t get any of this. What we did get is a comment by Apple from Macworld stating what we already knew. You can only legally virtualize Leopard Server, Snow Leopard Server, and Lion. That’s it. Honestly, there was no way Apple would have made a major change like this. When they announced that they would keep selling the old Final Cut Pro, they made a press announcement. This whole thing screamed error.
 
pdjudd said:
MS owns the corporate world because IBM virtually gave it to them. They have had a Monopoly since the mid 90’s - something that Apple never even got close to having and I dare say doesn’t want to have.

Your comparing Apples and pineapples The two things are not related at all.
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Doesn't want? Yeah, I'm sure Apple wouldn't want all those billions in extra profits :roll eyes:

Apple lost the corporate world because of closed systems and expensive hardware.
 
CorporateFelon said:
MS also doesn't sell the hardware, they only sell the OS license. So if it is a physical machine or virtual machine MS gets the same amount of money. Apple on the other hand makes their money from hardware.
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Most people aren't going to go out and spend $1000 on a new machine just because they need to test something or to run Roseta. But they might be willing to plunk down an extra $100 for an OS license for a VM.
 
mrbib said:
Don't think Apple is going to let this happen doing so would mean they would sell less machines. There is really no large benefit for Apple to license the OS to VMs plus, how much would VMWare be willing to fork over just to please a minority of us. Too bad for us. But there is still VirtualBox.
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I'm not sure they would sell fewer machines. If anything, it might get some people who are still using Snow Leopard or even Leopard to finally make the upgrade.

Steve Jobs had no qualms about making a clean break and moving on. Apple didn't care so much about virtualization of the server versions a) because server OSes tend to be virtualized more often anyway, and b) Snow Leopard Server was a $500 product.

However, Apple does not not Snow Leopard (or any particular OS X version) to become the Apple equivalent of Windows XP (i.e. an old, outdated OS that people still cling to a decade after its release). For that reason, Apple refuses to allow a Mac to run an OS older than the version that was current at the time of its release (even though there may be no technical reason why it can't). Perhaps for the same reason, Steve Jobs didn't want people running older versions of OS X through virtualization. He probably didn't care too much for people running Windows in Boot Camp, either, but that fit perfectly into Apple's "switcher" strategy so he tolerated it.

Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs, however. Perhaps he would be swayed by the argument that allowing virtualization would be a low-risk way of getting Snow Leopard owners to upgrade.
 
pdjudd said:
The Lion EULA has nothing to do with Snow Leopard installs, but there is a clause that says that Apple reserves all rights not mentioned in the EULA. That would probably cover virtualization.
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I'm not referring to the Lion EULA either. What I mean is that the SL EULA implies to me that you cannot virtualise SL within a SL host. Whereas VM SL in a Lion (or other Apple) host is permitted.

Which clause states that Apple reserves all rights not mentioned in the EULA? Surely that is ridiculous, and wouldn't stand up in court if tested? That means Apple could be adopting any (unwritten) policy of their choosing without having to inform the user in writing. It makes no legal sense whatsoever.

In any case: I still don't understand why it is VMWare that needs to "police" this. If indeed the EULA does legally prohibit SL client in a VM, then surely it is the user that is contravening the SL licencing, not VMWare.
 
Originally Posted by jpmohr
I wonder if I was to create the virtual machine now and then the upgrade is applied later, if it will make the VM unusable? Nice "mistake" though...
Try it and see. If the guest machines continue to run, they'll be a rare commodity. Me, I only just went Apple last May so I never had any old powerpc applications.
wgnoyes said:
Try it and see. If the guest machines continue to run, they'll be a rare commodity. Me, I only just went Apple last May so I never had any old powerpc applications.
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If they go back to the previous system, the OS won't work anymore, even if it was installed properly. VMWare does the check on each boot, whatever the media type...
But this check is trivial to bypass, even now that you have an installed and working OS on a writable disk.

Just create a fake file called "ServerVersion.plist" in /System/Library/CoreServices/ .
VMWare only relies on the presence of this file to determine wether your OS is the server one or not, the content doesn't even matter.
 
pdjudd said:
No they didn’t. Look at history. Apple never had the corporate world. Period.
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Yes, they did.

They could not get the corporate world because their hardware was expensive and their software was closed.

The corporate world adopted what was cheap, open and already understood by their employees (the user community).
 
thertrain said:
Wow, all the more reason to save that .dmg file of 4.1 and never lose it. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to virtualize client versions with no hacking. Thank god for back up drives :) :apple:
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Yup. I couldn't find the DMG image from the auto update, so I just re-downloaded the dmg images from VMware's Fusion site for safe-keeping. I guess there is a benefit to registering the software and setting up an ID on VMware's website after all! :D
 
Well I guess unless there's a major bug fix I need, I can stick with this version, but on the other hand - do I really need the ability to boot into SL or Leopard?
 
It looks like 4.1.1 (with the "fix") is available for download.

I downloaded vmware 4.1 by itself, but already had a version of 10.6 client working on vmware 3.x. It looks like the 10.6 vm gives "no operating system available" but still boots Snow Leopard when I press return. I'll have to do some research on that in a more appropriate forum than Macrumors.
I have determined that Neverwinter Nights does not run in fusion.

This is all theoretical at this point because I have not upgraded to Lion (and will not do so until hard drive prices return to sane levels).

It would make a lot of sense for Apple to allow SL client to be virtualized on Apple hardware. It's too bad they don't value their long term customers enough to do so.
 
ProVideo said:
What is the reasoning behind Apple not allowing this? How does running Leopard or Snow Leopard in virtualization hurt their bottom line in any way? If anything, it only hurts their reputation by inconveniencing their Mac users.
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Bubba Satori said:
Control.

They could care less.
What are Mac users going to do, buy PCs?
Blind loyalty carries a steep price.
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fxtech said:
What exactly could they care less about?
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Apple supposedly "hurting it's reputation and inconveniencing Mac users".

Apple knows that no matter what they do,
their core cadre of true believers will shrug their slumped shoulders
and mutter "it's not important to virtualize" or "Apple haterz b hatin' "
or some other formulaic silliness we come to expect from the fruity sheeple.
If this sounds harsh, well, it is what it is and that's how I see it.
 
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