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VMware plans Mac version of virtualization software
Sunday, April 09, 2006 - 10:17 AM EST

"If you think running Windows XP on an Apple Macintosh sounds like hot stuff, wait until something called virtualization takes off. Then you'll be able to run Windows, the Mac operating system and Linux at the same time, toggling between them as easily as you now click between applications running in different windows," Kevin Maney reports for USA Today. "And that's not long in coming. Virtualization is already running on at least 4 million PCs, says Diane Greene, who runs the leading virtualization software company, VMware. The company's products won't run on Macs yet, and they're not ready for the mass market. VMware is used, for instance, by people who run Linux on Windows machines."

"But virtualization is a fast-growing business for VMware and its parent, EMC. 'We'd like to let anybody run any operating system (OS) on any machine,' Greene says. 'You'll be able to buy any application you want and not worry what OS it runs on.' Apple's Boot Camp only takes that so far. It makes it easier to run Windows XP on a Mac, but you'd have to restart your computer to get from one to the other. There is software on the Web that can make a Mac run another OS, but it's difficult to use. Virtualization software tricks the computer into thinking each OS is the only one on the machine - so multiple operating systems can run simultaneously but not get in each others' way. VMware has plans to roll out virtualization for consumers over coming years. 'We can run it on the Mac OS in our labs already,' Greene says," Maney reports.

Full article here.

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Related articles:
Video of Parallels running Windows XP on Mac OS X - April 07, 2006
Ed Bott on Apple's new Boot Camp: virtualization would be better - April 06, 2006
Parallels releases first virtualization solution for Intel-powered Apple Intel-based Macs - April 06, 2006

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Apr 09, 06 - 10:37 am Comment from: John

Over the coming years? That sounds a bit late.

Apr 09, 06 - 10:55 am Comment from: Gregg Thurman

'We can run it [Windows] on the Mac OS in our labs already,' Greene says,"

So stop talking about it, and get it out there where the rest of the world can use it.

First post? Who cares?

Apr 09, 06 - 10:56 am Comment from: clyde

yeah, it does. not VISTA late, mind you, but late.

Apr 09, 06 - 11:14 am Comment from: D'nomder

We can run it on the Mac OS in our labs already

So? MS has Vista running in their labs too.

Apr 09, 06 - 11:21 am Comment from: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

I'll have my own show on Howard's Sirius line-up soon. It's in de labs right now, but could be here by de end of de year. When it starts airing I will take an even bigger POOP on all of you nerds. In a loving way, of course.

But my show will eventually arrive and when it does it will rule like a dominatrix in leather. Or like Trump with his hair. Yeh-heh-hehessss, you can all kiss my tight black ass when that happens.

Apr 09, 06 - 11:44 am Comment from: Spark

These virtualization companies better fine tune those betas and burn some midnight oil to get product out of the labs, because when Leopard is released there will be no need for 3rd party virtualization. It will be native to the OSX system. Here kitty, kitty, kitty...

Apr 09, 06 - 11:46 am Comment from: mike

If you think running Windows XP on an Apple Macintosh sounds like hot stuff, wait until something called virtualization takes off

---

When you're playing games, you don't need to switch to OS X to check your email.

Screw it.. we already have the perfect system thanks to Boot Camp.

Windows is for Games, and "rare" Business Apps

Native XP on Boot Camp is actually better than any of this crap.. why put up with resource hogging

Apr 09, 06 - 11:53 am Comment from: UndercoverMacBrother

Virtualization is nice. I got a VM ware demonstration on Friday, the computer (PC) was running various windoze versions plus linux. There were "Sarari-like" tabs at the top of the screen and each tab was a different OS. This would be great for Apple, because geeks that value quality won't be stuck using PC's.

Apr 09, 06 - 12:47 pm Comment from: Dimoss

This is what I have been waiting for all my life. I love my powerbook its bloody awesome, BUT I am an asp.net web developer. I love asp.net and SQL Server, but surprise surprise I HATE windows. I do use VM Ware on my PC with a Pentium D 930 and its awesome, I have a few linuxes and a few flavours of windows running virtually to suss them out.

If I can only run IIS web server, visual studio and sql server virtually, and use photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, fireworks, and everything else on my mac, how awesome would THAT be.

Apr 09, 06 - 12:48 pm Comment from: gypsy

This all sounds great, but I bet the script hickies are already working with both Parallels software, Boot Camp and VMWare to break OSX. I just hope that Apple keeps the virus and ?wares away while other OS's occupy that same drive.

Personally, I purchased my G5 to use OSX with it.

Apr 09, 06 - 12:52 pm Comment from: 2x

,i>There were "Sarari-like" tabs at the top of the screen and each tab was a different OS. This would be great for Apple, because geeks that value quality won't be stuck using PC's</i>

Unfortunately, to go mainstream it has to be usable by non-geeks. OS tabs sound cool, but how do you explain it all to Mom? How do you explain that different systems might come up depending on where you click? (i.e. "Sonny, I clicked and now everything looks different!") How do you get her to shut down virtual systems she isn't using? (Heh, getting her to shut down certain Mac apps when all the app's windows are closed is hard enough.) And, oh GOD, how do you walk Mom thorough setting it all up?

So from an OEM point of view, Boot Camp is a good choice for Apple. Sure it's less convenient, but it's also less confusing. Those who know what they're doing & want more flexibility can always opt for VMware.

Apr 09, 06 - 01:55 pm Comment from: Jooop

*Yawn* Why would anyone want to pay to use VMWare when MySpace is free?

Apr 09, 06 - 05:07 pm Comment from: Object-X

Who was saying Bootcamp would cause developers to stop developing for OS X? Makes me laugh.

Apr 09, 06 - 06:07 pm Comment from: gypsy

Boot camp will allow Windows to actually compare Windows and OSX; not just an hour or a day, but all day every day. It takes time to actually use a new OS and get comfortable with it.

As Mac users, we should be more confident that they'll convert and Mac developers will have a bigger base to program for. We already know how good it is.

Apr 09, 06 - 07:41 pm Comment from: Jim - the independent voter

Jooop.... yer killin me man. Great paraphrase of an obscure quote from a nutcase in a previous thread.

Apr 09, 06 - 07:44 pm Comment from: MacMania

Day late and a looney short®.

Too bad AAPL will release a better vm solution in Leopard and there's going to be a bunch of other competing solutions including Open Source come Q4.

Rock on Steve!
raspberry

Apr 09, 06 - 07:57 pm Comment from: iDon't

When I first read the headline, I thought I would be able to run a Windows program without having Windows installed. Now that would be magic.

Apr 09, 06 - 09:18 pm Comment from: Neil

My question is won't virtualization slow down both OSes if they are running at the same time?

Apr 09, 06 - 11:33 pm Comment from: mike

My question is won't virtualization slow down both OSes if they are running at the same time?


----


ABSOLUTELY.. use Mac Boot Camp instead.. this is dumb..

Unless its a VERY small app you want to run.. in which case.. why would it be so hard to port.. boot windows for the specialized app.. virt. is lame

Apr 10, 06 - 01:31 am Comment from: UndercoverMacBrother

Well, I guess you just have to see it in action to appreciate it. Of course the more memory the better, but with the price of memory it's a non issue. Mom and Pop may not get it right away, but all the developers out there stuck using an ugly PC will.

Apr 10, 06 - 04:42 am Comment from: Edgeley Exile 44

This would have one major advantage over Boot Camp. VMWare machine images are portable between Windows & Linux hosts. If VMWare port this feature, you would be able to run a virtual machine on a Mac that had previously been created by a Windows user, or vice versa.

Very important for developers and webmasters, who regularly need to test code against a pre-built software baseline.

Apr 10, 06 - 05:05 am Comment from: AllOverThis

There's an overwhelming need for this virtualization. Serious users in the hard sciences are already drooling over this.

My experiment uses a 900+ package monster of a code base to do what we do. It builds on a RHEL system (with our computing needs and diversity, linux/OSS is the only way we can pay for it). I design code for DSPs in the experiment. Code Composer Studio - Windows only.

The fact that I can run almost everything in OS X, develop the DSP code in a toy XP environment, and run RHEL for the serious tools I need - all at once - ~natively - and do iit fast and well...

There will be a lot of Macs sold here now that there are no tradeoffs. Woohoo! Need bigger disks now.

Apr 10, 06 - 07:55 am Comment from: Jeff

There IS a god!

Apr 10, 06 - 08:33 am Comment from: Macaday

What we need is a Rosetta translator for Win-apps to run on OSX. No-one will give a monkeys if the odd Win-app runs a bit slower, and there'd be no big performance hit on OSX by running any awful Windows infrastructure...

Apr 10, 06 - 10:05 am Comment from: Mr. Reeee

I don't want ANY flavor of Windows on MY Mac. If I HAD to load Windows, though I can think of no reason TO load Windows, I'd keep it COMPLETELY segregated from my Mac and load it on a separate hard drive.

I guess I don't quite get what virtualization actually is.

1.) Does it mean you can run several COMPLETE OSes concurrently?

2.) Does it mean that you can run a specific application from any OS alone, WITHOUT the need to run the entire OS?

For me, the ideal would be to run a Windows app without having to load ANY amount of Windows on my Mac.

Apr 10, 06 - 10:34 am Comment from: slackerdave

>I guess I don't quite get what virtualization actually is.
>1.) Does it mean you can run several COMPLETE OSes concurrently?
>2.) Does it mean that you can run a specific application from any OS alone, WITHOUT the need to run the entire OS?
>For me, the ideal would be to run a Windows app without having to load ANY amount of Windows on my Mac.


VMWare uses the underling features of x86 to virtualize the machine. The VMWare application hosts the guest operating system in such a way that the guest os thinks it's running on it's own x86 machine. This means there's NO translation of code so speeds are fast enough that you don't really notice it. But since it's wrapped in a native OS application you can copy and paste/dnd between the guest os and your hosting os.

So. 1. Yes... You can run as many VM's that you have RAM for.
2. No

But each guest OS lives on a disk image. SO you can start a gust os in such a way that any changes are NOT commited to the disk image.

This sort of thing is VERY useful. I used to run a linux box as my dev workstation. Used VMware to host different versions of windows w/ known configurations. Then could try out installers and test things in those vms. Next test? Just restart the vm and you're right back to a known state.

Other cool things:

- The network is virtualized too. So all your vms can be on their own subnet which is completely contained in your host machine.
- network shares are automatically configured so you can move data back and forth quite easily.
- Standard VMImages can be stored in central repositories... You need a copy of win 98 w/ sp1? Go grab it out of the repos.

Apr 10, 06 - 10:46 am Comment from: Mr. Reeee

slackerdave...

Thanks for the illumination. it does sound like it has massive potential.

I'd guess that nobody's grandma will be give a damn about it, either.

Apr 10, 06 - 10:58 am Comment from: slackerdave

>Thanks for the illumination. it does sound like it has massive potential.

VMWare has been around for years... I paid for it myself back in
2000 so I could run a few windows apps on my dell laptop w/ linux.

>I'd guess that nobody's grandma will be give a damn about it, either.

No of course not. That's not who it's for. It's perfect for developers and it's perfect for business types who need a critical app that is windows only. I personally know an accountant who wanted to move to a mac years ago. but the performance of VPC was just too bad for the accounting app she uses.

Her firm is a perfect example of a true small business who would be much better off with a bunch of macs but they just couldn't operate without that accounting application. They spend thousands per year on antivirus, outlook problems, windows problems etc. Linux was too much of a jump for them.... but OSX with VMware... that's a LOT closer to something they would jump for.

Apr 10, 06 - 11:23 am Comment from: TB2

We use VMware for a boatload of our test/dev servers. It's great. I can't wait for the Mac version, which should let you run WXP or Vista, and separate OS X session virtually as well. Moneys.

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