“When the news came out that Parallels was actually owned by enterprise software maker SWSoft about a month ago, there was a not-so-tiny detail from Forbes article that drew a lot of interest. That detail was that SWSoft’s CEO hinted that it wouldn’t be difficult to run OS X in a virtualization environment. In the same article, VMWare confirmed the comment, saying that they’ve been resisting temptation to do so for seemingly too long. ‘We were trying to do it the way they wanted to, but in hindsight we should have just gone ahead. I wonder what Steve Jobs is going to do, because there is so much pressure to run Mac OS on non-Macs,’ VMWare’s CEO Diane Greene said,” Jacqui Cheng reports for Ars Technica.
Cheng reports, “Well, Parallels has decided that unlike VMWare’s moral conflict over the issue, they have no qualms over being the good guys (in Apple’s eyes), for the time being. Marketing Manager Ben Rudolph responded to my pleas for an answer on the topic, and said that due to the EULA in OS X that forbids virtualization, Parallels will not be enabling users to virtualize OS X anytime soon.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Eric” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Fortune: Michael Dell reiterates he’d love to sell Apple’s Mac OS X if only Jobs would license – January 22, 2007
EULA be damned! ZDNet tests Apple Mac OS X on x86 on 1.2GHz Pentium M Toshiba notebook – November 09, 2005
Until after lunch or my greed raised its lovely head
Good move, Parallels. People who want Mac OS X should get a Mac, period. Running it on crappy PCs sends the whole integrated & unified experience goes down the tubes.
Good thing as why would a Mac user want to run virtualized. I mean sure there is that entire testing issue in large scale environments. There is also the easy restore/backout of bad installers. No it is much better to rebuild the machine for testing then to move a file around. I don’t blame Parallels for this choice, it is all on Apple. Get it right Apple, and allow for this. I am not exclusively a home user. I think in terms of thousands of Macs not one or two.
Want a Mac?
BUY a Mac!!!
They probably got a nice little letter from Apple’s legal team
this would really be bad for Apple, mainly because they don’t use Serial Numbers on most of their Software. Macs sales would go down the drain if everybody pirated OSX on a normal PC.
$5 says they are going to be bought out just before 10.5 is released. Seriously. This really is the last little bit of info that confirms it.
If you have used Parallels, it’s an amazing program. Apple would be stupid NOT to buy the program.
I have to wonder just how fully functional OS X is run in that environment. I mean, isn’t this the “holy grail” for a certain crowd? Why isn’t this all over the news?
The longer I have to wait for a Mac that we can afford at our house .. the more people get to see that crippled piece of crap G3 iMac that I’m currently stuck with. Sadly, they don’t know any better and think they are seeing a typical Mac in action. Needless to say, it’s a horrible fucking embarrassment.
OS X shouldn’t be restricted only to wealthy people.
gwm,
Next time your household is considering a computer purchase, why not go for a Mac mini? Granted, $600 is still a lot of money, but, you’d get OS X on a brand new machine!
nsapap,
Core Duo in the mini, that’s why. We’d be in the same boat as we are with the G3. EOL on the processor or probably darned close to it. And what have I got for a monitor? Nothin’. It’s an iMac. Best I could do is run the iMac’s built-in monitor as a remote to the mini, apparently.
Listen .. we’ll be purchasing a new Mac at mid-year, i hope. But I can assure you that people are indeed seeing what I’ve now and they aren’t liking it.
gwm,
nsapap is right. Mac minis are perfectly affordable solutions to your problem and you can throw together cheap peripherals. Macs are state of the art machines… why would you expect to pay bargain prices for them? Being specifically made for specific hardware makes them awesome… taking that away makes them like that crappy OS Windows. You wouldn’t buy a BMW exterior with a KIA interior would you?
MDN word: although, as in Although I am telling you to get over the fact that they aren’t cheap, I still wish they were.
Why would I ruin a perfectly good Vista PC with a virtualized Mac OS X?
I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at this one: “…there is so much pressure to run Mac OS on non-Macs.” Dream on buddy. Nobody, and I mean nobody wants Mac OS on anything but a bunch of crazed hippy zealots who haven’t figured out how magnificent Windows Vista truly is. 95% of the planet gets it. I don’t know why you Mac lemmings don’t get it.
Don’t listen to the biased reviewers or whiners who can’t install Vista right (probably Mac switchers) but go right to the source: Microsoft. Bill Gates’ genuine enthusiasm has been electrifying because the Chief Software Architect knows he has a winner. Congratulations on a job well done, Microsoft! Great effort!
Your potential. Our passion.
gwm:
You don’t say what G3 iMac you have. I’ve run Tiger on a G3 iMac DV (need the DV for the Tiger install DVD), and it ran pretty well. My only problems were with running video – then it could not keep up. I’m sure the G3 was under Apple’s suggested specs for running Tiger, but it was still pretty good, good enough for most things.
If money is such an issue, consider a used Mac. MDN would appreciate it if you visited some of those used Mac dealers who advertise on this very page. As a Mac IT professional, I have seen many ancient Macs still in active service. i have a client who still has G3 beige boxes as part of their essential hardware. On one of them, the keyboard has been used so much that there is a deep “dent” in the spacebar, from the literally millions of times it has been pressed.
Macs last nearly forever; or as they say, try running Vista on a seven year old FeeCee.
You’d think your visitors would forgive you, as your machine is at least 6 yrs old. I suppose the ram it has isn’t anything to brag about as well? Also you could look into a refurbished machine, and save some money. I feel your pain.
gwm,
I don’t think it’s Apple’s responsibility to allow you to afford a Mac anymore than it’s BMW’s responsibility to offer you an affordable car. Apple is not a stupid company. They will not price themselves out of a market (like they did 15 years ago). They must make a reasonable profit for their employees and shareholders while offering a low enough price to sell.
i learned when money was tight for me that I should not complain about that which I could not afford (beggars can’t be choosers). Hard work and perseverance pays off.
Also, a 20 year old Ford Pinto does not make me think the entire Ford fleet is crap. Other things lead me to believe that their fleet is crap.
Good luck on your savings.
It always draws a crowd. heh.
K. All you guys with the rare goosed-up G3s (how many G3 DVs were ever actually distributed) c’mon in and tell me how they still work pretty good, excepting of course for the part where most of them won’t do video worth beans anymore. And what the heck does Apple have on it’s homepage half the time? .. That’s right. G3-stallin’ out Video. arrghhhh.
Anyways, be assured that I’m exploring all options. Craigslist, eBay, all of it. In the meantime, I’m going to tell it like it is. We already all know how it could be if cost isn’t a concern.
Lastly .. who the heck do you suppose I hang with, financially speaking? Regular people, that’s who. All those folks that are witnessing my old undercapable iMac couldn’t afford a new Mac either.
I say free up OS X for the masses. And hurry up with it, too.
Will Apple, Inc. just go out and buy Parallels/SWSoft already before M$ does?! The Parallels product is too hot right now!
gwm:
Stop whining bout your slow old Mac. I remember it’s not your first time ranting about it.
I love ZT (figuratively speaking).
“Probably Mac switchers.”
This stuff makes my day.
Oh, I agree that Apple should buy Parallels. Are they waiting for Microsoft to lock it up and kill it like they did to VPC? Even if Apple’s Boot Camp ends up being a worthy substitute for Parallels, Apple should grab Parallels preemptively.
Why they’s at it, they had better seriously look at Adobe. A Microsoft purchase of Adobe would be a disaster.
People have been suggesting that Apple get Adobe for years now.
k, Dolita. Will do … and, it’s nice to hear that you’re attentive.
I used to find Zune Tang’s posts mildly amusing but now they are simply tiresome. They don’t provide much humor, aren’t particularly well written, and don’t really advance the dialog.
I DO enjoy those written by Ampar, Unsquirted (who has been hilarious lately) and even Tower Tone. There are some genuinely bright people who post on this site which, in addition to the often brilliantly acidic webmaster, make the site worth my repeat visits.
As for Parallels…I use it on my MacBook Pro and it works extremely well though I find that I have to go to BootCamp for certain functionality. I’m waiting for the cross system interoperability I used to have back in the old Virtual PC days. Dragging and dropping files from system to system is a very useful thing.
Mac OS X is hardly “restricted only to wealthy people” so give it a break. First off, a new Mac mini starts at only $599. Secondly, recent model used and refurbished minis that include both OS X Tiger and iLife are available for as little as $300-400 if you simply look around a little bit. I’d hardly call systems with prices that low as being restricted only to the wealthy.
gwm stop crying about being broke. If you and you friends are broke stop dreaming Mac and BUY A DELL! If you cannot shop at Ethan Allen then go to Value City Furniture. But you do not cry that Ethan Allen should cheapen their prices because you are broke. Save your money up and buy a Mac if you can, but if not GET A PC and shut up already!