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Leopard server can legally only run in a VM on Apple hardware though AFAIK. I can legally run (some versions of) Windows on any of our Linux machines, loading

Leopard server can legally only run in a VM on Apple hardware though AFAIK. I can legally run (some versions of) Windows on any of our Linux machines, loading it over the network, provided we don't exceed the license limit. This is _exceptionally_ useful as it allows access to (office|windows only apps) for the 1% of the time it is useful, without paying for the 99% of the time it isn't. To do the same for Macs would require us to buy an entire set of Apple hardware. Rather pointless in a shop where most people use Linux out of choice, and most work is done inside a web browser or Eclipse.

nickb 18y ago
OK... there's a bit of comparing apples and oranges here. Macintosh is a proprietary hardware platform and MacOS X requires it to run. You can run Windows and Linux on the same hardware because both of them support it and VM software easily uses hardware facilities through virtualization. VMWare and Parallels do not emulate everything. So it makes sense that you can't run MacOS X on non-Apple hardware since it was never meant to do that. On the other hand, Apple supports Windows XP and Vista on its hardware and have written a ton of drivers to do just that. Linux folks have done the same and they have written drivers for Mac hardware. Sure, there are such things as Hackintoshes but they have a ton of issues (sometimes fans don't work. graphics doesn't work, drivers missing etc). For Apple to do what you want, they'd have to license VMWare and other VM vendors internal Mac specs so that VMWare can emulate those on a machine that doesn't have them. And this is not beneficial to Apple at all.
- notauser 18y ago
  The fact that they have valid business reasons not to support my use case doesn't magically make my need go away. It's perfectly reasonable for them not to want some people as customers, but virtualisation on Apple only hardware covers nothing like as many people's needs as virtualisation on any hardware and any underlying OS.

nickb 18y ago

OK... there's a bit of comparing apples and oranges here. Macintosh is a proprietary hardware platform and MacOS X requires it to run. You can run Windows and Linux on the same hardware because both of them support it and VM software easily uses hardware facilities through virtualization. VMWare and Parallels do not emulate everything. So it makes sense that you can't run MacOS X on non-Apple hardware since it was never meant to do that. On the other hand, Apple supports Windows XP and Vista on its hardware and have written a ton of drivers to do just that. Linux folks have done the same and they have written drivers for Mac hardware. Sure, there are such things as Hackintoshes but they have a ton of issues (sometimes fans don't work. graphics doesn't work, drivers missing etc). For Apple to do what you want, they'd have to license VMWare and other VM vendors internal Mac specs so that VMWare can emulate those on a machine that doesn't have them. And this is not beneficial to Apple at all.

notauser 18y ago
The fact that they have valid business reasons not to support my use case doesn't magically make my need go away. It's perfectly reasonable for them not to want some people as customers, but virtualisation on Apple only hardware covers nothing like as many people's needs as virtualisation on any hardware and any underlying OS.