Virtual Mac OS X

I won’t bore you with all the details again, since no doubt by now you’ve probably already seen the news—or perhaps I should say hype—about how the End-User License Agreement (EULA) for Leopard Server (Mac OS X Server 10.5) has changed to apparently allow for virtualization of Mac OS X Server.

Quoting the EULA from the originating article:

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Mac OS X Server software (the “Mac OS X Server Software”) on a single Apple-labeled computer. You may also install and use other copies of Mac OS X Server Software on the same Apple-labeled computer, provided that you acquire an individual and valid license from Apple for each of these other copies of Mac OS X Server Software.

Now, this isn’t quite what I had discussed in my last post about Apple and virtualization, but it is a step in the right direction.  Unfortunately, the current EULA limits these virtual instances to be a) version 10.5 only; and b) Mac OS X Server only.  Alas, no virtual instances of “regular” Mac OS X for geeks such as myself, and no earlier instances of Mac OS X either.

Of course, the other big question surrounds who will win the race to produce the first application to provide virtualized Mac OS X Server instances…will it be VMware or Parallels?  To be honest, I’m inclined to say Parallels, but maybe Ben, Regis, and others at VMware can prove me wrong.

Here are a few other links with related information:

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/31/will-leopard-allow-virtualization-of-os-x-server/

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/10/31/os.x.server.on.vm/

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/31/1629236