Virtualized Mac OS X Machines?

When the Fortune article broke the news about SWsoft acquiring Parallels almost three years ago in a very “quiet” transaction, it also spoke about the possibilities of having a virtualized Mac OS X instance in a virtual machine.

You see, when Apple switched a year ago to using the same standard x86 processors that other PC vendors were using, it opened up the door for this wave of virtualization that is happening on the Mac today.

Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, has always been adamant about keeping control over the hardware used to operate his operating system. But that level of control seems to be slipping away, and virtualization isn’t helping.

The article had Diane Greene, VMware’s CEO, saying that her company’s existing x86 desktop product is already being used by some to run Mac OS on computers from Dell, HP and others, though this was not intentional on VMware’s part.

This is true. After doing a few simple searches on the Internet, there were dozens of people posting about running Mac OS X inside their VMware virtual machines.

SWsoft’s CEO, Beloussov, reiterated Greene’s comments. It seems Parallels has an upgrade to their desktop virtualization product coming soon that will make running Mac OS X even easier on a non-Apple computer. He also insists that this was not deliberate, but a consequence of the nature of the technology, especially now that Intel builds virtualization into its chips.

What will Steve Jobs do? There seems to be growing pressure from the community to allow the Mac OS to run on non-Apple hardware – whether that is within a virtual machine or installed on other vendors’ hardware. Michael Dell has been reported saying that he would offer Mac OS on his Dell equipment if Apple would license it on reasonable terms.

However, I get the distinct impression that Steve Jobs won’t find any of this appealing… no more so than Bill Gates would enjoy having Microsoft Vista turned into open source code!