Wired-"Who's Afraid of the Stevenote? Virtualization Developers Should Be"

[aanhorn]

There have been myriad rumors lately that Apple will unveil some sort of homegrown desktop virtualization solution at monday's WWDC keynote, as one of Leopard's "secret features".

new article today in Wired - http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/whos_afraid_of_.html

Apple has somewhat if a history of aping innovative software projects (Konfabulator, VirtueDesktops) and consequently dominating mindshare in those markets.

What do you guys think might happen on monday, and what do you think VMware and Parallels will do if Apple does indeed decide to enter the virtualization market? In my opinion, it would be a shame for Apple to squash these great software products, especially Fusion.

[jonnormand]

I really don't care what Apple introduces. I'll still use\buy VMware's products for one reason: cross platform compatibility.

Plus name me a time when an announcement from Jobs has EVER lived up to the hype. At most I would expect possibly better tie in API's for virtualization solutions into the OS.

[aliasme]

Apple may very well be working on virtualization --- they slipped the shipping date 6 months. Official story: teams were over-committed to iPhone. More likely scenario is getting virtualization right turns out to be a lot more complex than first anticipated.

There will still be a market though as Apple integration does not necessarily mean best performance or feature which appeal to all users. Apple release cycles are very slow and there's no way they are going to release a product which satisfies all types of virtualization users: developers needing snapshots, server virtualization, etc. As soon as they release Leopard, development may continue, but VMWare will have opportunity to sell based on advanced features. The missing market for VMWare with an Apple integrated product will be the casual consumer who views Parallels, VMWare, and iMicrosoft from Apple as equal products. And unfortunately that might be the largest share.

The white-hot competition is fantastic for us consumers, but I hope for the sake of VMWare that Apple decides to stay out of this business. Frankly it's frustrating as a software developer to watch Apple eat it's most innovative software developers over and over again. At least they ponied up cash for CoverFlow.

We'll have a pretty good idea Monday what to expect.

[Andreas_Masur]

the casual consumer who views Parallels, VMWare, and

iMicrosoft from Apple as equal products.

\*lol*...I really hope it would rather be iWindows...

Ciao, Andreas

[trodemaster]

I would be excited to see them virtualize their own OS. Windows/Linux/Solaris X86 is handled at this point. But the missing piece is OS X. Maybe they will borrow solaris containers and put it in os X server.

Blake-

[vinayv]

It could just be wishful thinking on my part, but I am reasonably sure that Apple would not have shoehorned a virtualization platform into the O.S. I do not believe that is a good move for Apple (business wise), nor do they have the expertise to do the job well. Certainly VMware's platform is built on \_years_ of experience, and Apple does not (currently) have that level of expertise in house.

Just my thoughts.

(of course, my thoughts do not reflect the views of VMware).

[Tony_Arnold]

I just need to say (as the developer of VirtueDesktops when Spaces was announced) that VirtueDesktops was in no way innovative. It had some nice features, but virtual desktops have been around for a lot longer than Mac OS X has been on the scene.

Plus - once you use Spaces - you'll understand why I've not been upset - Spaces is really very polished

[vdanen]

I'm not concerned. For one, I don't think Apple will do virtualization, and if they do, it'll probably be something wine-based. Call me skeptical, but I don't see them pulling full-blown virtualization off short of buying another company to do it for them.

Also, even if they did, it wouldn't matter. I guarantee that if they do, it won't be for free. I'd be so shocked if they pulled off virtualization (such as Parallels and VMware) and gave it away for free. There's way too much money in virtualization for a (probably stupid) move like that. In fact, I bet the virtualization is what we've already got; a more polished Boot Camp perhaps.

Finally, anyone recall Microsoft buying out the guys behind Virtual PC? Yeah, that was a crap product on the mac and I never bothered with it on windows, but I'd be shocked if Microsoft's selling Virtual PC impacted sales of VMware workstation much. VMware has way too much reputation, reliability, and dang solidness behind them for people who use it to go wandering. I've been using vmware since version 2. I've paid for each and every upgrade to workstation for Linux within hours of it's announcement (although I've beta tested almost all of them as well).

You don't get much better than vmware. 😃 So even if Apple did manage to pull a rabbit out of it's hat come WWDC, I'll bet I'm not the only who thinks they can keep their new and immature (and I'm betting wine-based) virtualization... I'll still use vmware.

[wdeboer]

Yes, if they did you are also depending on the thrills of Apple and support. Not something I really like to think about.

Anyway I have been using virtual desktops under OS/2 Warp for a long time. I think it came with Object Desktop. See: http://www.stardock.com/products/od20/megashot.jpg

Also it had one of the best word processors ever used: Describe/2.

Maybe I should try to get OS/2 Warp 4 running under Fusion :smileygrin:

[Jonathan12]

Not sure how many years of experience they need when you have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen

Apple does have a well established history of shoehorning open source software into their OS. However I still don't think Apple will do it. Since there are already 3 solutions already out there.

Edit: Gah! When did I make another account on my desktop PC?!

[cragthehack]

I doubt Apple will. Look, Apple is in the consumer business. I mean we all are to a certain degree. But Apple's focus is the living room. Most people using software like Fusion are programmers. Ok gamers MAYBE if anyone ever gets the 3D support worked out (Parallels certainly didn't - 3.0 is TERRIBLE). But people familiar with the cpmputer would use Fusion. Not my mom who uses her mac to spin church songs and watch TV shows.

I mean, almost all of the serious developer software on the Mac is hidden from the average user. Even Terminal.

What you will hear? Apple is (and it's about time) including Ruby (and many gems) in Leporad. So you'll hear about that on monday I bet. That's big. Oh and the rumored file system switch. That would be huge. Apple is warming up to open source it seems. In the past they just threw open source in and let us programmers work it out in terminal.

I will be VERY surprise if they announce a Virtualization app. VM has nothing to worry about. Except counting their coins. Fusion is a stunning piece of software.

[aliasme]

I get your point. You are \_way_ too humble! VirtueDesktops was amazing, useful and unlike other OS X apps. I went out and picked up more LCDs when I learned you discontinued it.

I make the distinction that innovation can exist from derivative design. Apple should engage the small-time developers who create apps and niche markets. I would be very surprised if you did not at least have a product manager ping you to find out who you are, what you do, what the code base is, etc. Microsoft does this, Intel does this, Nvidia does this. When you create a platform and consistently decide to compete with your most prized evangelists it sends very mixed messages. The Apple development community has learned to live with this, but it's a stupid move for long-term business if today's small-time 3rd party developer might become tomorrow's powerhouse software company. It's short-term and too-busy thinking. Apple paid engineers to reinvent or derive virtual desktops when they could have had another voice and some expertise from someone (you) who has spent the past n years thinking about how to solve that problem and the nuances of implementation in OS X.

I have to say though, you are a class act. What are you planning to do next?

[Tony_Arnold]

I am working on a couple of smaller apps - one is for doing web site validation and auditing (it's going to be leopard only) and one is a bit of a demo app to help a good friend of mine learn how to program cocoa. That and pestering real developers I do that more than I code my own stuff.

You'll be interested to learn that a fellow by the name of Florent Bruneau has been submitting patches to VirtueDesktops of late - if you're comfortable with Xcode, check out his work from the VirtueTrac site (http://trac.virtuedesktops.info/). It's much more stable than when I stopped working on it

[jonnormand]

OK somethings up. I can't post a reply with the text I want. It just times out.

I hate to break this to you but people coming from Windows by and large have money invested in software. (In my case a few thousand dollars worth over the last 7 years.) Why do you think Apple's market share only started to grow AFTER they moved to Intel? Its sure not because of Intel's catchy melody.

Its because of the ability to run Windows. That's all I ever hear about now when I talk up my MBP. Oh its one of those new Macs that can run Windows right?

Heck its gotten to the point that some Macs are shipping with the other white meat...

The simple fact is that it is a Windows world out there at something like 90%. I'm not saying Apple is going to do this. Most likely not. But the more I think about it the more of a possibility I think it may be.

Message was edited by:

jonnormand

[jonnormand]

part 2 because apparently VMwares board hates long posts.....

The one BIG thing that makes people think that this is a possibility is that Apple has gone through the trouble of getting BootCamp integrated into Leopard. If they are going to go as far as setting up a dual boot situation with driver development for windows users how unlikely is it that they may go the extra mile to integrate an open source solution like XEN into Leopard as well? All in one and all you have to do is drop an XP\Vista CD into the system. Leopard will detect that its an OS CD and ask if you would like to setup a virtualized OS...Its Apple after all. They can make the setup easy. Heck VMware made the setup easy.

[Linh_My]

My ill-educated guess is that Apple may want to control the OSX VM ecology. So the possibility of a VM system aimed at OSX VMs may be there. I wouldn't rule out some basic Windows support either.

[arraya-halim]

Here is some pure speculation...

They could have a fast-switch mode between bootcamp and OS X that would essentially allow the user to switch between the two OSes in seconds without a full reboot. This would utilize a hibernate-type function where memory state is saved to disk. Each OS would have to be forced to prevent mounting the other OSes disk in order to avoid corruption.

I doubt they'd do anything with Xen. Windows under Xen performance still isn't great. They'd have to modify OS X to be Xen-aware to have decent performance, especially since OS X uses Quartz Extreme to accelerate the GUI and this requires using the GPU, which typically isn't given to a VM. Also, using Xen requires a dom0 kernel, which right now is always Linux. Integrating Xen's patches into OS X to act as a dom0 "host" would require a massive amount of work for Apple. I seriously doubt they'd want to make OS X run as a domU OS, which would then have to be controlled by a Linux dom0.

I doubt Apple would work any kind of a deal with Parallels either. They're based in Russia for one thing, and they've got a pending lawsuit, for another thing. Their development cycles are too short and they haven't really been around long enough for a company like Apple to really trust them with bundling their app into the OS.

I'm not sure if anyone has speculated about this... but I think it is very possible, although I wouldn't go so far to say its likely: Apple partners with VMware to bundle Fusion with Leopard. This could explain the delay in Leopard (time to finish fusion). Fusion would then be tightly coupled with OS X and boot camp, offering a level of integration that couldn't be matched otherwise. Who knows, this may have been arranged from the very start of the Fusion project, althought I doubt that.

[aliasme]

"Apple is very happy with Parallels and VMWare and helping as much as we can."

--Steve Jobs, Apple 2007 WWDC Keynote

[jonnormand]

So the answer to the thread? No one. 😛

[bgertzfield]

I, for one, was extremely pleased to see this in person this morning:

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/06/dsc_5254.jpg

Fusion is really starting to take off! Thanks to everyone for your support and enthusiasm for the goodness that Fusion brings to Mac folks.