“Chameleon” Shows Its Colors

April April April

April April April

It would indeed make a great Apple fools joke.

Mash, you screwed up on the font on the front page. Fix, pronto.

Well may be... but this could be also to discourage apple users to put XP on their mac in the idea to wait the next release and install it with the "Official" way ...

I think it is likely that Apple is simply modifying OS X to support the simultaneous operating system capacity ("Intel Virtualization Technology") that Intel chips already have.

It will be interesting to see where Apple draws the line on supporting competitive operating systems, but it could be that they want to be the platform of choice for Windows and Linux users (as odd as that may sound), whereas virtual machines running these alternatives can be explicitly controllable by OS X and it's applications.

Of course, I do not bother keeping up with Microsoft's broken promises for Vista, but I suspect that Apple will crush it in the virtualization arena with OS X. Obviously some BIOS versus EFI issues will have to be overcome, so perhaps Apple will provide some kind of CFM to support virtualization of Vista.

Didn't Sun announce a virtualisation technology called, curiously enough, Chameleon, last year? It used a server and had Java-based clients which ran on any platform supporting JRE. They demonstrated it at Sun Labs Day in Mountain View California in May 2005 and they showed Windows, OSX and Linux 'running' on a Sun Unix platform.

From the original article:

According to Sun, its technology is different from existing offerings in that it works independently of the programming language used for the original application. It runs on any platform, provided it is equipped with the Java-based client software.

"We turn the desktop into a browsing environment," Arshan Poursohi, the project's main developer told vnunet.com. "We don't want the user to know if an application is running locally or remotely."

Project Chameleon clears the way for applications to be delivered in an on-demand fashion through an internet service provider or within enterprises.

However, as with any hosted application, applications delivered through the Chameleon technology suffer from network latency.

This causes a time delay between a user's command and the actual response on the screen. When a window is dragged to a new position, for instance, it can be a short while before it actually moves on the screen.

Chameleon was also supposed to be able to operate with a 'virtual' server on the client, replacing the need for applications such as VMWare. No idea what happened to it, but if I could be bothered to Google I'd probably find out.

Xen anyone?

Xen isn't the same thing, you need to modify the guest os's kernel to make it work with Xen.

i heard the apple mach kernel was pretty slow and xen might be an improvement... one of the lead dudes from xen is working on os x as his pet project...

i heard it on the internet

i heard it on the internet

Ah yes...the internet. The only place where bigfoot and gamer girls exists.

I'm agreeing with Bofors here. Atm, it does seem as if Apple will make use of the Virtualization technology built into the chips. Of course, this brings up an interesting problem for many Hackintosh users, most of which don't have this ability in their chips. This time around, it may be that a simple patch won't be enough for this to work.

As to your point on where they'll draw the line, I think they already have. By only officially letting these OS's run inside a virtual environment, you're being subjected to a substantial performance hit, even with the advantages of Intel's new technology. That way, the environment would give you enough power to handle the majority of tasks, but effectively prevent gaming with the likes of Half Life 2, or CS:S, or other performance heavy tasks. I think this just begs more questions, such as what Apple's stance on the current batch of Intel Macs running XP will be. Will they try to block us out, and limit us to their propietary virtualization technology? Or will they leave us be, deciding that running unofficial versions of windows on their Mac's will simply be without any help or support?

Just my speculation...

Xen isn't the same thing, you need to modify the guest os's kernel to make it work with Xen.

Isn't Xen 3.0 supposed to make use of intel vt-x tech in a way that the guest os doesn't need to be modified?

It would be interesting to know if Core Solo supports VT extensions, I haven't seen any document that confirms this.

The first revisions of Core Duo do support VT but seem to have it disabled by default, depending on the BIOS/EFI to be initialized, as you can read here [wikipedia.org]. Concluding: if Apple wants to use virtualization in Leopard, Core Solos may not be able to run it and Core Duos may need EFI updates.

I wonder if my PD920 does? I thought it did... must google.

In other news, Sun's virtualisation network thingy, and specifically the quote:

"We don't want the user to know if an application is running locally or remotely."

Is about the stupidest thing i've ever heard. Sun Microsystems themselves, during development of what eventually became NFS, famously concluded that there is NO POINT in trying to blur the distinction between local and remote, as its basically asking for trouble.

Fast forward a few years and Windows allows you to manipulate files on an FTP server, or indeed on a network share, with little or no visual clue that the files are non-local, or why operations take much longer. Cue end user confusion, irritation, breakdown of marriages etc etc.

Dont get me wrong, i'm not saying the whole 'apps on demand' thing, or platform agnosticism are BAD ideas, just that they should be obviously different to local apps, so the user understands there is a difference, and that different rules apply - eg network latency, network failure etc.

Tch, its a funny old world.

I wonder if my PD920 does? I thought it did... must google.

According to Intel's D920 Specs it should:-

This processor supports Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T), Execute Disable Bit Feature (NX), and the Virtualization Technology Feature (VT).

You're right about it being stupid trying to hide the fact that the network is involved. Windoze never has got it right. If I power down my Mac when I have its HDD shared on my Windows machine, it takes around three minutes for "My Computer" to open because one of its drives is now 'missing'. How difficult would it be to open the window instantly and just have a question mark next to the drive icon while Windows tries to connect in the background? Doh.