Seems like it would be technically possible, but also illegal (even if you own a legal copy of OS X according to section 2c of the OS X EULA)
Going to give this thread the old bump. I can't believe I'm the only person interested in running OSX on OSX. As for the issue of legality, I don't see Apple's rules as forbiding running OSX on a VM. They may want you to buy a another copy, which is fine, but the idea that they'd prevent it, especially for software testing, is at best humorous. James Hill
It would however not be illegal to install OSX in a VM on a Mac, At worst you would need a family liscence, or run an older version ... etc The bigger problem is making the VM support al the secret hardware the software tests to see if its being installed into a mac. Probably not worth the effort unless you were apple
No, you're not the only one who wants to do this, and though it actually wouldn't be against any license agreement to run Mac OS X in a VM *on Apple hardware*, the Apple license agreement expressly forbids running Mac OS X on anything but Apple hardware. This means that if a commercial VM vendor started doing what was necessary with their product to run Mac OS X in a VM on Mac OS X, they'd be treading dangerously close to potentially allowing it to run in their VM product on other platforms where it wouldn't be running on Apple hardware. Also, there are technical hurdles to be overcome. (And yes, to anyone who may be reading, we're aware that Mac OS X (Intel) has been hacked to run in, e.g., VMWare on PCs already for quite some time, but this is DEFINITELY against the license agreement (that Mac OS X can only be run on Apple-labeled hardware), requires hacking Mac OS X and running it in a completely unsupported state, technically requires pirating Mac OS X since no way to get a standalone license for Mac OS X (Intel) exists, and may be illegal in certain jurisdictions.) Because of the general situation, I don't think any VM vendors are going to be supporting Mac OS X as a guest OS, even ONLY on Mac OS X on genuine Apple hardware, until they get a specific blessing to do so from Apple, and/or partner with Apple on this. However, Apple may be planning to offer its own virtualization that does support Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server itself with Leopard, and therefore may not even get involved with third parties.
But it's important to note that even if Mac OS X would run in a Parallels VM, you'd need to hack it, which is against the EULA (again 2c). Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree with Dave's last post. Nonetheless, it'd be cool to do, especially as Leopard betas are seeded to us ADC members. We could play around with it, without repartioning/reinstalling/etc.
You're not the only one interested in this. I'm somewhat new to Mac development (though I've been doing Windows development forever), and would love to have a VM with a clean copy of OS X for clean testing a deployment package. If it's not going to happen by VM, can anyone recommend another method?
Yes. Set aside a partition for testing. Create a clean OS X install, and keep it clean. Use "asr" to quickly deploy a pristine OS X image to that partition (or FireWire drive, etc.) for testing. "man asr" for details on how to create an image, and quickly deploy it back to a partition/volume.
