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Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

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Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#101

Post by m463 »

benoau wrote: post #16
kylec wrote: post #2

This is a very silly restriction, at least to apply uniformly to all Macs. I think if you buy a more powerful Mac they should let you virtualize more Mac instances. Like an M5 maybe limit to 2, but maybe let an M5 Pro do 4 and an M5 Max do 8 or something.

Why should they impose a limit at all? Your hardware is a natural limit, you'll stop of your own accord when you reach its thresholds.

> Why should they impose a limit at all?

Whenever I see apple silliness, I have to remember:

  "You're not the target market."

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#102

Post by kylec »

fortran77 wrote: post #63
kylec wrote: post #2

This is a very silly restriction, at least to apply uniformly to all Macs. I think if you buy a more powerful Mac they should let you virtualize more Mac instances. Like an M5 maybe limit to 2, but maybe let an M5 Pro do 4 and an M5 Max do 8 or something.

I buy a $100 Windows 11 Pro licence, and my limit is 1024 VMs Hyper‑V on Windows 11 supports up to 1024 simultaneous VMs per host if the hardware can handle it. On my little Windows ARM laptop I can easily run 4 VMs before it runs out of steam.

The limit of 2 is just for virtualizing macOS. You can run as many Linux VMs as you want at once on macOS.

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#103

Post by benoau »

VanTheBrand wrote: post #96
JoshTriplett wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make more sense except they don't even have an option to pay for it .

The option is you have to buy another machine. There are mac ec2 instances and several mac cloud hosts that all would abuse this if they could, instead to stay compliant they buy more machines.

(where "abuse" means using the hardware to run software)

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#104

Post by ericmay »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #60
ericmay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand I’m very conveniently enjoying my experience, I don’t have to waste time screwing with stuff I have no interest in screwing with - like the OP’s examples, and if I want to run Linux I’ll just install it and do what I want or rent out some compute time somewhere. Besides, you can buy a Mac and do whatever you want and go buy a bunch of off the shelf components to do whatever hobby stuff you want to d…

> Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself. Nothing wrong with applying limitations to oneself. That's discipline, principles. It's important stuff. The real problem is accepting the completely made up limitations that others apply on you . Corporation wakes up one day and just decides people can't run more than two virtual machines? That's stupid. Actually defending this with…

You’re just living under the illusion of freedom. You are completely dependent on the decisions of others and their good graces for all of your computing needs, from the silicon to the Linux distro you use. You’re just drawing an arbitrary line a little further to feel like you’re in control, but you’re not.

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#105

Post by fortran77 »

kylec wrote: post #102
fortran77 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy a $100 Windows 11 Pro licence, and my limit is 1024 VMs Hyper‑V on Windows 11 supports up to 1024 simultaneous VMs per host if the hardware can handle it. On my little Windows ARM laptop I can easily run 4 VMs before it runs out of steam.

The limit of 2 is just for virtualizing macOS. You can run as many Linux VMs as you want at once on macOS.

There's first class support for Linux on Windows, and Microsoft has a developers VM available for download so you can run as many Windows as you want. I do a Hyper-V Quick Create and there are three flavors of Linux to choose from, or Windows, with all the development tools pre-installed.

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#106

Post by stingraycharles »

jonnrb wrote: post #97
JoshTriplett wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make more sense except they don't even have an option to pay for it .

Yes they do. It's called "another Mac". And I'm not even being snarky here: I legitimately think someone at Apple thought this through and said "yeah if they need more than 2 VMs running at the same time, there are probably multiple users and they can each get their own Mac".

Nah, Apple has been extremely restrictive about virtual machines in all kinds of ways, e.g. the minimum terms anyone is able to lease out a VM or Mac to someone else is 24h, making cloud-like workloads practically impossible. For some reason, Apple really doesn’t like virtual machines, and it’s much more intentional than just “probably multiple users”.

It’s extremely frustrating.

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#107

Post by matheusmoreira »

ericmay wrote: post #104
matheusmoreira wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself. Nothing wrong with applying limitations to oneself. That's discipline, principles. It's important stuff. The real problem is accepting the completely made up limitations that others apply on you . Corporation wakes up one day and just decides people can't run more than two virtual machines? That's stupid. Actually defending this with…

You’re just living under the illusion of freedom. You are completely dependent on the decisions of others and their good graces for all of your computing needs, from the silicon to the Linux distro you use. You’re just drawing an arbitrary line a little further to feel like you’re in control, but you’re not.

Silicon? Sure. Billion dollar fabs are huge single points of failure. It's turning into a problem too due to the war on general purpose computing. Free software doesn't matter if we can't run it. Linux distro? Not really. It's only a matter of how much effort I want to put into things. I can make my own distro, I can't make my own trillion dollar fab.

Anyway, what even is this argument? Can't control everything, so it doesn't matter? Don't even bother trying? Just give up? Just accept your lot in life as a serf in Apple's digital fiefdom? I'm pessimistic about the future but even I haven't completely succumbed to such total nihilism yet.

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#108

Post by stingraycharles »

ralph84 wrote: post #83
moondev wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VM limit only applies to the number of macOS VMs launched from macOS itself. My 2018 mac mini officially supports VMware ESXi to be installed directly on the hardware and virtualize any number of macOS machines Funny enough I can even launch more than 2 macOS vms on my framework chromebook with qemu + KVM from the integrated Linux terminal.

macOS is proprietary software. You need a license for every copy you run, whether it's in a VM or not. The VM limit is written into the macOS EULA. > to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software, or any prior macOS or OS X operating system software or subsequent release of the Apple Software, within virtual operating system environments on each Apple-branded computer you…

This implies anyone doing this using VMware violates the EULA?

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#109

Post by colechristensen »

benoau wrote: post #16
kylec wrote: post #2

This is a very silly restriction, at least to apply uniformly to all Macs. I think if you buy a more powerful Mac they should let you virtualize more Mac instances. Like an M5 maybe limit to 2, but maybe let an M5 Pro do 4 and an M5 Max do 8 or something.

Why should they impose a limit at all? Your hardware is a natural limit, you'll stop of your own accord when you reach its thresholds.

Market design.

They don't want to be in the server business, they don't want there to be third party VM providers running Mac farms selling oversubscribed giving underpowered disappointing VM experiences to users who will complain.

A bunch of folks want Apple to enter a market Apple doesn't want to enter into. They have tools available which would enable that market which they are kneecapping on purpose so that nobody unwillingly enters them into it. The "two VMs per unit hardware" has been in their license for at least a decade.

Re: Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

#110

Post by colechristensen »

fortran77 wrote: post #105
kylec wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The limit of 2 is just for virtualizing macOS. You can run as many Linux VMs as you want at once on macOS.

There's first class support for Linux on Windows, and Microsoft has a developers VM available for download so you can run as many Windows as you want. I do a Hyper-V Quick Create and there are three flavors of Linux to choose from, or Windows, with all the development tools pre-installed.

The only reason Linux exists on Windows is they're trying to redo the 90s playbook of dominating then destroying the competition. I was almost on board in the Windows 10 era, switching a whole lot of my time to doing things in WSL on Windows.

Windows 11 and the walled garden greed they're trying to enable is so bad that this dominating Linux attempt is certainly failing, the only reason I haven't completely ditched my Windows system is that my several TB external drive is at large and I haven't taken the time to actually do it.

Plus Steam and their Wine work is absolutely killing it so the one thing that was keeping me motivated to still have a Windows presence is pretty much gone.

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