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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)

#91

Post by linguae »

herecomesthepre wrote: post #87
hparadiz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware for a Linux laptop right now is not great. Especially for an arm64 machine. Even if the hardware is good the chassis and everything else is typically plastic and shitty.

[flagged]

I have a personal Framework 13 and a work-issued MacBook Pro. I love Framework’s mission of providing user-serviceable hardware; we need upgradable, serviceable hardware. However, the battery life on my MacBook Pro is dramatically better than on my Framework. Moreover, Apple Silicon offers excellent performance on top of its energy efficiency. While I use Windows 11 on my Framework, I prefer macOS.

Additionally, today’s sky-high RAM and SSD prices have caused an unexpected situation: Apple’s inflated prices for RAM and SSD upgrades don’t look that bad in comparison to paying market prices for DIMMs and NVMe SSDs. Yes, the Framework has the advantage of being upgradable, meaning that if RAM and SSD prices decrease, then upgrades will be cheaper in the future, whereas with a Mac you can’t (easily) upgrade the RAM and storage once purchased. However, for someone who needs a computer right now and is willing to purchase another one in a few years, then a new Mac looks appealing, especially when considering the benefits of Apple Silicon.

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

#92

Post by wpm »

tempest_ wrote: post #15
jonhohle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me at least, not being Linux is a feature. Linux has always been “almost Unix” to the point where now it has become its own thing for better or worse. OS X was never trying to be Linux. It would be better if we still had a few more commercial POSIX implementations.

That is fair but in my experience most devs are targeting linux servers not BSD(or any other flavour) which is helped by OSX. If OSX was linux derived it would suit them just as well. edit: I suppose I should also note the vast majority of people developing on mac books (in my experience anyway) are actually targeting chrome.

There is no reality that macOS could be based on Linux.

Turns out, an operating system is more than just a kernel with some userspace crap tacked on top, unlike what Linux distros tend to be.

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

#93

Post by JoshTriplett »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #80
benoau wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rent seeking, of course. They want to charge you for every physical and logical machine you use. Virtualization gets around that. They'd probably charge separately for every feature of the processor if they could.

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

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

#94

Post by icedchai »

morphle wrote: post #59
tempest_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has apple been a serious development platform in the last 20 years? I know a lot of devs like apple hardware because it is premium but OSX has always been "almost linux" controlled by a company that cares more about itunes then it does the people using their hardware to develop.

Apple had real Unix a decade before the Linux crap was made, a bad unix copy. Nextstep was much better than Linux crap. "A budget of bad ideas" is what Alan Kay said about Linux [1], he invented the personal computer. My 1987-1997 ISP was based on several different Unix running on Apple, probably long before you where born. Apple built several supercomputers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmsIZUuBoQs [2] Founde…

Are you talking about A/UX? That was one of the first Unix systems I was exposed to.

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

#95

Post by isodev »

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.

> Your hardware

Ah but when you buy an iPhone or a Mac, Apple sees it as their hardware graciously made available to you for a limited time and under ToS.

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

#96

Post by VanTheBrand »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #93
matheusmoreira wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent seeking, of course. They want to charge you for every physical and logical machine you use. Virtualization gets around that. They'd probably charge separately for every feature of the processor if they could.

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.

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

#97

Post by jonnrb »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #93
matheusmoreira wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent seeking, of course. They want to charge you for every physical and logical machine you use. Virtualization gets around that. They'd probably charge separately for every feature of the processor if they could.

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".

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

#98

Post by JoshTriplett »

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.

And thus they need a massive datacenter full of systems, rather than a pile of paid licenses.

And macOS remains a toy for use only by individuals that is a massive pain for developers to support.

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

#99

Post by jonnrb »

czk wrote: post #8

starting with M3+ you can use Hypervisor.framework/Virtualization.framework to spin up nested VMs. it would be amusing if that bypassed the limit.

Lol with 2 VMs per VM you can do an infinite VM linked list where each macOS hosts a "guest" and a "next host". I'm too lazy to test this out. Any takers?

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

#100

Post by realusername »

wpm wrote: post #92
tempest_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fair but in my experience most devs are targeting linux servers not BSD(or any other flavour) which is helped by OSX. If OSX was linux derived it would suit them just as well. edit: I suppose I should also note the vast majority of people developing on mac books (in my experience anyway) are actually targeting chrome.

There is no reality that macOS could be based on Linux. Turns out, an operating system is more than just a kernel with some userspace crap tacked on top, unlike what Linux distros tend to be.

> Turns out, an operating system is more than just a kernel with some userspace crap tacked on top, unlike what Linux distros tend to be.

This is also my opinion of OSX, let's not pretend that the userland mess is the most beautiful part of OSX.

Apple has great kernel and driver engineering for sure but once you go the stack above, it's ducktape upon ducktape and you better not upgrade your OS too quickly before they fix the next pile they've just added.

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