MacOS – virtualize Lion on Apple hardware running Linux without violating the EULA

Having extensively used VMware Fusion (all the versions from 1 beta till 3.1), Parallels (from their first public release till 5.x -haven’t yet upgraded to 6) and a lot of VirtualBox versions (Although I stopped using it six months ago), I can say that for Windows both Parallels and VMware ran circles around VirtualBox in terms of features, compatibility and speed.

I used to compile .NET code inside those Windows and the speed of VMware and Parallels was superior (I went ahead and clocked different timings).

VirtualBox’s advantage was (and still is) price. For a lot of stuff VirtualBox is enough, but it’s still (as far as I understand) slower than its two (only) competitors.

The advantage you have is that VirtualBox is free, so you can start trying it now, and both VMware and Parallels offer trial versions you can try. If you’re serious about finding the best virtualization solution for your scenario, I suggest you take the appropriate time to test all three options yourself.

I’m personally using Parallels 5 these months, because it worked better than VMware 3.1 for my Visual Studio C# very big solution. However, I’ve used VMware and skipped Parallels 3 and 4 because they were more unstable and slow (for me).

I didn’t want to upgrade to Parallels 6 because they annoy me with their $49 upgrade price that you have to pay every year.

Is this possible? Legal? If so, what are the drawbacks and tricks

As of OS X Lion 10.7, the EULA permits you to use the OS in two virtual machines, on Apple hardware:

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.

This was first allowed with OS X Server 10.5, and both VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop allow you to easily setup an OS X guest machine, as does VirtualBox

An OS X guest on non-Apple hardware is possible with some fiddling, but is in violation of the software's EULA (i.e doing so is of questionable legality..)

iTunes, running in a VM, will be able to see the iPod/iPhone/iPad. As long as the USB can be connected to the VM. So this depends on which setup you are using. The above should explain the legalities of the OS X and VMs.

You can install Linux on Apple hardware, then run a VM of OS X (10.7 and above) on the machine to be able to use iTunes to keep the library in sync and updated, etc., and it won't cause you any issues.