Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4,
full support with 1.6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1.• Mac OS X hosts:
– 10.5 (Leopard, 32-bit)
– 10.6 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit and 64-bit)
Intel hardware is required; please see chapter 14, Known limitations,
page 278 also.
3.1.1 Mac OS X guests
Starting with version 3.2, VirtualBox has experimental support for Mac OS X guests.
This allows you to install and execute unmodified versions of OS X on supported host
hardware.
Whereas competing solutions perform modifications to the OS X install DVDs (e.g.
different boot loader and replaced files), VirtualBox is the first product to provide the
modern PC architecture expected by OS X without requiring any “hacks”.
You should be aware of a number of important issues before attempting to install
a Mac OS X guest:
1. OS X is commercial, licensed software and contains both license and technical
restrictions that limit its use to certain hardware and usage scenarios. It is im-
portant that you understand and obey these restrictions.
As a result, before attempting to install Mac OS X in a virtual machine, make
sure you understand the license restrictions of the Mac OS X version you want
to use. For most versions of Mac OS X, Apple prohibits installing them on non-
Apple hardware.
These license restrictions are also enforced on a technical level: Mac OS X ver-
ifies whether it is running on Apple hardware, and most DVDs that that come
with Apple hardware even check for an exact model. These restrictions are not
circumvented by VirtualBox and continue to apply.
2. Only CPUs known and tested by Apple are supported. As a result, AMD CPUs
will never work at all, and if the Intel CPU is newer than the build of OS X, it
will most likely panic during bootup with an “Unsupported CPU” exception.
3. The Mac OS X installer expects the harddisk to be partitioned so when it does
not offer a selection, you have to launch the Disk Utility from the “Tools” menu
and partition the hard disk. Then close the Disk Utility and proceed with the
installation.
4. In addition, as Mac OS X support in VirtualBox is currently still experimental,
please refer also to chapter 14, Known limitations, page 278.
Note: VBoxSDL is not available on the Mac OS X host platform.
