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Sasquatch wrote:I've also heard that there are (or were) ideas to make Mac OSX support for PUEL only. Since I haven't heard any user here with the OSE trying to run Mac OSX, I can't confirm nor deny this 'rumour'.

I ran a Max OSX Server guest in OSE for a while, but I eventually switched to the closed-source version for USB support.

Hi all.

Thanks for all the hard work and the great progress all way to 4.1.6

But really, I have to bring this up again.
Any news about MacOS Guest additions?

Thanks

I have been waiting for this since long back. When will be it ready?

This is a user run forum, the devteam don't keep us informed of future plans, so your guess is as good as mine.

However, if you want my guess: the work will be done when enough of VirtualBox's paying customers put pressure on the devteam to do it. Recognize that such pressure is unlikely to be high since the OS X license terms limit the potential market to Apple hosts, a small market made even smaller by the fact that most Apple host users will be primarily interested in running Windows VMs.

Another two years have passed since the last post to this thread, and it is five years since it was started. Sadly there is still no apparent progress on the availability of guest additions for OS X guests.

In that time the absolute numbers of OS X users and the percentage market share of Mac users has increased considerably. Furthermore there is at least one major OS X server issue that would hugely benefit from OS X guest additions which is that SMB support in OS X versions from Lion onwards causes a huge number of problems to many people and the ability to run Snow Leopard Server in a guest on real Mac hardware would be a solution to this. Yes one can now run Snow Leopard Server as a guest but the lack of guest additions makes it impossible to 'share' directly the storage of the Mac host other than via a network mount which does not necessarily provide the level of functionality desired.

Note: To Linux and Windows developers who may not be aware of this, unlike Linux and Windows, OS X makes it impossible to run older operating system versions natively on current Mac hardware. While it is perfectly possible to run older Linux and Windows operating systems natively on current PC hardware the same is impossible with Macs and OS X. Therefore running older OS X operating systems inside a guest is the only way to achieve this. This would be of course on genuine Mac hardware and would therefore be legally complying with Apple's licensing terms.

The guest addition feature I am particularly looking for is shared folder support - network mounts are not an adequate solution, if they were then logically there would also be no need for guest additions for Linux and Windows guests. However currently OS X guests suffer in many areas such as limited video resolution support, inability to support multiple CPU cores, pitiful video performance, etc. etc.

I see there is a several year old 'bug' report regarding this issue which appears to have been completely neglected by the developers. See https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9987 perhaps if other users sharing this desire add their 'me too' comments to this it will be 'voted up' in terms of importance.

I would just mention for Oracle to be interested in creating OSX guest additions their commercial subscribers would have to be interested. Since there has been no attempt to create guest additions for Macs, one could assume there are few commercial customers clamoring for them.

I would also mention calling a non-existent feature a bug is like saying my fridge has a bug because I can't watch TV on it.

Lastly, shared folders are even less capable than true network shares.

jelockwood wrote:Another two years have passed...

What didn't you understand about my previous post, i.e. the one above yours? Nothing material has changed in the time since I posted it.

As to the incredible success of OS X, I came across the following graph in an online magazine from September last year.
The magazine was pro OS X and making the same point as you, i.e. that OS X share is rising... but when I look at the graph I see something different: that Windows in various versions accounts for about 90% of the market, OS X share is about 8%, which puts it even behind Linux, and the rate of growth is so low that it might take a century to overtake Windows - assuming it was sensible to project the graph that far (which of course it isn't). Factor in what percentage of OS X users are also VirtualBox users, then the percentage of those who want OS X guests on OS X hosts (the only legal combo), and then the percentage of those who are willing to pay. My guess? As near to a 0% market share as makes no difference. I wouldn't get out of bed for that market.

Feel free to post again when those numbers switch around.

p.s This :-

network mounts are not an adequate solution, if they were then logically there would also be no need for guest additions for Linux and Windows guests.

Is simply incorrect. GA shared folders are designed to be simple for novice users to set up, and don't require the user to configure a network connection between guest and host. The may also be more secure because of that. Otherwise, GA shared folders are inferior to a true network share. Performance is poorer, and some things plain don't work at all.

I would just add there are two commercial hypervisors that support OSX guests back to 10.7 and they also support OSX Servers as far back as 10.5. If running early OSX servers or running OSX with guest addition support is that important, save your pennies. For that matter, one can find working Macs that can run the software natively.

Where there's a will there's a way.

Would greatly appreciate some exciting news here -> like -> "We have a beta OS X Guest Addition".

They would be idiots if they were working on any such thing (read last few posts for why). And I don't think they are idiots. I'm quite confident that if you come back in 5 years then the situation will not have changed, unless a third party donates the work - and unfortunately the market realities apply to third parties too. GAs for OS X would simply be a huge waste of time.