Virtual machines and OS X

[Michael]

I'd like to know what VM's are able to run OS X, and how well.

First, being able to run 10.6 as a guest -- it's my understanding that this was technically possible, but restricted by the license, and the main VM's check for and refuse to run this. (Sniff ... PPC programs ... photoshop elements, quickbooks, appleworks (well, that last one is no longer needed :-).)

Second, 10.7 -- I've got what should be a perfectly valid installer image, and I'd love to be able to use the 10.7 finder instead of anything I've seen that came later. If there's a way to have the 10.7 guest signal the host to open files, that would be wonderful. If not, just running a 10.7 internals is better than nothing. 10.7's sandbox was not very tight, and I keep running into trouble with the 10.9 (main issue stems from trying to keep user files on a different partition than the operating system partition. This means that I have symlinks from inside my home directory on the OS partition to an external partition where I have my files. 10.9 thinks that's suspicious. At the moment, this is mostly tamed, and only causes me problems at login when various files/windows will not restore and throw a sandboxing error in the logs.) Yes, this means running most of my stuff in the 10.7 VM, and only using the 10.9 or 10.10 host for a few things that need the improved video support.

If 10.7 isn't a workable guest, then 10.9 as a last resort. I have one program that I use that does not work on 10.10 -- or rather, the "upgrade" is a paid version change rather than a free update. 

Bonus points for "Fast" video access from guest apps.

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Separately, what VM's are good for running Microsoft windows -- either XP or 7? The goal is one single program -- Dragon Naturally Speaking, and those are the windows versions I have licenses for.