Citrix brings another Virtualization option to the Mac Platform

Citrix (via MacRumors) demonstrated a new version of its Virtualization software for the Mac Platform this week.  As a background, Citrix has had Windows client software for the Macintosh since OS9 which allows you to login to a Windows box somewhat like VNC.  They’ve also built an iPhone client for this functionality which we covered last year.

This new virtual machine software they’ve produced for the Mac is much like VMWare Fusion or Parallels in functionality but operates on a lower level, letting the Windows partition have native access to hardware like the 3D card, thereby theoretically giving you Boot Camp performance in a virtual machine.  Citrix is enterprise player so they haven’t really explored the usage for gaming.

There is a quick demo below.  You’ll want to head to the 42:30 marker for the "One More Thing".

http://www.citrix.com/tv/s/tv/players/ctv_viral_1_0.swf?ctv=423&autoStart=false&height=412&width=486

This is also interesting because it makes a virtual machine out of the MacOS called "Type 1 hypervisor".  While initially you might consider that only MacOSX Server is allowed to be virtualized, Citrix is able to circumvent this restriction by running the virtualized MacOSX on Apple Hardware.  IT still seems like a gray area to us.  We’ll see how/if Apple responds.

Interestingly, you could theoretically use this software as another way to run MacOS on PC Hardware.