Hardware virtualization uses a hypervisor to create virtual machines that run directly on physical hardware, allowing near-native performance. Emulation, on the other hand, imitates hardware entirely in software, enabling the execution of programs designed for different architectures but with significant performance overhead. With this in mind, we can imagine how certain operating systems should or shouldn’t run on a ‘Book depending on the chip inside it. Of course the older and less resource intensive an OS is however, the less it will even matter that it is even being emulated as it won’t take as much oomph to run.
While there weren’t many options in the PowerPC era, you could at least work with two popular ones – Microsoft’s Virtual PC 7 and QEMU. Both allow for Intel platform emulation, Virtual PC 7 can even muster a Windows 7 installation, however there is a large swathe of operating systems which refuse to boot or install on either app.
In the Intel era there are more options, namely: Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMware fusion. Later on down the line UTM came along and provided a super-flexible app based off QEMU that provides both virtualization and emulation. This app is available for both Intel and Apple Silicon platforms, and will emulate or virtualize depending on which platform you are natively using versus the target platform of the OS you intend on using inside the app.
Advantages Virtualization and Emulation
In a nutshell they are doing nearly the same thing except in what tools they use to get the job done. A hypervisor shares the host’s resources for virtualization, yet emulation uses the app to “trick” an operating system into thinking it’s being installed on the computer it’s supposed to be installed on. An emulator/in emulation, the app talks to the computer to then talk to the operating system that’s meant for a different platform – and this takes additional resources and processing power. Often running below native speed if it’s a newer OS.
Virtualization is advantageous because:
- More efficient resource utilization: You can run more virtualized VMs overall or smoothly, typically over emulated VMs.
. - Full hardware acceleration: Native hardware means the VM will almost always run at native speed, or at least guarantees a fair shot at running way faster than an emulator almost all of the time.
. - Hardware customization is still possible: In UTM you can select different hardware than your native hardware when virtualizing. You may also configure your device accordingly as needed.
. - In locked down computers that don’t allow a 3rd party OS and stops receiving updates: If the resources are balanced more toward the virtual machine than the host in this very specific scenario, you can continue using the machine and not at all deal with the boot loader, getting some more life out of the machine. Especially if the VM is super responsive.
Emulation is advantageous because:
- You can break outside the box: The point of emulation is to run whatever you want on whatever you want. You aren’t limited to the native architecture and instead by what app you’re even using. UTM can emulate many platforms. There are also video game console/handheld emulators, too.
. - Try hardware configurations in emulation not possible with real hardware: A Power Mac G4 in real life can only go up to 2 GB of RAM and if you’re lucky you’ll find the unicorn Dual 2 GHz G4 CPU aftermarket upgrade. In an emulator, a Power Mac G4 can have as much RAM as the app/OS/circumstantial configuration/programming allows.
. - You can do much, much more: If your computer is powerful enough and versatile enough, you can have it all: Old windows OSes to Windows XP, Windows 8 and 11, all the classic macOS OSes, Playstation games, Nintendo gamecube games, etc; It’s like having every console or computer every made but inside one machine!
. - Side note for UTM, Intel Macs, and QEMU for PowerPC Macs: Since UTM is QEMU-based, it may or may not be possible to setup/install OSes on a UTM VM and then transfer the VM disk image to a PowerPC Mac to speed things along or to avoid roadblocks which previously prevented an OS from installing. Some OSes may or may not boot with a completed install but may not install themselves. Just a thought.
The case for keeping an Intel Mac
(Above: What I have in UTM on my Mac mini desktop)
When Apple came out with the Apple Silicon platform they announced Rosetta 2 alongside it. Rosetta 2 is a dynamic binary translator allowing M-Series Macs to run Intel Apps. It translates x86-64 instructions into ARM x64 in real time, enabling compatibility with older software. While there’s a slight performance overhead, Rosetta 2 optimizes frequently used code for better efficiency, keeping many Intel apps running smooth on Apple Silicon.
Rosetta 2 runs Intel apps astoundingly well as it uses AOT (Ahead Of Time Compilation) as well as JIT (Just In Time Translation) support. While UTM uses JIT on a Mac, it can only do so much pulling the weight of an entire operating system versus just an app, plus UTM isn’t optimized the way Rosetta 2 is.
I learned after spending some time with the new 15″ M4 MacBook Air and came to a conclusion: Intel OSes run way faster on an Intel Mac than an Apple Silicon Mac, and ARM OSes run way faster on an Apple Silicon Mac than they do an Intel Mac. In fact – the M4 MacBook Air stays cooler when virtualizing Windows 11 and runs faster than the 2018 15″ MacBook Pro virtualizing Windows 10 or Android. Way cooler. It’s no fault of the M4 MacBook Air or 2018 15″ TouchBar MacBook Pro, but a matter of fact – in the case of a newer and more resource intense OS it will run way faster on native hardware, always. Intel OSes run but not as fast as I’d like on the M4 MacBook Pro.
- As Intel Macs are no longer made and keep aging, they will only get cheaper before bottoming out in value. Some will inevitably rise in value somehow, but only time will tell if and when this would ever happen.
. - Late Intel Macs especially since Coffee Lake (8th Gen) have increased core counts and are decreasing in value. They make excellent hypervisors and are plenty fast. The 2018 Intel Mac mini is a good choice.
. - In my own testing, x86 Windows and Android run super fast on a 2018 mini or 2018 MacBook Pro.
. - You’ll get backwards compatibility for apps on a platform that’s been around for decades but at a more native speed and a far lesser performance penalty.
. - You can also get a Mac Pro 3,1 – 5,1 as they are bottoming out in value and have strong Multi core performance rivaling many of the later Intel Macs after 2015.
. - Most late Intel Macs aren’t worth much for an Apple trade in these days anymore.
. - $300 USD is more than enough to get your hands on a high performing Intel Mac.
While I don’t have anything particularly tying me to the Intel platform, I like to hang onto my older Macs if I can, and it’s nice to have a little extra utility out of depreciating hardware.
Using UTM on the 15″ M4 MacBook Air
What blew me away was how astronomically fast the 64-bit ARM build of Windows 11 would boot, launch apps, and shut down. I included a video in a previous article which I’ll again link below, it’s worth seeing. But when it came to emulating a PowerPC G4 CPU for Mac OS X Leopard or running Kubuntu 23 64-Bit for Intel, things were slower and steadier. The lighter the OS was, the faster it would run – Mac OS X Tiger runs kinda quick on the M4 MacBook Air.
To illustrate the performance penalty emulation has, take a look at the difference side by side. The first video is Windows 11 ARM x64, the second is Ubuntu 23.10 in the same app. The first one is Virtualized, the second is Emulated.
Using UTM on a 2018 i7 Mac mini
As in line with how Virtualization works, Intel OSes boot faster on an Intel Mac than they do on an Apple Silicon Mac. This effect may be observed below. If you watched the above video on how long it took to boot Ubuntu 23.10 on the M4 MacBook Air, compare it to the video below where Kubuntu boots in UTM except on a 2018 mini.
Virtualizing an Intel build of Windows 11 on a 2018 Mac mini:
Emulating a PowerPC Mac on a 2018 Mac mini:
Obviously any M-Series from Apple is newer than the 8th-Generation set of chips from Intel so there’s going to be better single core scores with many M-series chips also punching high in multicore, too. But it’s noticeable how ARM OSes boot faster in UTM on an M4 MacBook Air (and produces less heat) than an Intel OS booting in UTM on an Intel Mac.
VMWare Fusion on an older Intel Mac
You can use just about any old Intel Mac as a hypervisor, even the first generation of Intel Macs. To illustrate the effect of this, I recorded a short video booting Lubuntu 24 on a 20″ 2006 iMac. It works, and for the sake of the stunt – now you can run the latest version of Firefox on this absolutely outdated Mac even without leaving macOS.
- Older versions of VMWare Fusion are abandonware, and essentially you can grab it for your Mac on the garden.
Bonus: Windows 7 in Virtual PC 7 on a Power Mac G5
Emulation is emulation, right? Well, here’s a video of Windows 7 booting to the desktop and opening Control Panel (albeit painfully slowly) on a Dual 2.0 2003 Power Mac G5 in Virtual PC 7.0.3 in Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard. It’s painfully slow but it works, it will launch apps, but it struggles connecting to the internet.
In Conclusion
It’s clear the differences between running an OS natively versus emulating it, and the later generations of intel machines are an entirely different beast versus the earlier ones – making them a viable candidate as an Intel hypervisor. Emulation stretches the wings of a computer (or rather bolts on as many as you’d like), giving it the freedom to fly wherever it wants without restriction. Virtualization is like a maglev train – there are rails in place and is stuck only wherever there is track, however, magnets natively react to magnets. So the maglev flies. Running a bunch-a different OSes on an older Mac with the ease of use UTM offers gives another reason to hang on those old Macs!
