Apple @ Work: MacStadium announces free macOS virtualization with Orka Desktop

Apple @ Work is an exclusive offering from Mosyle, Apple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates into a single enterprise platform everything needed to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage, and protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to get millions of Apple devices up and running effortlessly and affordably. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.

MacStadium, a leading provider of cloud services for Mac, including cloud computing, virtualization solutions, and remote desktops, has launched Orka Desktop. This free macOS virtualization tool simplifies the creation and management of macOS virtual machines with a user-friendly graphical interface without adding additional cost to your workflows.

“Orka Desktop provides the tools for developers to build many different versions of macOS images locally, save them to a shared repository, and push them out for collaboration. Developers can also scale further by pooling these resources into an Orka cluster on MacStadium where you can orchestrate workloads with cloud resources,” said Chris Chapman, CTO of MacStadium. “Because Orka Desktop wraps and compresses your macOS image to an Open Container Initiative (OCI) compliant specification and density, this can mean a 90GB image is reduced by 80%, getting it down to nearly 15GB, making it much easier to move. The OCI wrapper also allows teams to work with most standards-based registries.”

As more developers focus on building, testing, and deploying macOS and iOS apps, Orka Desktop is a great free virtualization tool. It offers reliable and standardized development environments. An Apple enterprise report reveals that 76% of large enterprises have increased their use of Apple devices in the past year. This virtualization ensures consistency across development, testing, and production, significantly increasing operational efficiency.

“Developers use virtualization tools regularly, but most aren’t aware of the fundamental differences and optimizations these tools can bring to the Mac. We designed Orka Desktop to be the most powerful and standardized macOS virtualization tool for Apple Silicon. Users can create or download custom macOS images locally for their own use, and collaborate with team members using familiar workflow, versioning, auditing, and review controls. Ultimately, teams get the consistent environments they need,” said Jason Davis, Chief Product Officer at MacStadium.

Orka Desktop allows developers to quickly and effortlessly set up macOS virtual machines. It’s perfect for those new to Mac virtualization and development team members looking to build and test locally. Key features include:

• macOS’s free local virtualization gives developers robust tools to create, package, and distribute virtual machines at no cost.
• Near-native performance on Apple Silicon, with virtualization overhead as low as 5% in most cases.
• A seamless workflow for image creation and sharing, simplifying collaboration and content distribution.
• An intuitive graphical interface that supports virtual machine actions from on-premises to the cloud, improving both efficiency and flexibility.

9to5Mac’s review

The additional virtualization options in macOS are a huge benefit for users of all types, whether they’re home or business. It’s great to be able to quickly spin up virtual machines to test new settings, application workflows, and builds without any additional cost. While it doesn’t have some of the enterprise management features of other virtualization tools, it’s hard to beat the cost of the free version.

One thing to note: Orka Desktop doesn’t support Linux or Windows virtualization, so if that’s part of your needs, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Particularly as organizations ramp up their testing of macOS Sequoia, Orka Desktop offers a free option for testing.

Apple @ Work is an exclusive offering from Mosyle, Apple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates into a single enterprise platform everything needed to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage, and protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to get millions of Apple devices up and running effortlessly and affordably. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is all you need to work with Apple.