Yes, You Can Run Mac OS X in Windows XP

Many thanks to Aleksandar Vacic and a post in his blog that led me to a Mac emulator for Windows. I’ve been looking for such an emulator for a long time now. Mainly I wanted to get my hands on Safari to test my work. After two days of tweaking I finally got Mac OS X to run in Windows XP on my Inspiron 8200. See a screenie of my desktop (99K, png).

I always wondered why VMWare never had Mac OS on its list of supported operating systems. All flavors of Unix and Windows, but not Mac OS.

Alensandard mentioned a free emulator called PearPC which is a an Open Source PowerPC emulator for x86 computers. Basically it translates CPU instructions to those of x86 CPUs which allows to run a Mac in Windows. As of the time of this writing PearPC is in ver 0.3 so it has a long way to go. It is configured manually via a config file. There are a couple of GUI “helpers” out there but they got outdated faster than PearPC releases, and I had little luck with them.

I’m impressed with this emulator. Truly impressed. By the time is reaches 1.0 it will rock big time. For now the top three things I don’t like about it is speed, speed and speed. It’s pretty slow. For the most part the CPU is maxed out and disk access is very slow. If you browse around a heavy web site expect delays. On smaller sites traffic moves well. If your CPU is ticking at 2GHz or greater you should be fine, though. Plenty of memory is recommended.

You can install OS X from only the first distribution CD. I chose the bare minimum of packages to install and yet it took 3 hours to install them, so plan accordingly.

Network access is what caused the most pain and took the longest. It was nucking futz. Having tried all possible combinations of network settings I ended up using an AnalogX proxy. Don’t download anything big in the emulator. When I wanted to pull down an 88Mb “combo” update from Apple I had to do it in Windows and then FTP it to OS X. If you attempt to download something as big in the emulator you’ll be done in about a week.

Although the emulator is relatively slow at this time, it’s beta than nothing. Don’t get your hopes high to run Photoshop in it—I warned you! But if you simply want to get familiar with the system and/or be able to test your work in Safari PearPC is almost perfect. If it’s of interest to anyone how to set up PearPC (RTFM on their site first), I can write up a “how-to” and post it here. Leave comments below if you’re interested.

Good luck and shouts to developers of PearPC!

That looks neat! I've been looking for a way to test in Safari (although iCapture is good). Do you need a MacOS CD then? I don't have any Macs so hence no CD so that could be a bummer.

Also, in XP what is your right sidebar? It looks very Longhorn-ish (well the clock anyway).

Bruce,

Yes, you need CD1 of Mac OS X. As a matter of fact, you need an ISO of CD1.

The sidebar is called Desktop Sidebar. :) I've had it for a long time now and love it. They have an ICQ panel at last!

where can I d-load an Emulator for XP so I can run Mac OS X on Windows XP Pro, I want/need this emulator to run a program called Garageband for educational purposes. We have this program at school, we run it on E-Macs and they are really dodgey.

please send me a link for the download if any knows of one.

thanks

Andrew, PearPC *is* a Mac emulator run on Windows XP. I think it'll be a bit slow for Garageband, though.

On a x86 2.5 Ghz with Win XP in fact PearPC is too slow..!
I also tried PearPC emulation on a friend of mine Linux PC (2.4 Ghz) and - believe me - it's twice as fast !! I thought this only happened in Games !
So I copied my Windows Image to a new Linux Box and deleted my XP. Now I have a brand new G4 side by side in my FC2 Linux.

Thanks PearPC guys !!
You are Great !!

Well,
where can get Mac ISO CD, Also, is there any needed procedure to install it?

The reason VMWare doesn't support Mac OS is because Mac OS only runs on the PowerPC, and VMWare doesn't translate between x86 and PowerPC.

I don't seem to be able to get PearPC working. Granted, I am attempting to load it up with a Linux Operating System, but I was just testing it for the ISO (as I don't have a MacOS ISO yet).
I was just wondering if the offer by Milan for the configuration file was still available?! Although the original post of this was put up some time ago, hopefully someone will respond!
One last thing, does the ISO need to be a .img, or can it be .iso .. ?

Unfortunately, I don't have the same configuration anymore. I bought a real Mac since then. :)

Btw, check out CherryOS. It's a new Mac emulator for Windows. Supposedly it's faster and *is* a commercial product.

Is there an emulator that doesn't need the MacOS CD at all? I only want to use Safari to test some webcoding - don't want to have to buy a whole apple OS just for that.. :(

No, there is no standalone Safari build. Now that they are switching to Intel CPUs, maybe they will make their browser truly cross-platform.

I agree with "Acting". My question exactly.

just use microsoft virtual pc

I believe VPC can't host MacOS.

I don't know how outdated this post is, anyway

http://www.apple.com

They have the new iBook's that run on Intel processors.

I understand how their software USED to only run on PowerPC archicture,

but know Intel is the x86 so VMWare should be able to run Mac OS Tiger or the release of 10.5 when it happens

You'll still need a Mac OS CD but it should work with VMWare.

If that does work then I'm getting Mac OS to install on VMWare

Or, Maybe becuase Mac OS Tiger will run on intel x86, so I could just multiboot Windows XP with Mac OS 10.4 on my actual hd, on a different partition of course.


(Normally word verification bugs me, but I have a blog and know how annoying comment spam is ;))

VMWAre does work with Mac OS X for 80x86, but it's bloody slow (i'm using 2.4 GHz P4 with 2 GB RAM)