OSX Emulation On A PC?

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/' target='_blank'>http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/</a><br /><br /></div>Yes, it's true. Some plucky developer has discovered a means to emulate a PowerPC based Mac running OSX on an x86 driven PC. Sound too good to be true? Well it is. So don't get your hopes up just yet. This is a very experimental piece of software and isn't for the faint of heart. Plus it runs extremely slowly. <br /><br />Of course, I would ask the question....Why would anyone want to <i>emulate </i> a Mac when you would be much better off <i>using </i> a real live Mac? The thing is, even if you can emulate the OS, you still can't get a feel for the overall Mac user experience. Software is only as good as the hardware it sits upon, and God knows you can't emulate an iMac or PowerBook...though many PC makers often try and fail regularly. <br /><br />Like OSX? Get a Mac! <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/osxbooted_small.png" />

[entropy1980]

My understanding is th main hope for this is developers to be able to use this much as they do Virtual PC to cut down on hardware costs when developing new software. I bet by the time we get to a 1.0 release we will see similar speeds to what VPC is on a Mac. If anything it quiets all the naysayers who said the PPC architecture was not able to be emulated. having tried it out I can say it works, albiet slowly!

[sundown]

I could personally use this piece of software to see how web pages/sites my company designs look on a Mac. I don't want to buy a Mac because that's all I really need it for. We regularly encounter problems because browsers on Mac (IE especially) aren't the same as on a PC.

[kagayaki1]

Can't say I'm having too many problems with Virtual PC running a Mac OSX image...works very fast.

[Zack Mahdavi]

We regularly encounter problems because browsers on Mac (IE especially) aren't the same as on a PC.

Four tips for developing web sites for the Mac:
1) No one uses IE anymore.. :) The thing hasn't been updated in forever and is a piece of junk.
2) Design your sites for Camino and Safari.
3) The easiest way to make sure if a web page will work well on Safari is to test it out on a Mozilla-based browser in Windows. If it looks good, then it will look good on Safari.
4) Another way of testing if your site will look good on Safari is to check the page on Konquerer for Linux. Remember, Safari runs on a Konquerer backbone.

Hope this helps!

As for this topic, I sort of recently did a similar thing. I had been using Virtual PC for a while on my Mac to run the few Windows tasks I run. However, Virtual PC is incredibly slow... so instead of paying the $200 for Virtual PC, I bought a Dell for $300... :) Much better value!

[Suhit Gupta]

1) No one uses IE anymore.. :) The thing hasn't been updated in forever and is a piece of junk.
Is there any plan for an upgrade/new version? I somehow have this vague recollection that there is.

Suhit

[Kent Pribbernow]

1) No one uses IE anymore.. :) The thing hasn't been updated in forever and is a piece of junk.
Is there any plan for an upgrade/new version? I somehow have this vague recollection that there is.

Suhit

No. Microsoft has officially dropped IE for Mac. It is no longer being developed.

[Mr. MacinTiger]

Eventually, I figured some plucky programmer would figure out how to do this. Very interesting, although with the speed that it runs I cannot see how in the foreseeable future it would be useful for Mac multimedia like iMovie and iPhoto.

[Gary Sheynkman]

there is an easier alternative. Through a series of hack, icons, themes, and applets you can make you PC be almost identical to mac!

[OSUKid7]

there is an easier alternative. Through a series of hack, icons, themes, and applets you can make you PC be almost identical to mac!
Yeah, I don't think you understand what this software does. Just modding Windows doesn't allow you to run Mac apps.

[dean_shan]

No one uses IE anymore.. :) The thing hasn't been updated in forever and is a piece of junk

I've alwas hated IE for Mac. A kind of burning hate. I stuck with Netscape (for mac) until somthing better came out for Mac.

Anyways getting back on topic. The idea is cool but unless it can get the emulation speed to at least 70% it is pretty useless. Imagine trying to do Final Cut on this emulator.