mac os x on pc/windows?

C

craigw9292

Registered
Hi,

I can't buy a real MAC and so was wondering if you can run mac os x on a PC or run it in a vmware session?

or does it HAVE to be on MAC technology?

thanks!

C
 
You can run on some x86 Linux versions the Mac OS but only up to 8 version, tops! :D So, basically you cannot have Mac OS...X (aka Panther or 10.3) ;)

Never forget that you can buy a used Mac with $500-$600 and it will be able to run OS X just fine! And maybe it well let you do some things that NO high end Wintels/Amds can duplicate :p
 
Or if you're really desparate, you can get the underlying OS of OS X running. Check out Darwin. Its open source, and it runs on x86. However, it looks nothing like OS X.
 
there are some mac emulatros for mac os but all of them are for mac os 9.x or earlier - all those i saw were indeed for 7.1 to 8.6 and that is pretty old and not what you want (OS X is very different)

more about darwin here:

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

it does not promise on which systems it does run. i was a few years ago wanting to install darwin on a pc .. ended up playing with a lot of linuxes instead, and once i had saved enough money for a mac, just got a mac (it felt like it was what i wanted).
 
ok, well I guess I'll try save up or look for second hand ones!

I do love my pc but I'm sick to death of usb failures and not being able to print etc etc and right now the linux desktop doesn't cut it but I'm sure the macosx does fine, that with virtual-pc I should be good to go :)

Tell me, how do you guys play games? I love things like Westwood's Generals but those things aren't available for mac?

Do any of you develop via virtual-pc on a mac? That is really what a need because my job revolves around .net programming but it does seem a bit dumb to run a mac (stable) yet still have to program in an emulated (xp) which will still cause problems..... not sure its worth it yet. :confused:

thanks

Craig
 
craigw9292 said:
Tell me, how do you guys play games? I love things like Westwood's Generals but those things aren't available for mac?
Click to expand...
If you "love to play games" and intend to play Windows games via Virtual PC you will be a very unhappy camper. Virtual PC has no graphics acceleration and runs at a speed roughly equivalent to a Pentium running at 40 to 50% of the clock of the Mac. That is an inescapable fact of life for any emulator. An emulator has to execute anywhere from four to a dozen or more instructions on the host (the Mac) for every instruction on the target machine (the PC). You would be better off spending the $250 that VPC costs on a cheap PC for game playing.


Do any of you develop via virtual-pc on a mac? That is really what a need because my job revolves around .net programming but it does seem a bit dumb to run a mac (stable) yet still have to program in an emulated (xp) which will still cause problems..... not sure its worth it yet. :confused:
Click to expand...
I develop web pages and sites on a Mac using the full gamut of Macromedia software as well as Adobe Photoshop and validate PC browser compatibility using Virtual PC. It works well for that. I would not want to do any actual code development in VPC, it simply is not fast enough and you still have the same old Windows/PC stability issues.
 
If you are looking for a cheap second hand mac ebay is the place if u get your timeing you can get a realy good bargain. But watch out check you bids right up to the last min. most bids are made in the closeing mins.
 
well there are a lot of great games for the mac aswell

ex :

Star Wars Jedi Knight : Jedi Academy
Halo
Unreal Tournament 2004
Warcraft III :D
Medal Of Honor
Everquest

and soon battlefield 1942 :D

this is just some of the great games

take a look at Inside Mac Games.com


Edit :

i just noticed this :

Command & Conquer: Generals coming soon
ETA: This product is scheduled to ship in April, 2004
::ha::
 
Don't try running any of the Visual Studio.NET stuff under Virtual PC. It's dog slow, unless you have a really fast system.

.NET is a VM-like runtime, running on Windows, which in turns runs in an emulator. It ain't gonna be pretty.
 
hahaha very good - I doubt any good games will ever run under an emulator. Well thanks for all the posts, I think a mac is in my future! I'll use it for what I can and then use a PC for whatever doesn't run on MAC. Nice to see some of those cool games are available!

Craig
 
I actually did have another question - maybe another topic? anyway ....

Being new to MAC I have no idea of the kind of hardware I should be looking for. On a PC I'd be looking for 1Gig of Ram, 80+Gigs of Disk Space and a 1.5G processor, thats for being able to do development etc, using Office and games.

I did see lots of mac's on Ebay with 800Mhz specs, not much ram though.... any ideas? Maybe I'll just have to save and get a dual proc! :D

Craig
 
I've got a Powerbook 12" with 867 Mhz G4 processor and 640 MB RAM.

I use it mainly for programming in Java and C++. I use Netbeans and Eclipse for Java, and JEdit/Makefiles for C++. Speedwise, its alright. I've got no real complaints, but Netbeans and Eclipse do feel a little sluggish at times.

Recently, my powerbook has been running a lot of simulations in MATLAB. Speedwise, it seems very good. 100000 iterations of 4 modified Rossler equations take less than 2 seconds. I'm pretty happy with it so far.
 
Craig a lot depends on what you will be using it for .. like your desktop? Maybe a (used) (G4) iMac or a G4 quicksilver could be fine for you as well.

The more RAM the smoothier OS X run. Don't try anything with 128 mb, it would feel too slow for you. The more RAM the better - once you know how much RAM a model would support, check at www.crucial.com for good RAM prices. :)
 
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