Building the Ultimate Classic Mac.

Swift Griggs swiftgriggs at gmail.com
Tue Jul 19 09:08:00 CDT 2016


On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
> I've heard that but I have never once got it to work, either in VMware 
> or VirtualBox. :-(

IMHO, it's a PITA and not really worth it. Hardware-based Hackintoshes can 
be fast and somewhat well supported. You just have to be very careful 
about what hardware you pick. If one decides to build one, I'd recommend 
checking the Buyers Guide on http://www.tonymacx86.com. 

As far as VMware or VirtualBox goes, that's a different story. I've used 
both of them and as of about a year or so ago, I didn't get satisfactory 
results. For one, even when you use an EFI BIOS, you still need to load 
EFI hackery-loaders, and driver-hacks to get it working. I tried to do it 
the "legal way" by buying a copy of OSX Server standalone etc... 

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2005793

Eventually I got a working guest VM with OSX on it, but I think the 
graphics drivers and other niggly bits were non-optimal to the point it 
was just painful and slow to use. It took quite a bit of time even to get 
it that far (lots of trial and error with the guest VM settings). Perhaps 
things are easier these days, but I certainly couldn't recommend the 
process unless you just wanted/needed OSX Server running in a VM for some 
kind of infrastructure stuff. That's probably exactly what Apple intended, 
too.

BTW, I've heard it all runs peachy under OSX. Obviously, I'm talking about 
the host-server being FreeBSD, Linux, or Windows.

With Mac Minis and other OSX hardware being pretty accessible, and with my 
bad-attitude toward most modern commercial OSs (app store full of malware 
anyone?) I'm not enthusiastic enough to jack with VM'ing it much. My 
impression is that Apple seems much more interested in iPhones and perhaps 
tablets these days than some "old" desktop OS.

http://www.osnews.com/story/29299/Apple_PC_sales_fall_below_market

You'd think a company with a bazillion notional dollars equity value would 
have a few spare cycles for keeping the OS interesting. However, lately, 
my impression is that their idea of "interesting" seems to mean they put 
higher walls around the garden. Oh, wait, they are making it mo' betta' 
for to read in traditional Chinese and throwing in a bunch of bundled 
application tweaks that have little to do with the actual OS. Uhh. 
Grreeeeaaaaat.

http://www.apple.com/osx/all-features/

Hey Apple, you might want a modern volume management scheme (ie.. not Core 
Storage) before you slap "Server" on anything else. It's no small wonder 
OSX Server was a failure in the marketplace.

I'd rather install a 20 year old OS I've never seen versus OSX on VMware, 
but that's just me.

-Swift


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