How can I create an OS X Snow Leopard in Windows Virtual PC?

Question

I am a windows dev, but I have recently found that I need to create a rich app that is platform agnostic. After a few proofs of concept trials, I am electing to go with Silverlight because is based in WPF, and I am moving my windows development in that direction, so the two will dove tail each other.

My latest project requires that I support MAC OS x, so I am targeting Snow Leopard, and I would like to be able to run it in a Virtual PC environment.

I know apple is sort of picky about hardware, so I wonder, is this possible? Can I run OSX in a VM?

Answer 1

No. The license for OS X forbids running it in a virtualised environment on non-Apple hardware with Windows as the host OS.

Answer 2

Get a Mac. Google for "snow leopard hackintosh".

I know there're solutions for VMWare and VirtualBox, but not much about Virtual PC.

Answer 3

David Dorward is wrong. You can definitely run OS X as a guest inside a VM hosted on a Windows PC. People usually use VMWare for this.

However, running OS X in a VM is not a particularly good experience, even on supported host operating systems! You get no 3D acceleration for starters, and sound and network can be finicky and definitely not as well polished as running Windows in a VM.

Answer 4

The only legal way to run OS X in a VM is when running OS X Server in a VM on Mac hardware. This does not help you in what you are trying to achieve though.

There are non-legitimate ways of running OS X on your PC hardware (OSx86 would probably work better if you can get it to work) but if it is for work related purposes and could be a tax deduction for you, a Mac Mini could be a good option.

I went down the MacBook Pro path myself since I like UNIX :) One advantage of this is there is no issue running windows natively or in VM.