Have you ever wanted to give Mac OS X a try, but you either:

• Don’t want a Mac
• Can’t afford a Mac
• Don’t know how to hackintosh
• (All of the above)

Well, virtual machines can make running Mac OS X on a PC extremely simple. Should you do it? Of course! It’s so easy to do, that everyone should do it.

What we’re doing here, is pretty much making a hackintosh inside of a virtual machine (in this case, VMware Workstation 7 for Windows XP/Vista/7).

You could always make a hackintosh, but your system may not be *fully* compatible. Doing this in a virtual machine instead of natively ON your machine is a safe and simple process for anyone.

Pros

• Run the latest version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (including 10.6.2) on ANY PC.
• Quite speedy.
• Simple and safe alternative to hackintoshing.

Con

• Only one: No hardware video acceleration (QE/CI). Without QuartzExtreme and CoreImage, graphics will be laggy, and a lot of programs (such as iMovie ’09) will not run. Why? Because there are no display drivers. But don’t let this ruin everything, as you can still run other things, like iTunes, Tweetie, Adium, etc.

Demo video

*Being worked on at the moment.

Requirements

1. VMware Workstation 7 – Pretty pricey, but you can get a trial of it. YOU MAY ALSO TRY VMWARE PLAYER, WHICH IS FREE.
2. Retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD – Only $30; go get it.
3. Intel CPU (with VT-x support) – Check your BIOS to see if your CPU supports this (you’ll see an option for VT-x or ‘Virtualization Technology’). Most modern Intel CPUs have VT-x (ie. Core 2 Duo).
4. This file – About 13MB, which has everything you need (besides a copy of Snow Leopard).
5. About 45-60 minutes of time.
6. Some common sense, and the ability to follow [simple] directions.

Once you have all of those requirements (ESPECIALLY NUMBER 6!!!!!), go ahead continue reading.

Part 1 – Setting up the VM

*Make sure you have the file (from step 4 above) extracted – Just take the ‘Snowy_VM’ folder and stick it on your desktop.
*Make sure VMware Workstation 7 is installed and working.

1. Open VMware, and load the .vmx file that you extracted (in /Snowy_VM/Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental).vmwarevm/).
2. Edit the settings for Processors and Memory to suit your needs. Mine was 2 CPU cores, and 2.5GB RAM.
3. With the ‘Virtual Machine Settings’ window still open, go to CD/DVD (IDE), and click on the bubble for Use ISO image file, and find the ‘darwin_snow.iso’ file (in /Snowy_VM/). Click on OK when finished.

Part 2 – Installing Mac OS X

*Now comes the fun stuff!
*Insert your Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD at this time.

1. Start the virtual machine.
2. Hit F8 after seeing the VMware boot screen.
3. In the bottom of the virtual machine window, right-click on the CD/DVD drive icon, and choose ‘Settings’.
4. Choose Use physical drive, and make sure the proper drive is selected.Also make sure that the Connected & Connect at power on checkboxes are checked. Click on OK when done.
5. Press c on your keyboard (to boot from the DVD).
6. (Optional) – Press F8 on your keyboard, and type -v and press enter. This bypasses the Apple boot screen, and boots into verbose mode.
7. Once you’re at the installer, follow the prompts to install it. Reboot when finished. If you get a kernel panic upon rebooting, open up the “Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental).VMX” file in /Snowy_VM/Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental).vmwarevm with Notepad, search for “smc.present”, and change “TRUE” to “FALSE”. Save and close out of Notepad. You shouldn’t get anymore kernel panics.

Part 3 – Booting Mac OS X

*Assuming installation went well… (Which it should)

1. Start the virtual machine up again. It can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to boot, depending on your virtual machine settings.
2. If you get a “Operating system not found” error, go back to part 2 and follow steps 3, 4, and 5. BUT, on step 5, instead of pressing c, press h. This boots from the hard disk instead of from the DVD.
3. Once booted, you should be at the setup screens.
4. Fill out the registration details and whatnot. When you’re finally at your desktop, go to step 3.
5. You’re booted!

Part 4 – Updating to 10.6.2

*This is assuming your DVD of Snow Leopard is 10.6.

1. Inside of Mac OS X, open up Safari, and go to this link (the 10.6.2 Combo Update): http://bit.ly/4zMBJJ
2. Download the .dmg to your desktop.
3. When done downloading, open the installation package, and install 10.6.2.
4. Reboot when completed.

Part 5 – Getting sound to work

*This will get audio working.
*You’ll need to put “EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar.gz” onto your Mac OS X desktop. You can put the files on a USB drive, and mount the drive in the virtual machine. Once mounted, copy that file to your desktop.

1. Double-click on “EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar.gz”. Out should come a installation package.
2. Double-click on the installation package.
3. When you get to where you have to ‘customize’ the installation, check all 2 options.
4. Install.
5. Reboot when finished.

Part 6 – Installing VMware Tools

*This helps in overall performance of the VM.

1. In the bottom of the virtual machine window, right-click on the CD/DVD drive icon, and choose ‘Settings’.
2. Click on the bubble for Use ISO image file, and find the ‘darwin_snow.iso‘ file (in /Snowy_VM/). Click on OK when finished.
3. You should see a new drive on your desktop called ‘VMware Tools’. Double-click on this.
4. Run the installation package.
5. Reboot when finished.

That’s it! In less than an hour, you have a [almost] fully functioning Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 machine on your PC. Again, you won’t get QE/CI (hardware video/graphics acceleration), but that’s not a big deal unless you plan on running real applications like iMovie or other things.