Mac Emulator on Windows for Xcode Development

[littlepigboy5]

I am a developer for Android/Ios and I'm upgrading my PC to accomodate for running Mac OS in VM for Xcode.  I'll have a 6800k and 16gb of ram.  I was wondering if this is worth it because I have used Xcode in a VM before and it was kind of slow, but it was with only 2 cores and 4gb allocated to the VM.  Would I see better performance in a VM or should I use something like Unraid? (only if unraid can run windows and macOS simulataneously.

[vanished]

As far as I know you are only allowed to run Mac OS on Apple hardware, be it naively or in a VM.

[littlepigboy5]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

As far as I know you are only allowed to run Mac OS on Apple hardware, be it naively or in a VM.

explain?  how does that effect either unraid or using it in a VM?

[PigWithAMustache]

You should be good processor-wise, though maybe consider 32 gigs of ram in the future because 16 seems a bit small for that

 

[vanished]

1 minute ago, littlepigboy5 said:

explain?  how does that effect either unraid or using it in a VM?

Because you said you were upgrading your "PC".  I just assumed from that that it's a non-Apple computer, which, according to Apple's license agreement/ToS/EULA/whatever it's called, does not give you the right to run Mac OS.

[kirashi]

3 minutes ago, littlepigboy5 said:

explain?  how does that effect either unraid or using it in a VM?

Technically, running macOS via UnRAID or in a VM on non-Apple hardware are a violation of the EULA.

[littlepigboy5]

1 minute ago, PigWithAMustache said:

You should be good processor-wise, though maybe consider 32 gigs of ram in the future because 16 seems a bit small for that

 

ok.  I think I am leaning towards using unRaid because it seems more stable than a VM, but can you explain it a little bit.  From my understanding it is it's own OS that can simultaneously run different OS's across multiple drives and splitting up hardware.

[littlepigboy5]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

Because you said you were upgrading your "PC".  I just assumed from that that it's a non-Apple computer, which, according to Apple's license agreement/ToS/EULA/whatever it's called, does not give you the right to run Mac OS.

oh, yeah that's fine lol, I have done it before and though it may not be "allowed" it works just fine.

[Drak3]

Hackintoshes violate Apple's EULA and ToS, and is classified as piracy. You'd be better served just buying a Mac, or looking into an operating system that'll do what you want without running MacOS anyways.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, littlepigboy5 said:

oh, yeah that's fine lol, I have done it before and though it may not be "allowed" it works just fine.

you can not discuss something that is not allowed here anyway. it's like discussing how to download a movie of torrent 

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

As far as I know you are only allowed to run Mac OS on Apple hardware, be it naively or in a VM.

I believe that is the case, though it is OP's decision whether or not to violate those rules. Unless Apple has a clause that allows them to perform involuntary inspections, it is a difficult to enforce rule anyhow. 

 

Since I'm not discussing Mac OS in particular below, OSs run fastest natively. A multi-boot setup is recommended for speed, though a VM gives you a degree of flexibility. If you do not have a strong need for Windows during your tasks, then run with its own boot. If the guest OS is barely used aside from what you need it for, then the convenience of a VM may well be worth the performance hit. 

[vanished]

3 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I believe that is the case, though it is OP's decision whether or not to violate those rules. Unless Apple has a clause that allows them to perform involuntary inspections, it is a difficult to enforce rule anyhow.

Yes, completely true, but what I'm getting at is we, as per the CoC, can't assist people in making a hackintosh or anything along those lines

[Zodiark1593]

20 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Yes, completely true, but what I'm getting at is we, as per the CoC, can't assist people in making a hackintosh or anything along those lines

True, though I thought it worthy to note for anyone that recommended buying a Mac. Granted, that is the only legal option, though I'm under the assumption that the OP rejected that option before posting. 

 

The information of whether operating systems run fastest in a VM or natively, on the other hand, is legal and non-specific. Thus I provided the information I have in that regard as per OP's request.  

[NTDaws]

Heres how it works, you can install Mac on a PC, but you need a Mac to do it. You need the install files from apple and you need a bootloader and drivers to run Hackintosh. (Is what the cool kids call it)

[bobhays]

18 hours ago, littlepigboy5 said:

I am a developer for Android/Ios and I'm upgrading my PC to accomodate for running Mac OS in VM for Xcode.  I'll have a 6800k and 16gb of ram.  I was wondering if this is worth it because I have used Xcode in a VM before and it was kind of slow, but it was with only 2 cores and 4gb allocated to the VM.  Would I see better performance in a VM or should I use something like Unraid? (only if unraid can run windows and macOS simulataneously.

MacOS is a lot harder to virtualize than windows because there is no official support or official drivers, etc. if you really wanted it, i'd suggest a hackintosh dual boot

[Master Disaster]

13 hours ago, bobhays said:

MacOS is a lot harder to virtualize than windows because there is no official support or official drivers, etc. if you really wanted it, i'd suggest a hackintosh dual boot

Utter nonsense, a 5 second Google search will find you the vmware unlocker & vmware comes with a full Darwin additions package. 

[bobhays]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Utter nonsense, a 5 second Google search will find you the vmware unlocker & vmware comes with a full Darwin additions package. 

Welp I stand corrected. I didn't realize it was that easy to set up. I wonder why it takes so much tweaking to get a hackintosh ready then. When I tried to make one a couple years ago it took me days to fix all the problems I was having, but maybe that was due to my dual-boot.

 

Either way, I was making a hackintosh to try OS X, but now that I have to use it on the school lab computers, I know I will never own a mac if I can avoid it.

[TheGamingBarrel]

What you can do is rent out a mac hosted server, then use Xamarin in Visual Studio, tell it to direct the code to the server, which has xCode and can be used for this purpose, giving you a legal way to use your Windows Based PC to create iOS Apps, it also supports direct switching from iOS to Android to save time.

[Master Disaster]

28 minutes ago, bobhays said:

Welp I stand corrected. I didn't realize it was that easy to set up. I wonder why it takes so much tweaking to get a hackintosh ready then. When I tried to make one a couple years ago it took me days to fix all the problems I was having, but maybe that was due to my dual-boot.

 

Either way, I was making a hackintosh to try OS X, but now that I have to use it on the school lab computers, I know I will never own a mac if I can avoid it.

Without going into details, since El Cap released and assuming you have compatible hardware, setting up a hackintosh is no more difficult than it is with a real mac. Once they ditched Chimera and adopted Clover it became much easier. There are a few niggles (ALC1150 support is dodgy & GTX970+ requires a separate driver & kernel patch) but in general it's a fairly uninvolved process these days. Of course only hardware used by Apple in real Macs has native support. 

 

On the VM side, remember that VMWare does have a Mac client and supports emulating Mac on Mac so support is there, it's just disabled on Windows because it's against Apples ToS. Once you unlock it using the patch it works perfectly. Ironically installing OS X on a Windows VM client is much more difficult to do than installing OS X on a PC (due to OS X being shipped in DMG format which Windows can't read) but I'm saying no more , I don't want warning points

 

@littlepigboy5 To answer your question, it is possible but emulating OS X on Windows does feel slow & clunky, the OS runs noticeably slower and don't even think about trying to use USB drives in a VM, your talking minutes per MB transfer speed.