Run Mac OS applications on Windows?

Question

I love some Mac OSX developer applications such as Coda. But I run Windows on my desktop, and Mac OS X on my laptop. My question is simple, can I run Mac OS X applications individually on the Windows platform - without having to run a whole virtual Mac OS X machine?

Solution 1

It is more than possible. OSx86 documents it pretty well, but then you need to dual boot to get into OSX and that is lees than ideal. I don't know what Goz means by flakey, OSX on a PC is identical to Mac, better sometimes (you have proper control of the underlying hardware, and are able to use BIOS to tailor it to your needs)

Natively? Like Wine? Unfortunately no, mainly because 99% of Mac apps aren't built againsy Mach-O only, they are built against Cocoa and all the other higher level code that Apple works very hard to protect. There are even device drivers built into every install of OSX that decrypt encrypted parts of Finder, iWork and various other 1st party Apps incase anyone was ever successful in natively emulating OSX and its frame works (see DontStealMacOSX.kext)

Solution 2

No you can't. Even a whole virtual MacOSX machine will be flakey as hell ...

Solution 3

If they are both in a network you could access your mac laptop using VNC, you need to enable sharing in your mac preferences and then use a VNC client on your windows machine.

But this seems like non-ideal solution.

It would be much easier to do the opposite and run windows as a virtual machine under OSX. You could even import your current windows desktop into a virtual machine with Parallels.

Comments

[Paul Lefebvre]

And running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware violates the EULA.

[Matej]

@PaulLefebvre not Mac OS X Server, which isn't too bad after all & doesn't cost much more than Mac OS X.

[Matej]

I agree. Parallels offers stuff like coherence (where you only see Windows windows when open). It is really great Windows virtualising app.

[RaphaelDDL]

@PaulLefebvre So installing and running an OSX on VMWare Workstation violates EULA? I could install updates normally, Apple didn't blocked.

[Goz]

@RaphaelDDL: Just because you're blocked from doing something does not mean you aren't breaking the EULA. If you are running the VMWare instance on mac hardware AND you are running OSX server then, AFAIK, you're ok on the virtualisation front as far as the EULA is concerned ... how well the EULA stands up in your local court is a whole different matter ...

[Paul Lefebvre]

OS X Lion (10.7) is permitted to be run in a VM. As are all OS X server versions.

[Baumr]

Great answer, welcome Andrew!