OS X Virtual Machine on Windows...?

[XTheLancerX]

Everything points to "it can't be done" or "you shouldn't do it" but I really want to, if it's even possible. Somehow get El Cap running in a vm on my Win10 PC.

I am looking into purchasing a MacBook Pro someday, and I would like to give myself time to adjust and learn/get to know OS X. I have never used OS X in my life for personal use. Yes, I've played around with it in Apple Stores, but nothing that allowed me to really do what I wanted over an extended period.

Couple problems though. I'm not exactly a computer wiz, so I've never dealt with a virtual machine for setting up supported OSes let alone an unsupported one. Just wondering what you guys think about this or if you can give some advice.

This is a custom built PC (May of 2011), aging a bit but still definitely sufficient as I'm not a very heavy user of stuff anymore. Used to play games and such but not a lot as of late. I already know a Hackintosh is a no-go with my PC. GPU isn't supported.

Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
Intel Core i5 2500k Sandy Bridge @ 3.3GHz
Radeon HD 6950 2GB
8GB of RAM
Couldn't remember what motherboard I had, went on the Internet and used command prompt to identify it, I got msi p67a-g45

Thoughts? Answers?

 

[tremblewithfear6]

I don't think it's possible, but I definitely have been proven wrong before. I have a decent amount of experience with VMWare and VirtualBox, and even getting a non-buggy quality ISO mounted and emulated through those programs can be tricky and take hours of setup. Virtualizing an OS is essentially throwing an emulation of another computer on top of your computer, and thus requires access to drivers, hardware, and a lot of underlying equipment.

Mac OSX is really difficult (if impossible), to emulate and mount as a virtual drive. In all honesty, you would be better served watching YouTube videos, reading guides, and picking up a cheap Macbook or iMac to mess around with (cheap is relative/subjective). OSX isn't particularly difficult to learn, but there are tips and tricks for keyboard shortcuts and what not around, so it can take a little getting used to. When compared to Windows, OSX is pretty much dummy-proof. Things simply work -- straight out of the box, and it's as simple as that.

You can also request and/or play on some of the machines in Best Buy and the Apple Stores to get a little familiar. If you know anyone who has a Mac, you could simply try a request for play time to learn the OS as well.

But if you are hard-pressed on getting OSX virtualized, I don't think it would work but again, I could be wrong.

 

[hallux]

Officially, OS X is only licensed to run on Apple hardware. That's not to say people haven't done it but I think it's a challenge.

 

[Mikael H]

As @hallux wrote, you're not technically allowed to do it, but if you were to use a search engine to find the term running os x in a vm on Windows, you might stumble on some instructions from the darker corners of the intardwebz...