Question

After trying and failing to get my hands on a temporary Mac to develop an iPhone app for a client, I’ve started to look into VMware Workstation to virtualize OS X. I was wondering if there are any gotchas that people have found, or if the whole thing is unworkable.

For the record, I have an old stripey-Apple logo I pried off my old Apple IIe and am affixing to the lid of my dev laptop so that I’m complying with the spirit of the OS X EULA.

Answer 1

Some of my coworkers have tried the VMWare approach with OSX and have, for the most part, failed. I know there are some VMWare images floating around on the internets, but I wouldn’t recommend using any of those.

Also to Bruce’s point, the OSX86 project has made some great progress lately. I was able to get OSX running on an old Dell I have laying around. The thing ran fine as a media server until I made the mistake of downloading a patch, and then the thing died.

As Bruce stated a Mac Mini would be a good investment at $500, or better yet, check out eBay. Pick up something on eBay and at the end of your job you can sell it back on eBay or keep it. If your really tight on your budget you can look for a G4 Mac and do development on that, sans support for the iPhone simulator. I picked up a 2 G4 Macs for $80 a piece and sold one for $120.

Bottom line is if your thinking of getting into iPhone development make a small investment on a Mini or a used Intel Mac on eBay. If your successful in you development efforts your investment will pay off.

Good luck.

Edit: Though development on a G4/PPC mac is not supported it is doable. Here is a link outlining how to get it working.

http://3by9.com/85/