OS X on VMware Workstation 12 Pro

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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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IIRC I was on Workstation 10 when I did it. I was on Windows and have only used that minus my iPads and iPhones over the years. At the time MAC was the only one who had a kick-ass touchpad and I wanted to use that so I forget where I was on my OSX journey but I'd either just gotten my first MBP 13" or was already onto my MBP 15"... either way I wanted to try running 100% OSX for Laptop + Desktop, and at this time I was traveling every other month or more some months so before dropping $$ on a mac desktop I wanted to try it virtualized.

I had a 30" Primary and 2x 30" secondary but eventually went back to 20.1"-30"-30" and decided to place OSX @ 100% on my right 30" display for a seamless Windows + OSX desktop.

@briandm81 there was no "hack" that I did personally. Here's a run down of what/how I did to best of my remembering a couple years ago.

I was running an Intel 3930K CPU 32GB RAM and a couple SSD so I could dedicate enough cores and SSD to OSX by itself for highest performance. I was running some flavor of an AMD Graphics card, and as far as I knew all other components were on the 'hackintosh' list if I chose to build a baremetal OSX box I could have.

  • I downloaded an OSX iso or ??? (I forget which format) which was the most risky part as I wasn't 100% familiar with who'd made it... but that + my own OSX legal copy (by this time I think I had 2 OSX laptops 1 not in use so I had multiple licenses to use on 'in use hardware'

  • All I recall doing was loading up the OS in Workstation setting my options, and off I went.
There was an ever-so-slight input lag from the mouse and keyboard but it wasn't enough to prevent me from learning, and using OSX as much as possible.

I got enough taste and decided an OSX desktop would be awesome. I still decided against buying an all in one or dumping big $$ on a mac pro and went a different route. I used my MBP as a desktop w/adapters.

I was using my 15" MBP with some USB->DVI/VGA adapters and DP->DVI-D adapters to run 3 screens 20.1" - 30" - 20.1" and then got a new macbook air for travel, which I loved much more than the insanely painful MBP on my wrists! Those sharp edges were killer on the MBP. Warrantied out my 13" MBP for some random issue and my mother still uses it to this day for traveling.

I loved the software in OSX, especially the Mind Mapping software and the ability to get a terminal I knew how to actually use vs. windows as I spent (at that time) a lot of of time in CentOS CLI. For developing software / testing it was awesome!

I kept running into 1 huge problem though.
The wording that OSX used vs. Windows for FTP and uploading / replacing / overwriting file behavior was different than Windows.
I found myself on numerous occasions having to do a restore from archive backup because I would do a "replace" and instead of JUST replacing the files that were changed the OSX Software would DELETE the entire directory and only upload the couple files I'd changed/downloaded so I had to do a restore from backup.

This happened 2 or 3x with a couple other smaller/similar issues and at that time I realized Windows behavior was too much a part of me... I mean I'd grown up on windows, programming fun little things in BASIC as a kid, programming in 16Bit visual basic for early windows, etc... and even though I'd escaped to Linux for software development, and work I couldn't escape how windows functioned and affected my day to day life.

I installed Windows on macbook air, sold my mbp15 and ran my 3930k until I decided to experiment and see if I could function on my desktop with a high frequency 2 Core and ran that for ~10 months before jumping to a 5930K as soon as that came out. When MS SP3 came out I got one of those and sold my MBAIR.

That's my story of running OSX Virtualized.

I now I have a couple grand in OSX Software in the App Store and on CDs I probably need to sell or use.... so, I'm going to follow along about getting OSX Running in Workstation 12 again as I still have my Workstation license up to date, and may want to give OSX a try again, and try to 'adjust' my brain... always good to exercise the brain!

My new/current monitor situation is 24" 4k - 30" - 24" 4k.... so I plan to experiment with OSX and a Linux Desktop Enviroment on my left 24" / 4k display. This time though I got a 2nd keyboard and mouse to treat it as a completely stand-alone desktop if by chance I can get them running on my ESXI AIO and pass through my 4 port USB controller for 100% virtualized stand alone OSX / Linux system.