Cherry OS: Mac OS X on Windows?

By Jim on October 13th, 2004

Microsoft Corp.’s Virtual PC software has been lauded by critics as a convenient way for Mac users to run Windows applications on their Macs, but what if you need to do the opposite? Maui, Hawaii-based MXS announced Tuesday the release of Cherry OS, an emulator that does the exact opposite — its developer says Cherry OS lets PCs run Mac OS X instead.

The virtual machine emulated by Cherry OS sports full network capabilities and has complete access to the host computer’s hardware resources — hard drive, CPU, RAM, FireWire, USB, PCI, PCMCIA bus, Ethernet networking and modem. It purportedly runs at about 80 percent of the performance of the host CPU, according to the developer.

I’ve emailed them for a review copy. I hope I get a chance to check this out. I’d love to be able to run Mac OS X on my Windows box (or maybe even Linux…). Very cool, indeed. Definitely worth a review.

The Cherry OS site seems to be getting whacked by Slashdot reporting it and/or some hackers (that’s what the site said a few minutes ago). Hopefully things will settle down and their site will be fully functional again soon.

There is a demo available though, give it time to load. Took a while for me. There’s also an interview with Jim Kartes (the Cherry OS press contact) at apple-x.net.

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