I t is no longer a requirement that you use a PC from Apple based on the PowerPC architecture in order to run Appleis OS X operating system. All it requires is a fast x86-based PC, a PowerPC emulator called PearPC, and a lot of patience.
TMO covered the introduction of PearPC a few days ago, but according to an article at OSNews, despite PearPC still being very early in development, at least one user has now successfully installed Mac OS X 10.3 in the emulated environment. Apple hardware isnit irrelevant just quite yet, though, as OS X runs very slowly, even on the authoris Athlon XP 1600+ system.
Mac emulation has been available on x86 platforms (and more) for quite some time, using such software as Basilisk II and vMac. However, both emulators only emulated the 68000-series processor, meaning that OSes later than Mac OS 8.1 could not be used. PearPC is the first publicly available software able to emulate the PowerPC. From OSNews:
The installation was not really that hard; the PearPC Web site has done an excellent job in providing you with information. And, just days after the 0.1 release, Web sites all around the world posted howtois and installation guides. Iim not going to explain how it is done in this article; that is not the purpose of this article. The purpose of this article is to simply show you that it can be done, and I will do this through a number of screenshots.
[...]
My [heart] actually skipped a beat; I never really thought it would work; not necessarily because I thought PearPC was vaporware, but more because my computer is getting kind of, well, old.
Of course everything was not running very snappy; on their Web site they warn you: the emulated processor is about 40 times slower than the host processor. Still, I was amazed at what I saw: it worked!
You can read the entire article at OSNewsi Web site, including several screen shots of his experience.