Schlo: Final Stand Mac OS

Mac OS is the secondmost popular operating system after Microsoft Windows. Although you arecomfortable using Windows for a very long time but there are many scenarioswhere you need a Mac OS machine.

Whether you want to develop your iOS app on Xcode, using apps like Final Cut Pro or iMovie which only comes on Mac OS, you need to buy an expensive Apple Macbook. So, without making a hole in your pocket, the alternate solution to this installing Mac OS on your Windows computer. Let’s get started with this tutorial

Look just below the OS X version number in the Overview tab – if the Mac model name is the same or a later model year than the one shown in the compatibility list above, your Mac is compatible. Mac’s version is a bit more systemwide, with some older Windows dialogs still not darkened. The Windows 10 May 2019 Update adds a Custom option, which lets you decide whether you want dark. OS X, Windows, and Linux all use different hard drive formatting for normal system operations. A hard drive format refers to how the operating system stores the data on the drive. There are three common filesystems that are used today: HFS+, NTFS, and FAT32. Mac OS X uses HFS+, Windows uses NTFS and used to use FAT32.

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Step One: Download Mac OS ISO Image file

As you are on a Windows PC, you don’t have access to Apple Store to download Mac OS. You need to download Mac OS from an external trusted source. You can download the latest Mac OS Catalina 10.15 or Mac OS Mojave 10.14 Installer files from our website.


Step Two: Download Virtual Machine for Windows

There is various free Virtual Machine software available for Windows such as Oracle’s VirtualBox. But I recommend using VMware Workstation Pro, although it’s a paid software but you can use it free for 30 days trial. You can download Vmware Workstation Pro 15 from this link.


Step Three: Install VMware Patch to run Mac OS X

  1. Go to the VMware macOS Unlocker page to download. Click the Clone or download button, then click Download ZIP.
  2. Power off all virtual machines running and exit VMware.
  3. Extract the downloaded .zip file in step 1.
  4. On Windows, right-click on the win-install.cmd file and select Run as Administrator to unlock. Also, run win-update-tools.cmd for VMware tools for macOS.
  5. After the unlock process is complete, run VMware to create the macOS virtual machine.

Step Four: Create an Apple Mac OS Virtual Machine

  1. Click File, select New Virtual Machine…
  2. Select Typical (recommended) and click Next.
  3. Select I will install the operating system later. and click Next.
  4. Select Apple Mac OS X in the Guest operating system section and select macOS 10.14 in the Version section. Click Next.
  5. In the Name, the Virtual Machine window, name the virtual machine and virtual machine directory. I personally would put it on a different drive than the system drive.
  6. Select the size for the new virtual disk in the Specify Disk Capacity window. This is the virtual disk to be installed macOS. Click Next and then Finish.

Step Five: Run you Mac OS Virtual Machine with VMDK or ISO file

After successfully creating an Apple Mac OS Virtual Machine, you need to run the machine with an actual Mac OS file such as Mac OS Mojave 10.14 ISO file or Mac OS Mojave 10.14 VMDK Image


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If you face any driver issues, Try installing VMware tools from the VM tab in the VMware window. Also, I would recommend assigning a minimum of 4GB RAM and 40GB of Hard Disk to your Virtual Machine.

That’s it for the tutorial If you face any issues or had any query then please let us know in the comment section below. You can also send us an email via the contact us page for personalized support.

Creating self-contained applications on Mac OS X is not quite as straight-forward as it is on Windows but as long as you follow the guidance below all will be okay.

Python and PyQt

Unfortunately the current version of cx_Freeze on Mac OS X does not play particularly nicely with Python versions that have been installed from Python.org or PyQt if you have installed it previously using our instructions. Therefore, to ensure that cx_Freeze installs successfully you will need to install Python and PyQt using a package manager called MacPorts.

Thankfully, the MacPorts installation of Python and PyQt is separate from your existing installation so you do not* need to remove any files before you start.

MacPorts

MacPorts is a package manager for Mac OS X which is designed to make working with tools that are predominated Unix based much easier. If you have ever used a Linux distribution then you will be familiar with the concept and MacPorts works in the same way. It removes all of the hassle of compiling, maintaining and updating these tools and allows you to focus on just using them.

Installing MacPorts

To install MacPorts you will need to do the following:

  1. Ensure that you have the latest version of XCode installed (available from the Mac App Store)
  2. From within XCode install the command line tools
    • XCode menu -> Preferences -> Downloads
  3. Download the pkg installer of MacPorts for your version of Mac OS X:
  4. Run the downloaded installer for MacPorts

Using MacPorts to install Python and PyQt

MacPorts is a command line utility, which means that you will need to use the Terminal application to interact with it.

Open terminal and enter the following commands one at a time. Ensure you press enter after each command. When entering commands prefaced by sudo you may be asked for your password:

  1. sudo port selfupdate - this updates MacPorts to the latest version
  2. sudo port install py33-pyqt4 - this installs Python 3.3 and PyQt4
  3. sudo port install py33-tkinter - this installs required libraries to run IDLE

Python and PyQt should now be installed, test this out by doing the following:

  1. Open Applications/MacPorts/Python3.3/IDLE
  2. In the Python Shell type:
    • from PyQt4.QtGui import *

If there are no error messages then PyQt4 has been successfully installed.

Adding a missing library

There is another library that cx_Freeze requires to function correctly on Mac called libintl, we must install this first. Without it, any attempts to use cx_Freeze will fail.

Download the libintl library package:

  1. Run the package installer to install the library

Installing cx_Freeze

cx_Freeze is a utility that will take your Python program and convert it to a stand-alone application (.app) file that can be run on any Mac computer.

Getting the source

Before we can install cx_Freeze we need the source code:

Mac

If the link is broken try the cx_Freeze homepage:

Installing from source

Now that you have the source code you will need to build and install cx_Freeze. To do this you will need to make use of the Terminal application.

The video below demonstrates this.

Task

Use the above video to install cx_Freeze from the source code you have downloaded.

Creating a script for cx_Freeze

To create a stand-alone application from your program cx_Freeze needs a script to tell it what to do. Because our programs are fairly simple (in the grand scheme of things) all we need to do is make a few changes to the sample program that is provided by cx_Freeze for use with PyQt programs.

The sample script has two lines that we are interested in:

  1. application_title = 'simple_PyQt4'
  2. main_python_file = 'PyQt4app.py'

You should change the values assigned to the variables application_title and main_python_file so that they are suitable for whatever program you wish to create a stand-alone application for. For example, the field simulation would be:

  1. application_title = 'Field Simulation'
  2. main_python_file = 'field_simulation.py'

Once you have made the necessary changes save the script and then move it so that it is in the same directory as the Python modules you want to convert to a stand-alone application.

Run the cx_Freeze script

The final step of this process is to execute the cx_Freeze script. The video demonstrates how to do this.

Task

Schlo: Final Stand Mac Os Catalina

The

Use the above video to create a stand-alone application.

Final thoughts

Final Stand Youtube

In this section you have see how to turn your Python program into a stand-alone application that you can distribute to other people. To do this we modified an example script to get cx_Freeze to perform the necessary operations for us. However, if your application was more complex you may need to modify the script further. The documentation for cx_Freeze should be able to point you in the right direction and there is an excellent mailing list that you can join to get assistance as well.

Schlo: Final Stand Mac Os X

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