UTM On M1 Mac Emulating Intel MacOS?

Casting a wide net here since we’ve been unable to figure it out. We just got Apple Silicon Macs and running VSCode on them is no problem. However, our app is still Intel and the Delve (go) debugger won’t properly drop into the debugger with Intel apps running on Arm.

So I’ve started looking at UTM to run MacOS Intel in emulation. However, I have yet to find instructions on how to get Intel MacOS installed. I can install an Arm Mac/Win/Linux no problems but not in emulation. Every time I do I drop into a UEFI terminal and no commands work in it.

My GoogleFoo and LLMFoo is clearly lacking. So, please just don’t copy/paste from an LLM since I’ve already tried that with no luck.

You have to treat it like a hackintosh and install it with opencore(?).

Outside of that, intel mac for debugging may be the way to go, and are generally stupid cheap at the moment. Check a local university to see if they are tossing any, and/or better yet, get your company to pay you for these efforts too. :smiley:

I asked Eliza, but their response was, “Why does however, our app is still Intel and the Delve (go) debugger won’t properly drop into the debugger with Intel apps running on Arm make you feel that way?”

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Sidenote, IIRC, debugger architecture should match app architecture.

That describes my feelings perfectly. :slight_smile:

Well, we have Intel Macs currently and they gave us the shiny new M4 but our supporting libraries aren’t all Arm yet.

Check out this Git Repo.

This may help you also…

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The first one won’t work, but the second definitely might!

I’m curious why you think the 1st one won’t work.

If you are debugging Intel, you’d need stuff compiled on Intel to run on Intel.

Virtualizing it with Docker at best will just be like Rosetta with extra steps. You’re still running on ARM. It’s great for other situations tho. Utterly fantastic, and I’m glad it’s brought up because I have use cases.

But where QEMU can emulate x86 as if you were on it (to the best of it’s ability), there’s nothing in Docker that will unless I missed something large.

Another thing to consider is that x86 emulation under UTM can be pretty slow. Not as bad as say Virtual PC under PPC, but if running macOS is anywhere similar to my experience with x86 Windows under it, you might want to find another solution. I’m sure it’ll work for occasional use, but if it ends up being a daily driver, then I suspect you’ll end up pulling your hair out over the experience.

As Abbie mentioned, why not just supplement your M4 with an x86 Mac, maybe even a Mac mini that you can run headless and just screen share over to.

P.S. I’m M1 Pro over here and the M4 might have enough new “umph” to make the UTM experience better enough to be usable.

It is so slow that it’s not usable. Recent version of Parallels has emulation technology preview, but I didn’t try it.