Apple Silicon can run Mac OS 9.2 and PowerPC OS X 10 and here's how I did it on my MacBook Air M1

/edit: Some of the info here is a bit dated since QEMU has a native M1 port now which should remove the part about going Apple Silicon to X86 to PPC and now just Apple Silicon to PPC, and improve performance. See https://youtu.be/lZsjWuHgngI

Did I ever end up deep in the woods… For another video I’m working on I wanted to record video of previous versions of OS X which lead me to getting all the way to 10.5 before I hit Intel territory on my Mac Pro. I installed QEMU, and went to work. I wasn’t really thinking about it but I started on my M1 being new to QEMU and ended up virtualizing Mac OS 9.2.1 and I haven’t seen anyone else do this before on Apple Silicon.

I wrote a blog post about it and now here’s the video.

Running Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.0 – 10.4 on Apple Silicon (M1) & Intel via QEMU
http://blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/01/13/install-powerpc-macos-osx-on-apple-silicon-m1-and-x86-intel.html

I’ve noticed a few people on MacProUpgrade ask « Why? » or « What’s the point? » which is surprising to me but it is a valid question. There’s quite a bit of legacy software people may need to run for some reason or another, be it open an old document that from a defunct application, or to play a game that was never ported to a modern OS.

MacRumors: [SUCCESS] Virtualize Windows 10 for ARM on M1 with Alexander Graf’s qemu hypervisor patch
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/success-virtualize-windows-10-for-arm-on-m1-with-alexander-grafs-qemu-hypervisor-patch.2272354/

Edit: Looks like another dev did long before me, full month+ before I got my MacBook Air. No surprises there as I even mentioned I was a bit surprised no one else had done it yet. 🙂 I’m not on twitter so I didn’t think to check it but found this.
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1329565888320843779

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