Apple Game Porting Toolkit with Whisky

A long time ago, I compiled Wine from scratch on 32-bit macOS Sierra. I lost interest because I never used it. Now after WWDC 2023, everyone is talking about the happy side effect of Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK) which uses Wine under the hood to run Windows 10 DirectX 12 games on macOS! ...

12 Jun 2023

Using Rosetta in a UTM Linux VM with Docker on Apple Silicon

I have been using UTM on M1/M2 macs for all my virtualization needs for a while, but never posted much because it practically works out of the box. Since around October 2022, UTM v4.0.9 on macOS Ventura allows Apple Hypervisor Virtualization Virtual Machines to use Rosetta 2. ...

12 Mar 2023

Creating Windows and macOS VMs

Just a bunch of un-related findings that may help when creating Windows and macOS VMs using VirtualBox. ...

29 Nov 2020

VirtualBox very slow on Windows 10

I found that Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1 was running very slowly on my brand new Windows 10 PC. Initially I thought it was to do with VirtualBox, e.g. insufficient cores or memory, the display controller (VBoxSVGA), insufficient video memory, etc. And then I thought it might be an AMD thing, so had a look at BIOS, e.g. nested AMD-V, etc. ...

23 Nov 2020

Fixing issues with VirtualBox Guest Additions for Ubuntu 20.04

I recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) (dated 23 April 2020), with the intention of creating a VM using VirtualBox 6.0.22 (released 15 May 2020). I had issues with VirtualBox guest additions, and this is how I solved it. ...

31 May 2020

Installing IBM Cloud Private in VirtualBox

If you’ve had fun with Docker containers, I now introduce you to Kubernetes and wish you the best of luck. I’m still learning myself! I decided to install IBM Cloud Private Community Edition following the Installation guide at IBM’s Knowledge Center. ...

18 Apr 2019

Do NOT update Parallels Desktop Lite - it's no longer free

If, like me, you use Parallels Desktop Lite, then I have bad news for you. It’s no longer free to run macOS or Linux, so DON’T update it if you still want to use it! ...

22 Jan 2019

Installing Mojave in Parallels, and UI glitches running Electron Apps

I got macOS Mojave 10.14 / 10.14.1 installed in Parallels very easily! But encountered some graphics issues with certain apps… and managed to find a workaround. ...

18 Nov 2018

Installing High Sierra in a Parallels VM

When macOS High Sierra was released around 25th September, I tried to install it in Parallels Desktop Lite. However, both a clean install in a Parallels Virtual Machine (VM), nor an in-place update did not work (the High Sierra VM would refuse to boot). I discovered the High Sierra installer converts the VM file system to Apple File System (APFS). However, Parallels does not support APFS, so here’s how to disable the conversion and get High Sierra running in a Parallels. ...

20 Oct 2017

Further ways to lockdown apps like Kodi and VLC

You have have read that CheckPoint, a cyber security research company, has identified vulnerabilities that may allow an attacker to compromise your computer using malicious subtitle files downloaded by popular media players including Kodi and VLC. It’s not clear if this affects macOS too, but in light of this threat, here is a summary of how I further “lockdown” any apps I’m unsure of… ...

26 May 2017