ベン・ギルド (Ben Guild)

CherryOS (the PearPC-based Mac emulator for Windows)… still sucks! 🍒

A CherryOS trial version was released today, and the software is still absolute crap.

The project clearly lifts source-code from the open-source project PearPC and wraps it in a VB6 (Visual Basic) application to make it more commercial and similar to Virtual PC. 🤦🏼‍

You can tell that it's VB6 (a beginner's IDE for Windows) by the various OCX files and other Visual Basic dependencies that it installs. — But, how is the software overall, otherwise?

Obvious PearPC similarities

Being a Mac/Unix guy, I tried installing it on a spare PC out of curiosity.

One of the hassles with PearPC was creating the disk-images required to format with “Disk Utility” before installing Mac OS X, but CherryOS has found a way to automate this and create them for you. — I'm pretty sure that this is the only original code that they've written (besides the wrapper and installer), but I may be mistaken. 😂

Dealing with disk-images with using PearPC, I mean “CherryOS.”
Dealing with disk-images when setting up PearPC, I mean “CherryOS.”

However, I was soon greeted by a familiar screen when rebooting:

The “no” symbol boot quirk with PearPC, and subsequentally CherryOS as well.
The “no” symbol boot quirk with PearPC, and subsequentally CherryOS as well.

… The boot process is nearly identical to PearPC, with the same quirks and patterns. — The developer(s) even forgot to change the MAC address on the emulated network adapter from being the same as the default that PearPC ships with. 🤣‍

Sloppily written alert dialogs

They even forgot to set the title variables of some of the dialog boxes during setup… which defaulted to “MainCherryOS.exe,” the filename of the executable. 🤦🏼‍

Sloppily coded alert in “CherryOS.”
There's even bad English in a dialog box… part of which reads: “Need more help please press yes.”

This is such a trivial oversight… the correct code is simply just:

If MsgBox("Please insert a valid Mac installation CD in "
    & strDriveLetter
    & ": Drive"
    & vbCrLf
    & "Need more help on it please press yes", ' Fix this…
    vbYesNo,
    "CherryOS" ' … and this. (omg)‍
) Then

I mean, come on…! 🙄

Don't steal source-code

If the product weren't laughable, these guys would already have a lawsuit on their hands for sure.

Their published screenshots used to show specific debug information that was written by PearPC developers, to which they admitted stealing only that exact code and then said that they had removed it afterwards. 🤦🏼‍

…Seriously? This is ridiculous! 😡