How To Run Mac OS X El Capitan On Microsoft Surface Pro 3

I wanted to write this tutorial a long time ago but I just couldn’t find the time to do so. You will need to find a way to obtain the Mac OS X El Capitan ISO or update app if on a Macintosh. You will need a usb thumb drive with at least 8GB however 16GB is preferred. For the purposes of this tutorial I will be using Clover Boot Loader. I’m not really a fan of the newer OpenCore Boot as when you have a error with your EFI you literally can not boot without having the hard drive externally and these are not the devices to be removing screens just to fix any errors with your install;whereas with clover it can simply be disabled. I also found in testing that only certain versions of clover will boot if you use anything else it simply won’t boot 

Programs and files you will need are…

16GB free space absolute minimum with just a couple programs; recommended is 64GB, but 32GB is sufficient for most users. 

Unibeast 6.2.0. :  https://www.tonymacx86.com/resources/unibeast-6-2-0-yosemite-and-el-capitan.314/ Create the bootable USB. The Main reason why we need this app is not only to create the USB Installer; But When Creating the installer it installs Clover onto the USB Drives EFI Which will be your first Method Of Getting Clover Bootloader to boot on the Surface Pro 3.

VirtualBox : https://www.oracle.com/virtualization/technologies/vm/downloads/virtualbox-downloads.html If you don’t have a Mac Environment you can use this program to virtualize one 

Mac OS X El Capitan.app : http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-41424-20191024-218af9ec-cf50-4516-9011-228c78eda3d2/InstallMacOSX.dmg

Or https://apps.apple.com/us/app/os-x-el-capitan/id1147835434?mt=12 

To be used with Unibeast 

Clover Configurator : https://mackie100projects.altervista.org/download-clover-configurator/

Or https://www.tonymacx86.com/resources/clover-configurator.467/ edit config.plist files 

AOMEI Partition Manager : https://www.aomeitech.com/aomei-partition-assistant.html

(You can use normal Windows Disk Manager from control panel but if you ran low on space even if you have deleted a bunch of files it may not let you allocate enough space to complete the install. This program should let you use whatever free space you have; but there are other options) This program does however let you make your EFI Partition Visible or Mountable in Windows 

 

Explorer++ https://explorerplusplus.com/ This Is used to see and edit files in EFI folder 

TINU : https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/TINU

Lets you see and mount EFI partition in Mac (there are other options) 

Clover EFI boot loader: https://www.mediafire.com/file/v3icp1xtyhdnavs/Clover_v2.3k_r3423.pkg.zip/file

Clover_v2.3k_r3423.pkg (this seems to be the one of the only version that works with the Surface Pro 3 installing a more recent version will cause it not boot Mac OS X although there are a few versions that do still work.

My EFI File For Reference: https://www.mediafire.com/file/h8gyw0h4279iuc0/EFI.zip/file

(although depending on which config you set you may not have graphics acceleration or sound. There is a fully working config file the only way to know which one it is, is very simple; it will be only only config file that in finder the preview has no text just a blank file but if you edit it in any way in a new version of Clover Configurator it will give an error when saving and will not work if it does save.)

If you do not own a Mac in anyway you can still install it but you will need to use VirtualBox and find or make a working version of Mac OS X so that you can create the usb installer using Unibeast 6.0.2. If for some reason you already have clover installed in your efi for some odd reason then you can skip this step and create the installer in windows and you should be able to boot the installer from clover and continue that