[rcentros]

I bought an inexpensive 2012 Mac Mini a few months back to test a some Mac writing applications. Then I found I could use OpenCore to install Monterrey (or Ventura) and that worked pretty well (Catalina had reached EOL). Then I added a second SSD that I could dedicate to Linux. With 16 GBs of RAM and two SSDs, this old Mac is a pretty good machine.

So, tonight I decided to see if Windows 10 would run in VirtualBox under the Mac OS, and it does. Not much good for streaming videos on YouTube, but I've already got the Mac's native OS (or Linux) for that.

So then I thought that maybe I could run Barne's & Noble's Windows Nook App. And it runs well. I was able to download ten of my Nook eBooks (more or less at random), send them the shared folder between Windows 10 and the native Mac OS, and liberate them in Calibre with DeACSM and DeDRM on the Mac side -- then move them to my PocketBook Basic Lux 3. (I also did the same in the Windows virtual machine and that also worked. I didn't try connecting Windows in the virtual machine to my eBook, however.)

I didn't know until I watched a couple YouTube videos, but apparently the Windows 10 download is now free -- though they may nag you or put a watermark on the home screen. VirtualBox is also free (always has been). So this cost nothing, except for time. The Windows install takes a while using about half of this Mac's resources. I imagine it would be much faster with newer machines. Apparently Oracle now supports VirtualBox on Apple ARM chips (as well as Intel ones), but it's fairly new and I think it's only available in the "Preview" version. (I guess that's kind of like a beta.)

Anyhow this is one option to free your Nook eBooks on a Mac. I felt kind of sorry for the Mac owners. It works well, even on an old Mac hardware.