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by Andrew_nenakhov 2210 days ago
According to Apple software license agreements, yes, it is too much to ask. You can not legally run Mac OS on non-Apple hardware.

But don't be sad, their new Mac Pro is fantastic.

6 comments

It's also £5,499.00 in the UK (just under $7k USD).

Not exactly ideal for hobbyists.

I considered including a price tag (... and comes for only $6990 ), but decided against it for being too thick. I also think that using /s markers kinda kills the idea of sarcasm.
Poe's law is especially strong with Apple, /s is definitely needed unless you go over the top with praising the price.
> unless you go over the top with praising the price

most apple enthusiasts think that the price is spot on and in no way overblown. (i do not have an opinion on the matter as i neither own nor use apple devices)

i dont think you can convey any point about apple in a sarcastic manner while omitting a /s tag. there are always people honestly believing the point you're stating sarcastically.

this applies to both negative and positive statements

I use Apple gear and think it's mostly overpriced.

I Need to buy a new MacBookPro and even though I can reclaim the VAT (sales tax) and it'll come out of corporate accounts the price makes me wince

Oh and I'd like one without a touch bar but screwed on that front unless I go high end MacBook Air

iPhone SE at £400 is pretty reasonably priced though and will be my next phone

> I also think that using /s markers kinda kills the idea of sarcasm.

Tone of voice (and tone of face) are both essential to convey sarcasm over rich channels, and both are lost over text.

Now add Poe's Law.

In short: Welcome to the wonderful world of autism! /s

That's only about 7 monitor stands, could be worse /s
And that's before the wheels.
But those wheels are the real marvel of precise engineering! You could never experience such a smooth roll before.
Not exactly ideal for many people.

I've never spent more than £600 on a computer and never felt like I need to spend 10x that for any of my software development

It's an unenforced provision of the license agreement. No attorneys are recommending it but it's happening. I wouldn't start your own CI firm with it though.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has no motives to send the BSA after anyone. Pretty sure they've only used them for egregious copyright violations like the commercial Hackintoshes.

> Apple has no motives to send the BSA after anyone

... until your virtualization layer starts having a material impact on their precious hardware sales.

You cannot build business-critical systems on contractual clauses being "unofficially unenforced".

Probably the majority of macOS CI/CD use cases are materially beneficial to apple. Most people just want to automate building software for macOS/iOS. Making it easy to produce software for their products, just strengthens their ecosystem.
It's almost like they should offer it themselves...
Certainly Corellium are having a bad time.
The EULA says you can't run Mac OS on non Apple hardware?

Pretty sure these terms are not enforceable in Europe so safe to ignore.

I've always wondered why apple gets a pass on the kinds of anti competitive suits brought against google. Google gets fined Billions of dollars for preloading a web browser in Android, but it's fine for apple to completely monopolize their hardware and software ecosystems.
As far as I know, it's because they do not have partners.

Chromium is competing with Samsung internet and others on Android, because several companies sell Android. So it's not fine for Google to force the choice.

Apple is not competing with anyone else on iOS, you don't have a choice. As long as iOS does not have a monopoly in smartphones, they're in the clear.

Doesn't that seem a bit backwards? Google faces anticompetitive scrutiny because they created an open(ish) platform that others can compete on. But Apple goes all in on a walled garden where nobody even has the opportunity to compete with them. Doesn't that feel anticompetitive?

I'm certainly no friend of Google and I'm not losing sleep over them getting fined. But it seems that Apple is just as much if not more anti competitive and anti consumer, but they get a pass because of what feels like a loophole.

Yeah, I don't really know, I'm not a lawyer.

At the same time, it makes kinda sense. No company with a product has to allow competition in. GM doesn't have to allow BMW motors in their cars.

When you join a market with a product, like Apple, then you don't have to allow competition in your product. When you create a market like Google did Android, then you to allow competition in that market.

I think that's the key difference, product vs market.

If you don't respect Apple's software license terms, you have no moral authority to insist anyone respects the GPL's license terms.

I take it you'd have no objection to Google forking the Linux kernel for Android and refusing all requests for the source code.

Apple's software license terms are monopolistic and actively harm the industry, unlike GPL.
Irrelevant. Both licenses rely on exactly the same laws, morality and principles. Either you think intellectual property can be owned and licensed, or you think it should not be.
But how do you obtain the software in the first place?
It is freely downloadable from Apple servers.
Like in the 90s when people scavenged Apple ROMs. Buy old Macs, then don't use them.
Attach an Apple USB keyboard to your ESXi host and you’re good to go.
I'm not sure that to run a CI you have to violate the Apple license. I mean most core components of macOS (the Darwin project) are actually open source, and thus can be built and used freely. And for a CI you don't need a GUI and other stuff, only the kernel and the compiler basically. So maybe it's possible to compile a version of Darwin so close to the real macOS that has the bare minimum to run the compiler to build and test software.

Of course the problem are the SDK that you need to use to build most software, they are obviously proprietary, but does its license say that they can only be used to compile software on a real Mac?

Almost none of the stuff that matters exists in the Darwin layer, though.
Yes, the ToS for the SDKs do say that.
You can of course run the CI/CD system on Apple hardware just fine. You can even get colo hosted Apple hardware with a monthly payment Hetzner style from a few companies.
I used MacInCloud before Azure DevOps got hosted MacOS pipelines.

I've no affiliation with them, but can recommend them. Never had any technical issues, and the one billing issue we had was sorted out quickly by their support people.