[solarkraft]

I do wonder how they're implementing this. Are they also building Mac Mini farms or are they making exemptions from their ToS for themselves like so often to get around that and be able to run their service more efficiently than their competitors?

It feels like something that may or should be prevented by some laws.

[sokoloff]

Is it really an exemption from the ToS for them to run their own operating system on other hardware?

For one thing, it would still be "Apple-branded hardware" if Apple just puts an Apple sticker on it, so would literally be compliant with the same ToS they offer to everyone, but even if it wasn't based on that technicality, they reserve all other rights to their IP, so I don't see any logical or legal reason why they couldn't either make a version of Xcode that ran on an alternate OS or run macOS on other hardware.

[jhugo]

Exactly. "Apple Cloud Server Mk.1", powered by a Xeon processor.

[hot_gril]

Better off with AS anyway. Edit: Welp, turns out it is on a Xeon in an emulator (see comment below).

[coldtea]

>or are they making exemptions from their ToS for themselves

Err, allowing it to your self, is not an "exception from their ToS". The ToS, any ToS, only applies to third parties you provide a service/product to. You're free to do whatever you want with it yourself (within the general law of the land).

It's the same reason someone can't "violate" GPL by giving their own code, they wrote themselves, under a closed license as well, or even stop providing new versions under GPL altogether...

[mrpippy]

At least last summer, the machine type was “AppleQEMU” and CPU was a Xeon Gold 5218

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27698380

[userbinator]

Probably running KVM, so basically, it's their own Hackintosh?

[reaperducer]

It's the same TOS exception that video game companies get when they patch their own games: none. Because none is required.

Really, the knee-jerk axe grinding on HN has gotten so predictable lately.

[hot_gril]

It is pretty telling that they've deliberately made devs unable to build Apple software on non-Apple hardware, though. I've already ground my Apple tree axe down to nothing and quit being an iOS app developer; fed up with their antics.

[mr_toad]

> are they making exemptions from their ToS for themselves

You can’t enter into a legal contract with yourself, and you couldn’t legally enforce terms on yourself even if for some bizarre reason you wanted to.

[joshspankit]

I mean they definitely can (and do) enter in to legal agreements with “themselves”. Many companies do, especially when it comes to licensing (even Subway does it).

It’s one of the most common methods for shifting income to other countries where the taxes are lower.

[jhugo]

No, that's two separate (but related) legal entities entering into agreements with each other.

[joshspankit]

On the surface, yes. That’s exactly why it’s legal. However, from another perspective it’s the same company.

Let’s take the Apple example:

Apple created Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe as companies that own the intellectual property that Apple uses to create it’s products.

They did this because when they make 1B profit on 10B sales (let’s pretend for the sake of easy math), they would normally have to pay tax on that 1B but instead they can say “Our agreement with Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe state that we must pay “them” 1B in licensing fees for these sales. As you can see, we have no more money left to tax.”. Since Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe are subject to different tax laws they can pay little to no tax at all.

Now: Are those separate legal companies? Yes. But when it comes down to it, are they all the company we think of when we say Apple? I would say yes.

[prepend]

Those are with separate legal entities like subsidiaries and franchises.

[BonoboIO]

Really good question, I think someone will get their hands dirty and find a way to see on which hardware it’s running. Maybe through time correlation, that 2 test are running on the same hardware and reverse the power of the Hardware.

[joshspankit]

They have public documentation[1] about running macOS in a VM, so maybe they’ve let that go?

The parts of their ToS you are alluding to mostly talks about it being against ToS to run macOS on non-Apple hardware and since Apple makes chips now it’s very possible that the entire Xcloud service is running on Apple hardware.

[1]https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

[jhugo]

They didn't "let anything go" by publishing these docs; since they've never forbidden running macOS in a VM, only running it on non-Apple hardware.

[renewiltord]

I'm going to make an exception from my usual policy and go sleep in my bed without first asking my wife.

[naikrovek]

if they are only offering CI/CD time, they aren't doing anything forbidden to anyone else.

it is lease of an entire MacOS VM that must be one 24-hours at a time, along with other restrictions.

[MBCook]

My understanding is Apple uses Linux a lot internally for server stuff. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it was just Linux machines running LLVM and their other tools.

Perhaps the stuff runs on MacOS in VMs for the best compatibility, but I’m not sure that’s strictly necessary.

[mrweasel]

The iPhone apps where already cross-compiled from AMD64, before the switch to the Apple Silicon. It might not take that much to do the compilation on an Linux server, regardless of the underlying hardware.

There is something weird about a company that makes it's own hardware and operating system using something completely different in their datacenters. However I don't think that macOS have the tooling required to large scale installation required for something like this.

[pjmlp]

Once upon a time they did.

[duxup]

I think Apple can declare their TOS doesn’t apply to them.