[musicale]

Apple is not anti-VM. It is anti VM-on-non-Apple-hardware. ;-)

Presumably they have determined that lost hardware sales would offset any increased app or service sales from allowing VMs on non-Apple hardware.

Though I don't actually know what platform macOS and iOS VMs run on in GitHub Actions and Azure pipelines.

Edit: apparently Azure pipelines uses Mac pros. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/age...

[13of40]

Considering a couple years ago, "Apple Hardware" was an intel CPU with an nvidia GPU I've always wondered why you couldn't just throw a million dollars at them so they could stick apple stickers on your rack and let you run MacOS VMs. The company I used to work for had to do crazy gymnastics just to test software and scan for malware on their OS.

[mulmen]

There’s more to a mac than the sticker. It’s specific hardware that is tested and supported by the software. That’s worth a premium. Verifying your rack is a cost Apple doesn’t want to take on. iCloud doesn’t run on MacOS. It runs on Linux. Just buy the right hardware for the job.

[buzer]

Does Apple dogfood their OS X/iOS CI pipelines, i.e. are they running them on some off-the-shelf Macs like they expect everyone else to do? I remember reading that at least in the past they were running virtualized OS X on regular servers for those (actually found following: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18117885).

And it's not like Apple would need to verify anything. They can grant the license, but say that the only supported configuration is Mac, it's up to VMWare and such to provide the support if they want to say that you can run OS X on their platform.

[my123]

> are they running them on some off-the-shelf Macs like they expect everyone else to do?

No. Last time I poked into Xcode Cloud, it was running on Ice Lake server Xeons, which didn't ship on any Mac.

[mulmen]

Azure doesn't run on Windows. Why would iCloud run on MacOS? There's exactly one organization in the world that needs to run iCloud, why would MacOS target that use case? I doubt Apple eats their own dogfood.

[tiernano]

Azure does run on Windows. It's HyperV server below the rest of the hardware. It's a custom Windows install that you can't purchase, but it's Windows none the less.

[ayewo]

That's interesting. Do you have a public source for this handy?

I remember seeing an article [1] proclaiming that more than 50% of Azure's workloads are on Linux, so I'm guessing their hypervisors are running an optimised Linux kernel somewhat.

1: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23156222

[throwaway2990]

Nvidia? Which apple product had Nvidia in it?

[Fuzzeh]

My Mid 2014, 15" Macbook Pro has both Intel and Nvidia.

Chipset Model: Intel Iris Pro

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

This Macbook pro was a free upgrade from Apple after I'd had 3 mainboard replacements because they'd had faulty GPU's on my 2011 MBP ( see https://web.archive.org/web/20170119031155/https://people.ca... for background) - Basically after I found out what was going on I took my 'repaired' machine home and stress tested it until it failed. After the very quick repeated failures Apple decided to replace my machine completely.

[throwaway2990]

So more than “a couple of years ago”

Cos been almost 10 years since apple ditched Nvidia.

[Fuzzeh]

I have no idea when they last used nvidia. I'm just answering the question "Which apple product had Nvidia in it"

[throwaway2990]

I asked cos the person I replied to stated that it was a couple of years ago. I thought maybe there’s some other apple product other than macs that have Nvidia in them. But seems like there isn’t.

[cpuguy83]

MacBook pros did for awhile until they leaked some detail about an upcoming product and Apple switched vendors.

[windowsrookie]

I'm not sure where you heard this from?

Back in 2007-2009 Nividia shipped defective GPUs to everyone, including Apple.

Every MacBook Pro from that era was affected. Nvidia and Apple couldn't come to an agreement to who should pay for the bad GPUs. It cost Apple a lot of money and Nvidia din't seem to care.

After that, Apple slowly started removing Nvidia GPUs from their products. AMD also shipped bad GPU's around ~2011 and Apple went back to Nvidia for a generation or two until AMD sorted their issues out. From Then on it was AMD GPUs only until the M1.

[cpuguy83]

Can't reply to the child comment, but...

I only found one article about this from back in 2008. It was definitely a thing back then, I just can't find it.... But indeed likely second fiddle to the gpu issues around the same time, I totally forgot about that.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

The comment time stamp is clickable, you should see the reply button there.

[sumedh]

Oh wow, I have been on HN for many years, never knew this feature.

[alvarezbjm-hn]

Thank you! I need the cheatsheet for this site.

[deecewan]

there was a point in time when you could run nvidia gpus in mac pros. there were first-party drivers for nvidia cards on macOS

[throwaway2990]

The Nvidia fanboys are out to downvote not knowing it’s been almost 10 years since apple used Nvidia. Lol

[matwood]

Apple almost went out of business allowing macOS to run on non-Apple hardware. I think there are still people there who have an irrational fear from that time.

From a current financial/business standpoint, Apple considers itself a hardware company that includes their custom OS with their hardware. From that angle it makes no sense to allow it to run on non-Apple hardware. Sort of like Sony being ok with the PS OS running on Xbox.

[red_trumpet]

But it also makes no sense to forbid it. If Apple were a hardware company, letting people use their software on other devices wouldn't cut their baseline. After all, people buy Apple because of the hardware, right?

Apparently not, and because they subsidise the software using hardware sales, they don't want to decouple the two.

The Sony/PS situation is exactly the opposite: Sony subsidizes hardware using software (games) sales. Which is why they don't allow you to use different software on a PS.

[alwaysbeconsing]

Now that Apple leans into services revenue it might make sense to license the OS for clones, if they could still sell you an Apple Music subscription on your Samsung iOS device. But as matwood said above in the 90s they traded high-end hardware sales for much less lucrative license fees and lost badly. It was one of the very first things Jobs tried to fix when he returned, and he ended the program because he couldn't get terms he liked from the licensees. (Which in retrospect is weird because it put them entirely out of business, but shrug.)

[saagarjha]

Apple makes it pretty annoying to run VMs on Apple hardware too. Their license agreement has restrictions in it that are kind of unfortunate.

[lostlogin]

Why are people so hung up on the licence agreement? VMs run fine all on all sorts of hardware, Mac’s, Nucs, NASs, actual servers etc.

I often see posted that using VMs violates the agreement, has someone been sued or something?

[janosdebugs]

The post is literally about someone getting sued for providing this very service. Are you missing a /s?

[lostlogin]

A poorly written comment by me, as I was thinking of macOS and trying to ask:

“Has an individual running a few VMs ever lost a lawsuit?”

Obviously fighting Apple would be terrible, but has an individual (as opposed to a company) ever run into trouble?

[saghm]

Exactly. At an old job, we had basically a glorified closet full of Mac minis for running our Mac CI builds on; the Linux builds just used EC2 instances.

[withinrafael]

GitHub uses macOS VMs as part of some agreement under NDA (that supercedes the terms outlined in the EULA).

See previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29419610

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

TIL wtf? Has there been anything new on this front? Very interesting.

[eptcyka]

Apple is anti-VM - there is a soft limit on how many VMs one can run on their M1/M2 Macs. The number is 2.

[pasc1878]

That is the number of macOS VMs. Linux windows etc is not limited

[eptcyka]

If I cared about Linux VMs, I wouldn't be running macOS as my host.

[jraph]

Maybe you don't, but it's common for macOS users to run Linux VMs to get shit done.

[eptcyka]

Sure, but for getting shit done, you can always use nested VMs or SSH into a real linux machine if need be. Regardless, the fact that you can run an unspecified amount of Linux VMs yet macOS VMs are limited to 2 is even more egregious. It's far cheaper to get Linux VMs anywhere than macOS VMs.

[ijidak]

It's probably more about lock-in. They likely don't want a migration path out of their walled garden.

[qwerty456127]

> Apple is not anti-VM. It is anti VM-on-non-Apple-hardware. ;-)

Do you mean they allow VMs on iPads already?

[Mad_ad]

works okayish on iPad Pro https://getutm.app/