4 ms·

I'm curious about the mentions of Hackintosh. As I understand it, running macOS on non-Apple hardware (the essence of a Hackintosh) is a violation of the EULA.

I'm curious about the mentions of Hackintosh. As I understand it, running macOS on non-Apple hardware (the essence of a Hackintosh) is a violation of the EULA. I'm not here to argue the pros and cons, and I am not a lawyer, but I'm intrigued about the author saying -- and I paraphrase -- "I'm doing this on a computer that's breaking the licence agreement". That's an admission. I'm not judging, it's an observation. Hackintosh admissions on a personal site where they can be traced back to a person seem a bit risky to me. I have no knowledge of Apple legal circling. Perhaps I'm just paranoid.

singhrac 9y ago
My guess is that Apple's lawyers are busy enough without worrying about individuals violating their EULA without harming their business (e.g. by selling the Hackintoshes). As long as you're not Psystar I think you'll be fine.
mikeokner 9y ago
EULAs in general are somewhat of a farce. Most companies use them as scare tactics but wouldn't want to risk them being scrutinized in court, especially when the only damages they could point to would be lost revenue in small-claims territory.
schmookeeg 9y ago
Orz mode on. :) Items in * are poorly translated and not to be taken literally. (edit, lol, fail. Didn't realize asterisks cause italics. Sigh) From my experience with Hackintosh, you're downloading a canned VMWare image of a pirated OS. I'm not exactly sure when they would say you agreed to anything when you downloaded it, since you only have interactions with VMWare Player (or VBox) and the site hosting the VMWare images, plus a few of the BIOS patches that are needed to make it all work. you never interact with Apple in any way. The guy who keeps packaging it is running a risk of legal action when Apple gets their fill of PCs running MacOS, though. In the meantime, though, it allowed me to shelve my Mac Mini for iOS development and keep everything in one PC, albeit one virtualized environment. Being able to copy/paste between PC and Mac is fantastic for workflow. I am a big fan. I probably get burned by something deep in the Apple Developer Program EULA where I agreed not to do unintended things with Apple software. :)
regulation_d 9y ago
I have to think that most people who build Hackintoshes are already Mac customers. I'd guess a typical use case is somebody that already owns a MacBook Pro and wants a decent companion desktop which Apple doesn't really sell at this point. It's still a violation of the EULA, but I think most violations would be substantially different from, for example, using a cracked version of Windows, in that most Hackintoshers have probably already given Apple $2000 for another computer.

singhrac 9y ago

My guess is that Apple's lawyers are busy enough without worrying about individuals violating their EULA without harming their business (e.g. by selling the Hackintoshes). As long as you're not Psystar I think you'll be fine.

mikeokner 9y ago

EULAs in general are somewhat of a farce. Most companies use them as scare tactics but wouldn't want to risk them being scrutinized in court, especially when the only damages they could point to would be lost revenue in small-claims territory.

schmookeeg 9y ago

Orz mode on. :) Items in * are poorly translated and not to be taken literally. (edit, lol, fail. Didn't realize asterisks cause italics. Sigh) From my experience with Hackintosh, you're downloading a canned VMWare image of a pirated OS. I'm not exactly sure when they would say you agreed to anything when you downloaded it, since you only have interactions with VMWare Player (or VBox) and the site hosting the VMWare images, plus a few of the BIOS patches that are needed to make it all work. you never interact with Apple in any way. The guy who keeps packaging it is running a risk of legal action when Apple gets their fill of PCs running MacOS, though. In the meantime, though, it allowed me to shelve my Mac Mini for iOS development and keep everything in one PC, albeit one virtualized environment. Being able to copy/paste between PC and Mac is fantastic for workflow. I am a big fan. I probably get burned by something deep in the Apple Developer Program EULA where I agreed not to do unintended things with Apple software. :)

regulation_d 9y ago

I have to think that most people who build Hackintoshes are already Mac customers. I'd guess a typical use case is somebody that already owns a MacBook Pro and wants a decent companion desktop which Apple doesn't really sell at this point. It's still a violation of the EULA, but I think most violations would be substantially different from, for example, using a cracked version of Windows, in that most Hackintoshers have probably already given Apple $2000 for another computer.