7 ms·

This falls on deaf years but I say it every chance I get. I would pay a significant premium to install MacOS on a machine without violating their ToS.

awalton 7y ago
But then how would Apple sell you a Mac Mini?
- holy_city 7y ago
  I mean they're not selling me one now, I don't need a hot plate on my desk. But I would pay a (comparatively) obscene amount of money for just the operating system license to install on a midtower.
- gregmac 7y ago
  I'd buy a stack of Mac Mini's and leave them unplugged if it allowed me to provision dozens of Mac VMs on real server hardware.
deagle50 7y ago
No kidding. I would pay their entire iMac hardware margin for an OSX desktop license.
- mgalgs 7y ago
  I'm afraid the markup would have to be a lot more than that. They're banking on you buying multiple pieces of hardware over the years, not just one iMac... Hardware lock-in is their whole business model...
  - deagle50 7y ago
    We're talking about people like me who build their own desktops and wouldn't buy an Apple desktop otherwise. They could even make it a subscription.
    - mgalgs 7y ago
      Right, but how would they prevent eroding sales to people _not_ like you? That's exactly why the hardware lock-in model is so insidious. > They could even make it a subscription. Yes, my only point is that it would have to cost a lot more than the margin of a single iMac.
      - deagle50 7y ago
        I see your point now. Oh well.
mlevental 7y ago
it falls on deaf ears because there are only dozens of us.
JoshTriplett 7y ago
I would pay a premium to be able to install macOS on a cloud VM that I can scale arbitrarily large (and to arbitrarily many instances, presumably with premium for each). I'd like to do scalable CI and builds for macOS. (Also, if someone can find a maintainable method for it, I'd love to support someone who maintains a cross-compiler toolchain that targets macOS, making it possible to build Rust and C apps for macOS without having macOS installed. But that's not a complete substitute for having an actual macOS cloud build server, on which the compiled applications can run as part of the build process.)
- tomjakubowski 7y ago
  This toolchain can build C, C++ and Rust programs for macOS on Linux and FreeBSD. You'd need an Apple developer account to download the SDK. https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    Handy! How hard would it be to integrate something like that into rustup, to make it easy to install a capable cross-compiler backend?
- peterkelly 7y ago
  This may be of interest to you: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/cloud-hosted-mac-agents-for-ci-cd-pipelines/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/cloud-hosted-mac-agent...
Aaronstotle 7y ago
It always baffled me that Apple refuses to sell MacOS, they could capture a significant part of the OS market.
- richardwhiuk 7y ago
  They probably wouldn't. Apple have very limited driver support, and they get away with that because of their tight hardware configurations. The slickness of Mac OS X is partially because it's only deployed on high-end, well known hardware.
- holy_city 7y ago
  I don't fault them for it, they're a hardware company. Releasing the OS as a consumer product would probably destroy their hardware sales, since users (like me) wouldn't buy Apple hardware anymore. But like I said, I would pay an outrageous fee to use MacOS on a non-Apple machine without violating the EULA. And I only want it for professional use, where I can justify certain expenses (like a $500 software license + yearly renewal for updates), but can't justify spending $2-5k on an Apple machine that won't give me the performance, maintenance, or upgrade path available from off the shelf components. It's such a weird business calculus to develop for MacOS. I genuinely love their products and software, but it constantly feels like developers get screwed every generation (especially smaller shops that do heavy lifting on MacOS).
- jki275 7y ago
  It would be a maintenance nightmare for Apple. MS puts a lot of resources towards making Windows run on everything. Apple controls the hardware with an iron fist so they don't have to do that.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
Since Apple isn't opposed to releasing new OS flavors, I think they should release "serverOS", a variant of macOS but licensed to run anywhere, even (or especially) on non-Apple hardware and in VMs. It's very frustrating to a lot of people that macOS VMs aren't easy (licensing/ToS-wise) to spin up on non-Apple hardware, especially since Apple doesn't sell high-end servers any longer. Yes, that calculus will be different when the new Mac Pro begins to sell, but a lot of IT departments would rather add Apple VMs for testing/build/dev to their on existing on-premise compute clouds (vSphere/etc.) than spin up brand new ones on Apple hardware. Additionally, there's a lot of demand for local Apple VMs on Windows machines. Microsoft makes a lot of money from software that's running on my Mac - especially Office and Windows (via Parallels Desktop or Boot Camp). Why shouldn't Apple make money from VMs running on Windows and Linux machines?
- airstrike 7y ago
  Perhaps better yet they can build Apple-branded server hardware and compete with Azure and AWS on a Mac OS version of the cloud
  - AceJohnny2 7y ago
    Server hardware is low-margin. Apple doesn't do low-margin.
    - airstrike 7y ago
      Cloud hosting is high-margin, though
  - c256 7y ago
    It was called XServe. It died due to a bunch of reasons, mostly (I believe) having to do with price/power/performance of Intel chips. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  It's a quip among colleagues that "macOS is not a server OS". I have to run a bunch of VMs for builds, and I really wish I could be running Linux instead.

awalton 7y ago

But then how would Apple sell you a Mac Mini?

holy_city 7y ago
I mean they're not selling me one now, I don't need a hot plate on my desk. But I would pay a (comparatively) obscene amount of money for just the operating system license to install on a midtower.
gregmac 7y ago
I'd buy a stack of Mac Mini's and leave them unplugged if it allowed me to provision dozens of Mac VMs on real server hardware.

deagle50 7y ago

No kidding. I would pay their entire iMac hardware margin for an OSX desktop license.

mgalgs 7y ago
I'm afraid the markup would have to be a lot more than that. They're banking on you buying multiple pieces of hardware over the years, not just one iMac... Hardware lock-in is their whole business model...
- deagle50 7y ago
  We're talking about people like me who build their own desktops and wouldn't buy an Apple desktop otherwise. They could even make it a subscription.
  - mgalgs 7y ago
    Right, but how would they prevent eroding sales to people _not_ like you? That's exactly why the hardware lock-in model is so insidious. > They could even make it a subscription. Yes, my only point is that it would have to cost a lot more than the margin of a single iMac.
    - deagle50 7y ago
      I see your point now. Oh well.

mlevental 7y ago

it falls on deaf ears because there are only dozens of us.

JoshTriplett 7y ago

I would pay a premium to be able to install macOS on a cloud VM that I can scale arbitrarily large (and to arbitrarily many instances, presumably with premium for each). I'd like to do scalable CI and builds for macOS. (Also, if someone can find a maintainable method for it, I'd love to support someone who maintains a cross-compiler toolchain that targets macOS, making it possible to build Rust and C apps for macOS without having macOS installed. But that's not a complete substitute for having an actual macOS cloud build server, on which the compiled applications can run as part of the build process.)

tomjakubowski 7y ago
This toolchain can build C, C++ and Rust programs for macOS on Linux and FreeBSD. You'd need an Apple developer account to download the SDK. https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  Handy! How hard would it be to integrate something like that into rustup, to make it easy to install a capable cross-compiler backend?
peterkelly 7y ago
This may be of interest to you: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/cloud-hosted-mac-agents-for-ci-cd-pipelines/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/cloud-hosted-mac-agent...

Aaronstotle 7y ago

It always baffled me that Apple refuses to sell MacOS, they could capture a significant part of the OS market.

richardwhiuk 7y ago
They probably wouldn't. Apple have very limited driver support, and they get away with that because of their tight hardware configurations. The slickness of Mac OS X is partially because it's only deployed on high-end, well known hardware.
holy_city 7y ago
I don't fault them for it, they're a hardware company. Releasing the OS as a consumer product would probably destroy their hardware sales, since users (like me) wouldn't buy Apple hardware anymore. But like I said, I would pay an outrageous fee to use MacOS on a non-Apple machine without violating the EULA. And I only want it for professional use, where I can justify certain expenses (like a $500 software license + yearly renewal for updates), but can't justify spending $2-5k on an Apple machine that won't give me the performance, maintenance, or upgrade path available from off the shelf components. It's such a weird business calculus to develop for MacOS. I genuinely love their products and software, but it constantly feels like developers get screwed every generation (especially smaller shops that do heavy lifting on MacOS).
jki275 7y ago
It would be a maintenance nightmare for Apple. MS puts a lot of resources towards making Windows run on everything. Apple controls the hardware with an iron fist so they don't have to do that.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

Since Apple isn't opposed to releasing new OS flavors, I think they should release "serverOS", a variant of macOS but licensed to run anywhere, even (or especially) on non-Apple hardware and in VMs. It's very frustrating to a lot of people that macOS VMs aren't easy (licensing/ToS-wise) to spin up on non-Apple hardware, especially since Apple doesn't sell high-end servers any longer. Yes, that calculus will be different when the new Mac Pro begins to sell, but a lot of IT departments would rather add Apple VMs for testing/build/dev to their on existing on-premise compute clouds (vSphere/etc.) than spin up brand new ones on Apple hardware. Additionally, there's a lot of demand for local Apple VMs on Windows machines. Microsoft makes a lot of money from software that's running on my Mac - especially Office and Windows (via Parallels Desktop or Boot Camp). Why shouldn't Apple make money from VMs running on Windows and Linux machines?

airstrike 7y ago
Perhaps better yet they can build Apple-branded server hardware and compete with Azure and AWS on a Mac OS version of the cloud
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  Server hardware is low-margin. Apple doesn't do low-margin.
  - airstrike 7y ago
    Cloud hosting is high-margin, though
- c256 7y ago
  It was called XServe. It died due to a bunch of reasons, mostly (I believe) having to do with price/power/performance of Intel chips. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve
AceJohnny2 7y ago
It's a quip among colleagues that "macOS is not a server OS". I have to run a bunch of VMs for builds, and I really wish I could be running Linux instead.