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> I thought OS X was tied in some way to Apple hardware (i.e. you can emulate the CPU but they tie it to other hardware). It is, but very weakly - basically a

> I thought OS X was tied in some way to Apple hardware (i.e. you can emulate the CPU but they tie it to other hardware). It is, but very weakly - basically a secret string stored in the SMI. > Is this how Github actions and other CI services work? For some reason I thought they had to buy a bunch of Apple hardware ... You can virtualize MacOS, but only on official Apple hardware. There is likely a fleet of Mac Pros or Mac Minis somewhere running real hardware + VMs. EDIT: Read "You can ..." above as "You are authorized by Apple and can legally virtualize MacOS". You can run OSX on virtually any hardware in a VM, but doing it at scale or in a commercial setting will probably be a bad idea from a legal perspective.

chubot 6y ago
OK so by "can" you mean "according to Apple's TOS" ? Because it seems like you "can" in the technical sense (although I didn't try it, I looked at the code and it looks legit) I imagine that a small CI service could start with the QEMU solution unofficially, but they would likely have to switch to Apple hardware before Apple got wind of it ...
- zymhan 6y ago
  You couldn't hide a macOS CI service from Apple for long. You can also get old Xserves and Mac Pros for quite cheap.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    New versions of macOS deprecate support for older hardware. Sierra dropped support for Xserves.
wheybags 6y ago
> You can virtualize MacOS, but only on official Apple hardware. legally only on apple hardware. It does actually work fine on normal PCs though.
lights0123 6y ago
> It is, but very weakly - basically a secret string stored in the SMI. Which, incidentally, is "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc"
- 7ewis 6y ago
  Interesting, did some Googling on this and apparently they tried to protect the haiku in court as trade secret: https://www.rcfp.org/wp-content/uploads/imported/20120105_202426_apple_sealing.pdf https://www.rcfp.org/wp-content/uploads/imported/20120105_20... (Direct link to PDF)

chubot 6y ago

OK so by "can" you mean "according to Apple's TOS" ? Because it seems like you "can" in the technical sense (although I didn't try it, I looked at the code and it looks legit) I imagine that a small CI service could start with the QEMU solution unofficially, but they would likely have to switch to Apple hardware before Apple got wind of it ...

zymhan 6y ago
You couldn't hide a macOS CI service from Apple for long. You can also get old Xserves and Mac Pros for quite cheap.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  New versions of macOS deprecate support for older hardware. Sierra dropped support for Xserves.

wheybags 6y ago

> You can virtualize MacOS, but only on official Apple hardware. legally only on apple hardware. It does actually work fine on normal PCs though.

lights0123 6y ago

> It is, but very weakly - basically a secret string stored in the SMI. Which, incidentally, is "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc"

7ewis 6y ago
Interesting, did some Googling on this and apparently they tried to protect the haiku in court as trade secret: https://www.rcfp.org/wp-content/uploads/imported/20120105_202426_apple_sealing.pdf https://www.rcfp.org/wp-content/uploads/imported/20120105_20... (Direct link to PDF)