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I fell into the same trap a while back. Bought a mac, fixed some OSS I maintained (and I do note the documentation was quite crap "Well, Apple. I made it... des

I fell into the same trap a while back. Bought a mac, fixed some OSS I maintained (and I do note the documentation was quite crap "Well, Apple. I made it... despite your directions"), the next OS X update killed it again, gave up, sold the mac. Felt like an enourmous waste of money and time.

enriquto 6y ago
> Felt like an enourmous waste of money and time. And it certainly was. But sometimes you have well-appreciated macOS users that you have not yet managed to convert out of it. In that case, instead of throwing away your money you can easily [0] install a Catalina vm inside linux or windows. With a quite small effort, you can readily check that your program compiles and runs on that shitty system. [0] https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  Is it legal? I thought you can run MacOS only on Mac hardware.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    I don't see how such a thing might be illegal, but the current century never ceases to amaze me. In any case, it is just a (very popular) shell script that downloads a few publicly available files and runs them in a controlled environment. It does not harm anybody.
    - m-p-3 6y ago
      It's technologically doable, but running MacOS on non-Apple hardware is against the ToS.
      - enriquto 6y ago
        Is it? Anyhow, it does not mean that it is illegal, which was the original question. I guess most ToS are not enforceable in practice. The worst that may happen is that you "lose the warranty" of your macOS install and you cannot ask Apple for support. No big deal.
        The_Colonel 6y ago
        So I'm not an expert, but isn't it still simply pirating software? I mean what's the difference between this and pirating Photoshop for example?
        userbinator 6y ago
        Adobe sells Photoshop, Apple does not sell macOS (and freely publishes download links for the latter.)
        The_Colonel 6y ago
        Apple does sell macOS (as a part of MacBook, iMac etc).
        vlakkx 6y ago
        The difference is that the cited shell script downloads software that the copyright holder himself makes freely available. It is like downloading binary freeware. The ToS are a separate issue, but I doubt they'd hold in Europe for example.
        thw0rted 6y ago
        Just because software is made available using a public web server does not mean that you are free to use it as you please. It's distributed along with a ToS agreement that governs its use. Bringing in words like "illegal" can be fraught because I don't think we've seen a court case (in the US at least) about exactly how binding a "click-wrap" agreement actually is, but there's no question that projects like the one linked upthread violate the terms of the software license.
  - sdflhasjd 6y ago
    This is a TOS problem that I could personally not care less about. The bigger issue is that even though you're running in a VM, you're not going to get all the necessary hardware working for Mac OS. For me, I couldn't get my graphics drivers properly set up and as such couldn't get any OpenGL stuff to work as it would be on a real mac, so it was a no-go. At least you can XCode working and do macOS builds.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    It's against the Terms of Service, which may or may not have legal implications based on where you are. However, Apple doesn't really give a shit unless you're going to profit off of it. The Hackintosh community has been around for ages and Apple doesn't do anything unless someone starts selling pre-installed Hackintoshes.

enriquto 6y ago

> Felt like an enourmous waste of money and time. And it certainly was. But sometimes you have well-appreciated macOS users that you have not yet managed to convert out of it. In that case, instead of throwing away your money you can easily [0] install a Catalina vm inside linux or windows. With a quite small effort, you can readily check that your program compiles and runs on that shitty system. [0] https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

The_Colonel 6y ago
Is it legal? I thought you can run MacOS only on Mac hardware.
- enriquto 6y ago
  I don't see how such a thing might be illegal, but the current century never ceases to amaze me. In any case, it is just a (very popular) shell script that downloads a few publicly available files and runs them in a controlled environment. It does not harm anybody.
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    It's technologically doable, but running MacOS on non-Apple hardware is against the ToS.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      Is it? Anyhow, it does not mean that it is illegal, which was the original question. I guess most ToS are not enforceable in practice. The worst that may happen is that you "lose the warranty" of your macOS install and you cannot ask Apple for support. No big deal.
      - The_Colonel 6y ago
        So I'm not an expert, but isn't it still simply pirating software? I mean what's the difference between this and pirating Photoshop for example?
        userbinator 6y ago
        Adobe sells Photoshop, Apple does not sell macOS (and freely publishes download links for the latter.)
        The_Colonel 6y ago
        Apple does sell macOS (as a part of MacBook, iMac etc).
        vlakkx 6y ago
        The difference is that the cited shell script downloads software that the copyright holder himself makes freely available. It is like downloading binary freeware. The ToS are a separate issue, but I doubt they'd hold in Europe for example.
        thw0rted 6y ago
        Just because software is made available using a public web server does not mean that you are free to use it as you please. It's distributed along with a ToS agreement that governs its use. Bringing in words like "illegal" can be fraught because I don't think we've seen a court case (in the US at least) about exactly how binding a "click-wrap" agreement actually is, but there's no question that projects like the one linked upthread violate the terms of the software license.
- sdflhasjd 6y ago
  This is a TOS problem that I could personally not care less about. The bigger issue is that even though you're running in a VM, you're not going to get all the necessary hardware working for Mac OS. For me, I couldn't get my graphics drivers properly set up and as such couldn't get any OpenGL stuff to work as it would be on a real mac, so it was a no-go. At least you can XCode working and do macOS builds.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  It's against the Terms of Service, which may or may not have legal implications based on where you are. However, Apple doesn't really give a shit unless you're going to profit off of it. The Hackintosh community has been around for ages and Apple doesn't do anything unless someone starts selling pre-installed Hackintoshes.