3 ms·

Violating a EULA isn't illegal - it is a violation of your agreement with a company but not a violation of government law (in most places anyways?). The worst t

Violating a EULA isn't illegal - it is a violation of your agreement with a company but not a violation of government law (in most places anyways?). The worst that could happen is being banned from Apple services. Apple gains little benefit from banning individual users, and stands to lose a lot if that person then publishes a blog post or something that goes viral. It would hurt them not just in the mass public perception, but also among developers in particular. If Apple was seriously concerned about hackintoshes, the logical place to start would be taking down the popular guides and forums discussing how to build hackintoshes, not targeting people who follow those guides. Shutting down a few subreddits / discords would deter far more people than targeting an individual. Finally, hackintoshes have been around decades. 99% of people who want to use Mac will not have the knowledge/time/energy to do this and will just buy a Mac instead. The niche is sort of self-limiting to a tiny group of people, so it will never be an existential threat to the sale of Apple products. So overall I don't see much risk in doing stuff like this.. the risk/reward for Apple in going after Hackintoshers just doesn't make sense. So hackintosh away ;)

mavhc 5y ago
If Apple was seriously concerned about hackintoshes they'd develop their own custom CPU that they owned and no one else had access to.
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  If the government was seriously concerned about tracking people they'd manufacture a viral pandemic and put microchips in the vaccine. Is that a good reason to believe that COVID was created by the government? M1/Hackintosh - same reasoning, different example.
- microtonal 5y ago
  I think it is very obvious that this was not their motivation. Hobbyist hackintosh is barely a blip on the radar. They switched to their own CPU because Intel screwed up, plus they want to increase vertical integration. But of course, it is quite likely that once Apple kills x86_64 macOS, it's also the end of Hackintosh. Apple uses too many proprietary extensions (e.g. AMX) and custom hardware (neural engine, GPU, etc.) to make running macOS on generic ARM hardware easy.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    Indeed, they did own 40% of ARM as a co-founder at one point. When iOS is 90% of your business you need to reduce the costs of the other 10%
microtonal 5y ago
The niche is sort of self-limiting to a tiny group of people, so it will never be an existential threat to the sale of Apple products. Indeed. Setting up a hackintosh is only really feasible for people with some tech chops. In most Western countries, someone with enough technical background to set up a hackintosh machine will probably have an hourly wage where (hardware price + hourly wages x hours to setup/maintain hackintosh) >> purchase price hackintosh. Setting up and maintaining a hackintosh is just a fun technical challenge for a lot of people. Similar to how running OpenBSD on a PowerPC or SPARC is fun. Some will also use hackintosh because Apple doesn't offer the hardware that they want. Apple seems to draw a line at selling Hackintosh machines (see e.g. their lawsuit against Psystar [1]). Fully compatible, supported hackintoshes would be a threat to Apple's bottom line. --- Both me and a family member installed OS X on a HP/Dell laptop in 2007 as sort of a challenge. We both liked OS X so much that we had both bought a Mac Mini and a MacBook in weeks and have been users since then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation

mavhc 5y ago

If Apple was seriously concerned about hackintoshes they'd develop their own custom CPU that they owned and no one else had access to.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago
If the government was seriously concerned about tracking people they'd manufacture a viral pandemic and put microchips in the vaccine. Is that a good reason to believe that COVID was created by the government? M1/Hackintosh - same reasoning, different example.
microtonal 5y ago
I think it is very obvious that this was not their motivation. Hobbyist hackintosh is barely a blip on the radar. They switched to their own CPU because Intel screwed up, plus they want to increase vertical integration. But of course, it is quite likely that once Apple kills x86_64 macOS, it's also the end of Hackintosh. Apple uses too many proprietary extensions (e.g. AMX) and custom hardware (neural engine, GPU, etc.) to make running macOS on generic ARM hardware easy.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Indeed, they did own 40% of ARM as a co-founder at one point. When iOS is 90% of your business you need to reduce the costs of the other 10%

microtonal 5y ago

The niche is sort of self-limiting to a tiny group of people, so it will never be an existential threat to the sale of Apple products. Indeed. Setting up a hackintosh is only really feasible for people with some tech chops. In most Western countries, someone with enough technical background to set up a hackintosh machine will probably have an hourly wage where (hardware price + hourly wages x hours to setup/maintain hackintosh) >> purchase price hackintosh. Setting up and maintaining a hackintosh is just a fun technical challenge for a lot of people. Similar to how running OpenBSD on a PowerPC or SPARC is fun. Some will also use hackintosh because Apple doesn't offer the hardware that they want. Apple seems to draw a line at selling Hackintosh machines (see e.g. their lawsuit against Psystar [1]). Fully compatible, supported hackintoshes would be a threat to Apple's bottom line. --- Both me and a family member installed OS X on a HP/Dell laptop in 2007 as sort of a challenge. We both liked OS X so much that we had both bought a Mac Mini and a MacBook in weeks and have been users since then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation