Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Is it possible to run Mac OS X on a PC?
- Thread starter Penwin
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It's not "vague" at all. And it's not "Apple branded hardware", but "Apple branded computer", that is very different.
Is your computer "Apple-branded" ? No, it isn't.
So you CANNOT install, run or use Mac OSX on your fabulous i5 ...
Quoting from a friend...
your friend is absolutely wrong and don't even read carefully the EULA:
Capter 2.
...You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so...
Computer, not hardware, so the "hard disk drive" issue is a non-sense.
You have an Apple Computer = you can use Mac OSX
You don' t have an Apple Computer = you cannot use Mac OSX.
The fact that Apple is not going to sue you due to EULA's violation is only because that will cost money and time, and you're not going to harm their business in no-way with your fabulous i5 ...
Breaking the SLA means that any contract between Apple and you is void, and therefore you have no right to make any copies of the software, which includes installation, backup, and copying into RAM to execute the software. You even lose the right to install it and use it on a Macintosh. Furthermore, MacOS X has copy protection, and you can't run it on a non-Macintosh computer without circumvention of the copy protection, committing a DMCA violation.
Now I personally don't care if you tell someone that Apple won't catch them, and even if they get caught Apple will very likely not sue them, but don't tell them that it is legal.
Courts are not impressed at all if you misquote the SLA. It says "installation on a single Apple-branded computer at a time". I'm not qualified to say who precise or vague this is, but your Dell, HP, or home-built computer will _not_ qualify as Apple-branded. And Apple's SLA has just stood up in court quite nicely, when Judge Alsup said "this is what Apple's license says, so that is what Psystar and its customers are bound to".
And you left out:
Now I don't know if it is your attention span that kept you from reading the complete sentence in the license, or if it is blatant dishonesty, but that is the second time you misquote Apple's license.
There are probably tens of thousands if not more that run OSX on regular PC hardware, wether they have even bought OSX or not. Many even work with these computers for their jobs. These computers run fine and even support hardware never supported by Apple, hardly something that is negative...
Till you are not doing it as business reselling hackintoshes, what are you going to get in trouble for? Apple doesn't even sue people that run iPhone jailbreaking and pirates apps sites.
So who the hell is going to sue individuals that run OSX on regular computer hardware?
Hackintoshes, jailbreaking, pirating and such are bigger than Apple or any corporation. It is Apple themselves that by restricting the OS to their hardware or by limiting functionality that create this situation.
German Psystar for you https://www.pearc.de/, Apple's EULA is illegal in Germany for example and it probably is the same for other countries.
I am sure Apple will never take any individual to court with their EULA because they know that it is far from sure they would win.
Till you are not doing it as business reselling hackintoshes, what are you going to get in trouble for? Apple doesn't even sue people that run iPhone jailbreaking and pirates apps sites.
So who the hell is going to sue individuals that run OSX on regular computer hardware?
Hackintoshes, jailbreaking, pirating and such are bigger than Apple or any corporation. It is Apple themselves that by restricting the OS to their hardware or by limiting functionality that create this situation.
German Psystar for you https://www.pearc.de/, Apple's EULA is illegal in Germany for example and it probably is the same for other countries.
I am sure Apple will never take any individual to court with their EULA because they know that it is far from sure they would win.
Could you elaborate on the first part; I haven't heard of any copy-protection preventing someone from installing OSX. You buy the disc from amazon; plop in a bootloader on a CD in your PC then take it out once it has loaded and put in the OSX disc. As far as I'm aware nothing apple is modified at all.
Why does the i5 require an adjective to precede it in two instances?
The only people that will agree with you are people that will try to get around every loophole they can.
^^^ I totally agree. I know the fanboys will begin to flame on, however I don't see it as illegal. I see it as apple being monopolistic on their conditions. It's similar to M$ subjectively installing windows explorer as the only web browser. The same is Apple Bull***** agreement mandatory installing their os only on their computer. That would be like me not being able to install a chev engine into a ford. Know many guys that did it for the challenge. I believe as Apple gets bigger the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will look into this more seriously. Steve Jobs spoke in 1997 about having choice in the OS. The context was about web browsers. I would like to see Apple being genuine about choice and extending it into allowing the OS being installed onto any computer. However it's all about the Benjamin's.
Remember... Gambling was illegal until the government could make money. Alcohol was illegal until the government could make money. Prostitution was illegal until the government could make money, etc. I see the bible as really the only truth out there. The rest is just man made laws motivated by the love of money.
This is nothing like Microsoft. Apple develops a complete system. They do not sell the OS and hardware separately but as a bundle and you are free to delete the operating system and install a different one such as Windows and Linux if you so please. Since they are not a monopoly (you have the choice of many other computer manufacturers) then they are completely free to do this. They are not forcing everyone to use their operating system and breaking standards to lock everyone into it so it is nothing like MS and IE.
Apple does not sell full copies of OS X. You simply cannot buy a full copy as it is always an upgrade from an earlier copy of Mac OS X which came with your Mac. If you don't have a Mac then you do not have a copy of Mac OS X to upgrade from so you are breaking the license agreement. The legality of this isn't in question. Apple owns the operating system and to have a legitimate license to use a copy you have to accept their terms. They have the right to sue you and they will win as the business with Psystar has shown. Installing a copy of SL on a PC means you have produced an unauthorised copy so are in breach of copyright so yes, it is illegal since you would be using it without a legitimate license and thus guilty of copyright infringement.
EULA is not illegal in German as in many european country. This is an "urban legend" ...
There is not DMCA in Europe, but there are many laws to protect copyright
The only reason because Apple has not yet sue Pearc.de is that they are doing little business so far.
There is a far, far more draconian copyright directive in the EU.
The EU Copyright Directive also known as Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.
You just said it yourself. You need to "plop in a bootloader on a CD". That bootloader emulates Apple EFI. Then look in the extra folder on the CD. There's a DMG (preboot.dmg) in there. Lets take a look shall we... Looks fairly innocuous. Oh wait, what's this Extra folder.. oOoOoO There's a folder called extensions in it... What's in here...
FakeSMC.kext - intentions fairly clear here, fooling OS X that this is an Apple to get past the infinite beach ball issue. This replaces Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext on a real mac, and this hacked kext was called DSMOS.kext on Leopard hackintoshes.
OpenHaltRestart.kext - Original Developer PSYSTAR.
So all you guys who install this bootloader CD help PSYSTAR break their injunction!
There are more in here, but I don't need to go any further..
The bit marked in bold is where you are circumventing Apple's DRM. The DMCA says that it is illegal to circumvent an effective copy protection mechanism, and that is exactly what the bootloader does. There is no need to modify anything that belongs to Apple for this to catch you, except that by modifying MacOS X Psystar _additionally_ did things not allowed under copyright.
Yeah yeah as if Apple would let anyone anywhere in the world sell regular hardware with OSX installed and not sue them if they were sure they would win... Rrrrriiiggghht...
PearC actually state that the Apple EULA is illegal under the German Law (and that for Europe there are no problems too), it would be really cocky from them to do this knowing it is untrue. I am sure they would have been taken down a long time ago if that was the case and for sure Apple has already tried to do something about them. They also ship all over Europe if you are interested.
For your information, for example in France it is illegal to force the customer to buy the OS with the computer, even if it is preinstalled. Many have taken manufacturers to court and have gotten refunds for the entire software installed on the computer (OS, etc). Some manufacturers have now come up with procedures to get refunded. Even Apple's French OSX EULA states that if you do not agree with the terms of the EULA you can get refunded for the cost of the software (although no one has tried to do it with Apple yet).
So there is probably a good reason that Apple is not going to do much in Europe because they do not know what the outcome will be if they try to take people or companies to court with their EULA. Seeing what happened in the recent past (MS and Intel) I think that it is clear that the European politicians are not scared of US corporations and they will not let them have their ways in Europe as they do in USA.
big deal. apple have dropped hardware support for their own 'hardware' tons of times in its own lineup.
As far as I understand the current Hackintosh bootloaders use open source code only. Since you can install retail OSX DVDs without modifying them at all, there is no piracy or code theft involved.
If it was as obvious as you say Apple would be all over the people developing these tools and since they are not it proves once again that they do not know what the outcome would be (just as for iphone jailbreaking which is still not officially illegal afaik).
I think you really missed the point. Me installing a OSx onto a PC is not producing a copy. If so then me ripping all my owned CD's several years back into iTunes library would then be illegal according to your point. Then I guess sony, columbia records, etc would be able to sue me because I infringed on copyright laws.
Pystar really got sued for one reason. They were making money off of the OS. It's always about the money.
this is totally bull**** to me.
From the French EULA:
Vous renoncez pour vous-même et pour autrui à installer, utiliser ou exécuter le logiciel Apple sur tout autre ordinateur non Apple. Cette Licence interdit linstallation du logiciel Apple sur plusieurs ordinateurs à la fois et son utilisation sur réseau où il serait accessible par plusieurs ordinateurs simultanément.
It's the same as US EULA, Italian EULA, Germany EULA and so on ...
Your is the typical attempt to justify something that is clearly illegal but you feel safe just because you know that Apple is not going to spend time and money to sue you.
Pearc is something like an amateur's site, without a real shop, and Apple probably already know all about their business.
1 Some people like to throw around the word "piracy" for anything involving software. I just take it as the uneducated's word for "illegal activity."
2 Apple needs to keep looking like good guys, and suing the crap out of some guy who writes bootloaders in his basement on weekends isnt going to help them at all.
I do agree.
No piracy involved here, only illegal activity (if you buy a legal copy of Mac OSX)
To anyone with a bit of common sense it is obvious that installing MacOS X on a PC (or a Macintosh) is producing a copy. You start with a DVD with MacOS X and a hard drive without MacOS X, and you finish with a DVD with MacOS X and a hard drive with MacOS X. So clearly a copy has been made. And loading the operating system into RAM is also making a copy, which is also common sense, but also supported by several recent court decisions.
What you are confusing is making copies with permission of the copyright holder and making copies without permission of the copyright holder. installing MacOS X on a Mac or a PC is in both cases "making a copy", but in one case you have the permission of the copyright holder (if you install on one Mac only), in the other case you don't. That's the difference. And you have permission of the copyright holder to rip non-copy protected CDs into iTunes.
And Psystar probably was sued not for making money (or lets say for trying to make money, because they failed miserably at it), but for being complete *******s.
Can I just say that you are completely missing the point? It doesn't matter whether the code is open source or not, or whether MacOS X is modified or not. The fact is that MacOS X will not run on a computer unless something is used that gets around Apple's DRM preventing MacOS X from running on non-Apple computers. And that is a DMCA violation, both on the side of the person or company producing the tool, and on the side of the person or company using the tool.
There is also unavoidable copyright infringement on the side of whoever installs MacOS X on a non-Apple computer, and unavoidable copyright infringement on the side of anyone who runs MacOS X on a non-Apple computer.
People are led into the wrong direction by the fact that Psystar, out of greed or incompetence, did other things that were illegal, like installing MacOS X from a modified master copy, and that Apple sued them for that as well. A lot of things that Psystar has to pay for could have been avoided. The DMCA violation and either copyright infringement by installing MacOS X, or contributory copyright infringement by enticing people to install MacOS X, these two were not avoidable.
Every Apple EULA has the refund clause. It is an essential part, because people without internet access cannot read the EULA before they install the product.
PearC states on their website that IN THEIR OPINION the Apple EULA is illegal under German Law. Whether that is true or not, bypassing technical measures IS illegal throughout the EU.
Apple are, I'm sure, now formulating their case against PearC, using their experience in the Psystar case to do this.