I'm perfectly fine with running Hackintoshes for more than a decade now and I see it as being morally superior to buying the stuff from Apple, or Microsoft, or Google, you name it. I believe that the world could be a better place if the hardware and software were more fragmented and less integrated. This would lead to simpler, less opaque solutions that could be controlled by the users and developers and not by 10 international corporations. I wish all of them were destroyed by some EM storm and the tech would return to using older technologies which wouldn't allow the systems to become too complex (due to the hardware decoming very slow). Having less of convenience is not an issue when the alternative is having no control. Having to teach the population to use the plain email, FTP and the text editor is better than being herded by "I know what is better for you"-type elitist groups. I know from the experience that if the information crud is removed, most organisatons could run on the C program with an sqlite db (or even a text file) and be perfectly fine. So I'm happily stealing from both Apple and Microsoft, and I wish I could encourage more people to do likewise. "Why wouldn't you use Linux then?" - because I'm forced to use all that garbage by a workplace or the orgs I'm interacting with. I would personally use none of that. My background is 30 years of programming.

Personally, I have just about zero interest in running an Apple OS, but maybe I could be interested in the tinkering to get it to run.

However, OS X/macOs is clearly a general purpose Operating System that could work on a general purpose computer, but is only sold bundled with Apple hardware. There's a potential quandary with respect to using commercial software without paying for it, but Apple doesn't exactly let you pay for it either, so eh? A lot of people don't have a big problem with copying software that is generally unavailable, and I could see how can't buy it without buying expensive hardware I don't want is close enough to meet people's ethics. And some people's ethics allow them to use commercial software without paying without remorse too, so there's that.

I would have no problem with paying for software licensed for use on specific hardware and using that software on different hardware. That's not really a restriction I think a software seller should be able to make, so I'm not going to consider it unethical to circumvent (although in a business context when there's an enforcement mechanism, I might not circumvent it then). Just because my DVD is only licensed for use on a licensed DVD player doesn't mean I'll feel bad playing with with VLC; same with a video game that I manage to play on a system other than the one it was made for. Of course, pirating a movie or video game is different. That's what makes this issue a little touchy --- you can't pay for OS X separate from the hardware (you also can't pay for the hardware separate from the OS); if it's a no cost OS that ships with the hardware, then it doesn't seem bad to use it otherwise, but if it's really a $100 OS that comes bundled, that's different.

I never read the EULA when I put MacOS on my Thinkpad, so I'd file it under "willful ignorance" if I were you.

Thanks for answering! I am not really asking about the legality, per se, which is where the EULA comes into this. I don't want to put any words into your mouth, so let me just imagine a couple of "inner monologues" about the ethical/moral aspect of that, just so you have an idea of what I'm trying to ask.

"I know Apple doesn't want me to use it this way, and I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway even though it's wrong"

"I know Apple doesn't want me to use it this way, but they shouldn't have a say in it, so it's not really wrong"

Would be interested to know how you're thinking about your decision to run MacOS on your Thinkpad from that perspective.

It's a little of column A and column B. I don't feel bad for breaking their EULA though, Apple definitely has bigger fish to fry than chasing down hobbyists who want to toss their free-to-download software on a laptop without their blessing. The so-called "ethics" side of it isn't even on my radar, considering how opaque Apple is with their software and hardware distribution.

> Would be interested to know how you're thinking about your decision to run MacOS on your Thinkpad from that perspective.

Frankly, I just don't care or think about it for that matter. It took maybe 30 minutes to install, I marveled at how well it worked on unsupported hardware for about an hour, then booted back into Linux and forgot about it altogether. I don't see it as anything other than a cheap party trick, any hurt feelings that the world's largest company has towards it is just a complimentary bonus in my book.

We talking about the same Apple that is accused of child labor and other human rights abuses?

Yes, but the majority of HN browsers will downvote/flag you for sharing the sentiment.

You will be downvoted for the lack of reference. Here is a link for you, don't forget to add it next time: https://www.yahoo.com/news/apple-knew-supplier-using-child-2....

Intellectual property is a social fiction devised to serve certain ends in society, and it's one that these days is largely shaped (i.e., laws have literally rewritten) by huge corporations (e.g., Disney, Apple) to serve their own commercial interests.

EULA enforcement is not a matter of acknowledging some holy natural right, and onerous EULAs are not only ethically but often legally dubious themselves.

That projects like this are meaningfully harmful is the proposition requiring argument or justification, imo.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking.

I didn't ask "is this legal?", I asked "is this ethical or moral?".

Apple invests what I assume to be a huge effort into making the Mac and selling it, including MacOS. I think we all agree that MacOS is an important part of the "Mac experience" that Apple is selling.

I'm going out on a limb here to say that people who spend a bunch of effort to subvert the technical controls that stop MacOS running on other hardware know that those are in place because Apple sells the MacOS as part of Mac; regardless of the legal technicality of whether they actually clicked through the EULA, read it, or their opinions on whether that license is legally binding.

We have a situation where Apple, the creator of a piece of work - MacOS, only wants people who purchase its hardware to benefit from it. Other people understand that, and try to benefit from it anyway. What is the ethical and moral position you need to take to say "it just doesn't matter what Apple, the creator, thinks."

So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor? So it's OK to infringe on IP rights of big profitable companies, or where you weren't going to buy the hardware product anyway?

Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes?

> There's a lot of railing against copyright law, EULAs, etc. which have nothing to do with what I'm asking.

Intellectual property is a legal construct, and the thing being violated here is a EULA. (I'd also hardly describe what I wrote as ‘railing against’ anything. I just stated some facts about what IP is.)

> So what's your theory here? Apple is big enough and profitable enough that meaningful harm to Apple is the determining factor?

My ‘theory’ is that meaningful harm is a pretty good criterion for ethical objections in general, and that well-founded moral objections to things which are harmless are exceptional. This isn't a novel or controversial view; it's foundational to liberalism.

> Or is it that no concept of property exists outside of the physical realm - so that e.g. musicians should have no control over who records their performances, nor artists over who reproduces their work, nor developers over who uses their software and for what purposes?

I'd say that physical property is also an instrumental legal concept. Its existence, like the existence of intellectual property, is mostly grounded in histories of power and its exercise. But there are good arguments for its usefulness in certain contexts, and there are good moral arguments related to ownership. And the best arguments relating to ownership of physical things don't apply to ideas because ideas are not like physical things.

Your question, as posed, also overlooks the fact that intellectual property as it actually exists in fact does little to ensure that artists have control over their work. In the same way, Apple's policy on the use of macOS on non-Apple hardware is totally outside the control of actual developers who work at Apple.

If you'd like to tell me about how developers at Apple have an interest in ensuring that macOS is not used on non-Apple hardware... congratulations: you've just started outlining a case for how projects like the one in the OP are meaningfully harmful.