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I wonder if you could "abuse" a service like GH Actions to replace an always-on Mac. I'm not an Apple user, so I don't know how feasible it is. But using such a (freely provided) service for something it wasn't meant to do is unethical, even tho I think it's a lot less unethical than mining crypto on it.


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eh... illegal, depends on how you got access to MacOS and on your jurisdiction as well as the reasons for doing it. (Research, for instance.) The other points, I agree with 100%.

It's technologically doable, but running MacOS on non-Apple hardware is against the ToS.

Apple always has the option of fusing their Macs and selling blown ones externally, and then writing their OS to turn off parts of the OS that they use but think you don't need. They haven't done that, but it is always possible that they could.

Apple would probably send their army of lawyers after GH if you were able to run Final Cut Pro without using Apple hardware or macOS

IIRC this is possible but violates their EULAs for MacOS and likely the DMCA. So if you plan on using it commerically then you may be risking the entire business.

It might be unethical, but the risk is zero. Apple isn't going to sue you. Running unlicensed Windows is a significantly bigger risk.

You can also disable all the system integrity protection stuff on macOS pretty easily if you do want to mess around where apple rather people not.

Using this for that would probably break terms of service just as much as a hackintosh would.

Yes, I agree that this is a bad idea overall. However, since I'm not a macos user I couldn't care less.

Exactly my point. To not do so is a crime on osx.

Yikes! How come Apple allows it? I thought they were super stringent about what they allow on their platforms (MacOS might be more lax from what i gather).

Those who care about privacy wouldn't be using macOS to begin with.

Except you’re not going to be selling access to a Mac VM running on Graviton anytime soon.

Aside from selling hackintosh computers I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Apple going after someone for running macOS on third party hardware or running it virtualized. If you try to make a business out of it they will come after you but they are going after developers.

Nowadays something like BrowserStack feels like a requirement anyways since I’ll never have all the devices I need to test.


IANAL but I guess it wouldn't be legal since macOS can only run on Apple hardware.

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.

Why are you so sure of that? I wouldn't be surprised if Apple would enable the same kind of policies on the Mac.

I think it depends on how they do it. If it’s some sort of utility that runs on your Mac, that exists and would likely be ok.

If they “broke in” somehow Apple will fix it and cut them off again.


This falls on deaf years but I say it every chance I get.

I would pay a significant premium to install MacOS on a machine without violating their ToS.

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