Yeah, one has been able to do this for some time now.

A few years ago I had a setup where (and I admit much of this was for the aesthetic purity of it, not practical reasons), I used a legally purchased copy of macos, copied it unmodified to my VM server, and, with a decent amount of effort, and a patched qemu (for the SMC thingie -- i donno if by now the patch is in mainline), was enjoying a non pirated, non modified macos on a linux host.

I even got USB and BLE passthrough working, so I could use the mac VM for iOS app development.

It was quite effective.

A more challenging project I did later (which I probably deserve some derision for not documenting and sharing) is "How to develop, sign, and upload iOS apps entirely from debian linux, entirely with F/OSS, no VM, no Xcode, just good ol' emacs and cmake". IIRC, there were very little Big Contributions I did, but plenty of assembling a large variety of other projects, bug fixing them, and making an integrated environment.

You should document the ability to build, develop, upload and sign from Linux. Unless you think it will cause Apple to close the path to do so (I assume others have worked out something similar and it would be a shame to cut them off).

I had a client give me a meaty Mac laptop, and had no desire to carry two laptops. I imaged their install, and then formatted the machine, and ran their image in a VM, and treated the underlying machine as my own. Worked well for a little while

Cool! Glad it worked for you. (I'm mildly curious what the chipset was on the guest that MacOS was running in) But like, not curious enough that you should spend any effort to find out.

Because I think one of the toughest parts was getting QEMU to make a machine macos would be happy with.

It was a Mac on a Mac, which I believe is also officially supported

Ahhh, yup that would do it! And to the best of my memory you're right on both counts.

> A more challenging project I did later (which I probably deserve some derision for not documenting and sharing) is "How to develop, sign, and upload iOS apps entirely from debian linux, entirely with F/OSS, no VM, no Xcode, just good ol' emacs and cmake".

Please write this blog post. I've no interest in running Mac OS for any reason other than to test software in it and use it as a developer account for cross-platform apps. This would be a huge boon to people like me.

Great! These are really two accomplishments that deserve to be shared.

That must have been a long time ago indeed because the last version you could 'buy' was removed from sale in 2013. But actually you didn't buy a copy, you bought a disc and a license to upgrade the software on one 'Apple branded machine'.

I don't care if you run unlicensed software but it's not 'legally purchased' or 'non pirated'. You're just fooling yourself.

Also, I think you might have not noticed what in my opinion was the most important detail.

I'm not aware of if it's still true for hackintoshes or OSX in KVM or whatnot, but previously, most of the solutions I saw involved steps which I felt, I can't find a better word for than... "Gross". Things like, "Oh, yeah, it's totally MacOS working in a VM.... as long as you modify these random parts of the operating system and replace these other files with a binary I made"

Having many, many a time pirated Windows in the distant past I have some (possibly completely irrational) aversion to using an operating system with Joe Hacker's random patch applied to it. I'll prefer to take upstream thank-you-very-much. :)

My choice to pay for a non-pirated version of MacOS had nothing to do with believing that somehow Apple deserves my money -- I did so because I knew if and once I could get it to work, it would be more... clean.

You have a partial point, and I may have been sloppy with my words. But on the whole, you do not, and while I might willingly fool myself about a great many things, this is not one of them. I'm well aware that the license agreement claims to forbid running it on non Apple hardware.

However, no -- the software WAS "legally purchased" AND "not pirated".

I purchased, from Apple.com, a mac-mini, then in the apple app store paid for a stand-alone install of macos. I believe it was $20.

"legally purchased" -- I paid for it through the legitimate channel (as opposed to, say, buying it from anyone other than Apple Inc. like ebay)

"not pirated" -- Piracy (in this, that is, not the captain hook kind) context means taking advantage of the fact that digital assets can be perfectly duplicated to escape paying for it. I paid for it. I didn't duplicate it.

As to the issue of the Apple's "license agreement". On this we may simply view the world differently. It is my viewpoint that once a product is sold the original owner no longer is entitled to a reasonable expectation of control over its use. I can buy a screwdriver labeled "Only for use with Lowe's(tm) screws", and use it on whatever brand screws I want, because it's my screwdriver, and the notion that Lowe's gets to exert control over how I use a tool after I've legally bought it is

I am aware that currently some interpretations of US law are not congruous with this. I frankly don't care. You have the right to believe whatever you want, but to me law does not define truth. Interpretations of law frequently codify things that are not.

Regardless of bills passed or the outcome of court cases corporations are not (yet!) sentient entities, in 1897 Indiana the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was not exactly 3.2 -- it was pi, just like today, and all of my family members are equally human beings as anyone else despite much older laws asserting that some of them were 3/5th.

"fooling yourself" is a waste of effort. I'm well aware -- I have no romantic delusions about, for instance my copy of IDA Pro or MATLAB for example. It's a tool I greatly benefit from, that I cannot even come close to affording, so I stole it. Sure, it's almost certainly the case that in the coming years I'll again be in a position to legally purchase several licenses for work use, but that doesn't change the fact that I still pirated them.

But no, I legally purchased my copy of MacOS, it is not pirated, and I do not believe in the waste of time that is fooling ones self.

Congratulations, you have fooled yourself. You don’t have to put a lot of effort into convincing me that you didn’t because it doesn’t matter, I don’t care.

Heh, it's just like before, you're almost there but....

No, no... While I'll admit the truth, that I certainly put more effort into attempting to be understandable than I normally do, I believe you missed the reason why. If you use simple theory of mind maybe then it'll make sense to you.

I've never tried to "convince you" as you say, what would I get out of it, and also, if someone like you is determined to see the sky as green, they'll see green no matter how many blue skies you show them.

I know i don't "fool myself", it's not actually even plausible enough to be taken seriously, like, i donno, like if i suddenly claimed to be the best pitcher in the NL. :) but everyone knows that, and I bet you do too.

What I was hoping I could help you see is there is a difference between a pedantic strict ruleset, like, say, laws, and human truths. and that we are to be their masters, not the other way around. Because if you go through life only seeing things through the lens you want to see, you'll miss out of a lot of cool stuff, not to mention, if past history means anything, often ending up on the wrong side of it :/

I donno, I do admit that I have the aspie trait that it's hard for me to just smile and nod to make someone go away, because i think (well, most) humans deserve respect. What you're misinterpreting as "effort to convince" I think the correct term would be is "altruistically try to help". I don't know you, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't feel bad at least trying to help.

Anyway, best, regardless.

maybe try to remember -- fooling yourself is being in denial about something, I think if you reread what I said before it'll click that that's not going on.

I really want this. I'm a hardcore linux guy(23+ years), but I have to run a windows vm for some instruments I have that wont run under wine. I hate windows. It sucks so much. Even just using it not that often with my instruments reminds me why I stopped using it.

I'm very similar. other than you've got about 5 more years on me :D

If you're referring to musical instruments, then yeah, that's the only reason I even have a windows 7 VM around. Although increasingly I've been able to get the necessary code to run under wine....

But yes: > I hate windows. It sucks so much. Even just using it not that often with my instruments reminds me why I stopped using it.

Is basically my mental state as well. (and, hence, swore off windows around 2000)

I'm curious though, how would having a pure (aka linux) dev environment for macos help you in your situation?

Or maybe you were saying you want the Windows equivalent of this? The ability to make native windows apps from linux with ordinary tools?

I don't know what it is, but I thought we've had that for some time now....

That would also be good. But anything to reduce the amount I have to use windows.

I really want this. I'm a hardcore windows guy(23+ years), but I have to run a linux vm for some programs I have that wont run under WSL. I hate linux. It sucks so much. Even just using it not that often with my programs reminds me why I stopped using it.