Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> port it to off the shelf ARM processors

My guess is that Apple will put some effort into ensuring this will be non-trivial (read: impossible).




Apple is unlikely to waste engineering resources and product resources on something they don't care about. Hackintoshes are largely an enthusiast phenomenon that doesn't overlap much with their core market of people willing to spend a premium on hardware that "just works" and looks nice. For the last 10 years Apple hasn't lifted a finger to stop them , why would they start now?

The danger is not so much T2 chips or the like, because that can easily be defeated in software, but locking down peripheral support would be. For instance if they only support their own custom graphics hardware that would be a problem. This is what Apple tends to do so it's the most likely scenario.


They did waste legal resources going after commercial Hackintosh clones, though, and they might want to prevent something similar in the future. And once they have their own unique CPUs, adding a CPU ID check is trivial.


And defeating a CPU ID check is trivial.

Companies selling hardware that is "Mac compatible" and profiting from that is a very different thing. Apple clearly cares about that.


Exactly. macOS will surely start to require the T2 (or newer) chip.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: