No, it's not. I do cross-platform development for over a decade now and all I have are virtual machines. Over 2 dozens of them and I never owned any Apple hardware. Why pay for overpriced hardware when virtualization covers everything for a 100th of the price?
I would never do iOS development seriously without native devices.
Virtualization brings you far, true, but it's still different.
I would even create a hardware lap if I would do end-user device Software development.
And the quote is still true. If you do iOS MacOS development it IS the obvious choice obviously.
Yours might be cheaper and might have other advantages but it is NOT obvious.
"You agree not to install, use or run the Apple SDKs on any non-Apple-branded computer, and not to install, use or run iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, macOS and Provisioning Profiles on or in connection with devices other than Apple-branded products, or to enable others to do so."
[0] https://developer.apple.com/support/downloads/terms/apple-de...
IANAL, but it doesn't work like that. Like any original creative work, macOS falls under copyright protection. Apple only gives you a licenses you to copy/run macOS on Apple-branded hardware.
You might want to take a second look at their EULA for their Apple developer ID
I don't see anything in the Apple Developer Agreement that would cancel the terms of the macOS EULA. But I'd love to be proven wrong, please give me a pointer.
you'll see that for those $100/year they sing a very different song. Money talks!
$100/year is less than pocket change for Apple. Even if they have a million paying developers (unlikely), it's ~1/3658th of their yearly revenue. If they'd make their iPhones 50 cents more expensive, they would make more money.
The $100 per year is only there as one of the many ways to fight scammers. It makes it more costly to open many accounts, they have a credit card (with a name) on file, etc. Sure, it is not air tight, but it is just one of many measures.