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Comment by Khalid_nowaf | Hacker News Reader

I’m very curious, why did Apple put such a limitation?

Because their business model is to sell tightly integrated hardware and software as a package. The hardware sales fund the software development. They don't want people who haven't bought the hardware using the software.

Yeah but the "hardware" in that sense is almost entirely iPhone and iPhone-adjacent, Mac is a trailing 4th- or 5th-place line of business... maybe 6th.

The VM limit only applies to the number of macOS VMs launched from macOS itself.

My 2018 mac mini officially supports VMware ESXi to be installed directly on the hardware and virtualize any number of macOS machines

Funny enough I can even launch more than 2 macOS vms on my framework chromebook with qemu + KVM from the integrated Linux terminal.

macOS is proprietary software. You need a license for every copy you run, whether it's in a VM or not. The VM limit is written into the macOS EULA.

> to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software, or any prior macOS or OS X operating system software or subsequent release of the Apple Software, within virtual operating system environments on each Apple-branded computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.

This implies anyone doing this using VMware violates the EULA?

Yes. Apple's not going to come after you for running too many VMs on your personal machine, but if you're running a commercial enterprise involving macOS VMs they do care.

VMware vSphere is not a product intended to be used by consumers. It's intended to be run by enterprises at scale. ESXi is running the vms not macOS.

https://i0.wp.com/williamlam.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/...

Yes. And the license only allows you to run macOS guests on macOS hosts. So using esxi means you don’t have any license for whatever macOS guests you run.

You are confusing macos guests on KVM (Linux) and macos guests on ESXi which is a real enterprise product, and officially enables you to run as many macos vms as your hardware supports.

MacOS is full of these anti-owner decisions. They want full control over your experience for their benefit.

Probably to prevent a single hardware system from being used to run an online identity farm.

Doesn't make too much sense, the VMs don't get unique hardware identifiers that one could (ab)use for spamming iMessage.

That kind of tracks as the source of the concern. My first thought was it’d be something IDMS-related as well. I don’t know enough about that system to pinpoint exactly what.

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