Mac OS Installing Mac OS is not illegal in India

U

unixguru

Disciple
There seems to be common misconception that installing Mac OS X on a non-apple computer is illegal. This is not true if you buy the retail version from apple( way cheaper than windows). Of course, the U.S. Federal District Court ruled Psystar( a company which was selling pre-installed PC's with Mac OS) violated Apple's copyrights, but this ruling has absolutely no effect in India. Furthermore, if you buy the retail version and Install it on a PC, you are not breaking Copyright laws but rather Apple's license agreements. I have asked a friend of mine who is a lawer (a very good one), he has told me that EULA's have absolutely no effect in India. When you press "I agree" in India, no binding legal contract is made between you and Apple. EULA's are also not contracts in many European countries. The other main issue is that to run Mac OS on PC's you will have to break Apple's encryption which is illegal in the U.S. This was done with dsmos.kext which was a decryption kext. But, thanks to the genius of Netkas who introduced fakesmc which is an opensource SMC emulator, this is no longer needed. The legality of this kext is still questionable but so far Apple has done nothing. Just remember that the laws vary from country to country ( smoking weed!). There is nothing illegal in running Mac OS as long as you are in India. Check this post for reference :- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...t-proposals-are-un-american-and-thats-bad.ars
 
The point is why would you even want to buy a copy of the OS from Apple if you are going to violate the license terms, Apple has no obligation to support your purchase under such conditions regardless of whether there is a legal binding involved. They cannot take you to court, but you cannot take them to court over support issues either. So essentially what this means is that due to our laws not being up to date, there are loopholes whereby you can legally install a retail copy of OS X on a PC, but cannot avail any of the benefits of purchasing a legit OS.

A license agreement may not be enough to let a company prosecute you, but its enough to protect the company from supporting you when you violate the terms.
 
why would you want to put apple's os on a pc anyway? it was meant to run best on apple made pc's and that's where that os should be put. :)

don't get me wrong, i have nothing against the company, but putting an os on a platform where it was not intended to be will only make it run slower/ crappier/ run into trouble which the manufacturer wanted to avoid.
 
I have to agree with Lord Nemesis here..... Why buy a retail and install it as its most likely that you wont get support for the same as you violate the terms of use....

It aint called Hackintosh for no reason.... But paying for a retail copy and installing it violating apple's terms of usage is just :p
 
6pack said:
why would you want to put apple's os on a pc anyway? it was meant to run best on apple made pc's and that's where that os should be put. :)

don't get me wrong, i have nothing against the company, but putting an os on a platform where it was not intended to be will only make it run slower/ crappier/ run into trouble which the manufacturer wanted to avoid.
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ronnie_gogs said:
I have to agree with Lord Nemesis here..... Why buy a and use etail and install it as its most likely that you wont get support for the same as you violate the terms of use....

It aint called Hackintosh for no reason.... But paying for a retail copy and installing it violating apple's terms of usage is just :p
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Ever since Apple went the Intel way, there are many who build their own unofficial macs.

Whether that's legal or not i have never explored as i haven't tried or planned to try that yet.

But some may ask as they may not have an idea why some people "need" macs. :)

But let's put it in a way that we differentiate between oem and assembled rigs.

Assuming one is someone who uses/needs/benefits from Apple rigs, would they like to own a top-of-the-line mac,

for approx 67-70% of the cost of a genuine one and may provide 30-35% extra performance too?

Let's put it this way- would they love to ... ? :)
 
6pack said:
why would you want to put apple's os on a pc anyway? it was meant to run best on apple made pc's and that's where that os should be put. :)

don't get me wrong, i have nothing against the company, but putting an os on a platform where it was not intended to be will only make it run slower/ crappier/ run into trouble which the manufacturer wanted to avoid.
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Considering the hardware is same for PC's and MAC's there is no reason why the OS should perform badly unless you have incompatible hardware or using hacked drivers. Actually I have myself sometime back setup a Leopard based Hackintosh at home and it ran much better and stabler than any of the best and costliest Apple hardware we have at our office. If you have ever looked at the insides of an Apple Power Mac/ Mac Pro tower you would realize that they are not any better than the branded Dell and HP branded crap. No matter how uber costly, what you end up with is crappy OEM hardware assembled carelessly. the iMac's are even worse, One look at the power supply module used in these things (its similar to those Pico PSU's used for light weight car PC's) and you would think twice about relying on an iMac for any thing important. In contrast, the hardware I used for my Hackintosh while fully compatible, was top of the line and choice picked components. It would obviously perform better and run stable than any of the original Apple hardware. That said, I would still say that if you want to run a legit version of OS X, then just get proper Apple hardware.
 
Not buying the retail version from apple and installing it violates copyright law and is illegal. The whole point of the post is that once you have bought it from Apple, you pretty much do whatever is legal with the copy, and installing the copy on a PC and violating Apple's terms is not illegal in India. The "Hack" in hackintosh is for installing it on a device which it was never meant to be run. Hacking has several maenings :- Hacking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I do not buy stuff for getting support, but rather not to violate laws whenever possible. I try to buy every game not because I get support from the developer but to pay the hard working developers. i do admit that I pirate software whenever I cannot afford it and I am running a pirated copy of Snow Leopard which is illegal in India.
 
unixguru said:
Not buying the retail version from apple and installing it violates copyright law and is illegal.
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Which is why I am saying that if you want to run a authentic version of Mac OS then buy a Mac and run it without violating the license agreement either. Legality is the only of the aspects for which people buy a authentic copy of a software. You lose every other benefit when you violate the license terms.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Which is why I am saying that if you want to run a authentic version of Mac OS then buy a Mac and run it without violating the license agreement either. Legality is the only of the aspects for which people buy a authentic copy of a software. You lose every other benefit when you violate the license terms.
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I agree with your earlier post about how you can build much more powerful hackintoshes than regular Apple macs, but I disagree with this one. There's a big cost involved in purchasing a mac. I have a quad-core rig at home with the works. This cost me about 40-50k to assemble. If I wanted an equivalent Mac, I'd have to buy the 1.5 lakh Mac Pro which still doesn't come with a monitor., keyboard or mouse. Do you not see a blaring price difference? So what's wrong in picking up a 29$ "upgrade" version of Snow Leopard and making a Hackintosh? Sure when I have that amount of money to splurge (which will hopefully coincide with my buying an Audi R8) I'll buy a Mac Pro. Till then, I don't mind spending a fraction of that amount by buying a retail Apple OS disk. Either that, or I haven't clearly understood your point.

edit: Legality is not the only aspect for owning an authentic copy. Everyone wants to stop being a pirate at some point in their life right? So what's wrong with buying official software if you can afford it? It doesn't change the fact that I may not be able to afford a 2 lakh mac pro...
 
^^Okey OP verified the OSX legality part with his lawyer friend. Do you have a vaild source for your statement. Cause IIRC cracking anything is ever legal anywhere(Cant say about Afghanistan) weather it be for home use or other.
 
tracerbullet said:
Everyone wants to stop being a pirate at some point in their life right? So what's wrong with buying official software if you can afford it? It doesn't change the fact that I may not be able to afford a 2 lakh mac pro...
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Because even if you buy it, you are still a non authentic user at least in Apple's eyes when you violate their license terms, the only thing is that they cannot take you to court over it. Its like buying a copy of Windows and then using in a way that violates the MS license terms. MS may not always be able to take you to court over it, but they can still count you as a non authentic user even if you paid good money for it.
 
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