Policy regarding OS X on non-Apple Hardware


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now i remember on MACworld.com they reviewed the frakenmac. the osx86 mac that you could buy with it pre installed.. would that be illegal if i were to stumble across this site and buy a mackinhackinfranketosh ? and use it?

i uddderstand thats a whole nuther issue in ittitself

As far as I understand how the law works, it would be a breach of the EULA, but you wouldn't be the one committing that breach if you bought it pre-installed. Therefore you wouldn't be suable, but the vendor would be.

Remember folks, it's NOT a criminal offense to breach the terms of an EULA, it's a civil offense. No cops will come knocking on your door, but a lawyer might.

Discussion of OS X on non-Apple hardware is allowed on Neowin. The amendment to the rules was conclusively made after much discussion among our staff. The primary reasoning behind this is a 1984 Federal Court ruling specifically makes it illegal for a company to force their users to install the OS on specific hardware. Which is ultimately the reason we're now allowing this discussion.

Note: Be aware though that Apple has a right to deny you support and service for OS X with a breach of the EULA. Neowin will not be held responsible in the event you void your warranty or support contracts.

Also please be mindful that Neowin still has a strong policy against warez of any kind and thus any discussion on illegally obtained copies of Mac OS X and such will be dealt with accordingly.

In order to differentiate new support threads in the forums, tagging your thread title with [OSx86] is now necessary.

Example: [OSx86] Can't get wireless card to be recognized

We do not intend to remove or amend warnings or other restrictions on accounts for previous violations of this rule because at the time the warning was placed on the account, these were the rules of Neowin.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

I don't won't to sound like an idiot, but what has american laws have to do with Neowin since it is in Netherlands? Have we all become citizens of america or something?

On another aspect of this, some mods allow people ask about downloading tv programs for people from canada. so does this mean I can post an audio cd in neowin if my country laws says that I can?

btw: Which country laws does Neowin follow when it comes to copyrights? If its american laws, why?

I never could get it to install. I tired several different versions, but it would always just reboot just when it's about to load Darwin. I tried asking on several forums dedicated to this kind of stuff, but no one could ever figure out why as it should be able to install on my system easily.

btw: Which country laws does Neowin follow when it comes to copyrights? If its american laws, why?

Neowin is an LLC, so actually it's a company in America I thought. Therefore they need to follow the rules of the United States.

Also it's not because the founders are from Holland that Neowin should follow the rules of the Netherlands. It depends on the location of your servers.

^Yes indeed. And where is Neowin hosted then?

Well i was wrong a couple of pages back then. I thought it was illegal, but breaking the EULA is not illegal then. Now i want to try OSX86 too :laugh:

But in what forum should i post OSX86 threads?

as it has been stated before by some other posters, the main thing that's worrying me, is that apple will introduce similar methods to activation just like microsoft have with windows.

The beauty of OSX and Mac's was that when you wanted to reinstall the OS you put the disk in and let it install.

Petty arguing over the violation of laws pushed by special interest groups and written by corrupt government officials getting under the table payoffs to limit consumer rights for the purpose of corporate profit. EULAs and "licenses" specifying what you can and cannot do with the product you payed for and own.

I can't help but laugh at all of you playing into the game of greed.

Wowzers... I can't think of anything more well put being said in this forum or media for that matter.

I don't won't to sound like an idiot, but what has american laws have to do with Neowin since it is in Netherlands? Have we all become citizens of america or something?

On another aspect of this, some mods allow people ask about downloading tv programs for people from canada. so does this mean I can post an audio cd in neowin if my country laws says that I can?

btw: Which country laws does Neowin follow when it comes to copyrights? If its american laws, why?

Our servers are hosted in the United States, Neowin is registered as a corporation in the United States... we are bound by the laws of the United States.

How is it illegal to install software you own. You're not stealing anything, only breaking the EULA.

EULA violations have never been tested in a court of law. So, there's no precedent or case history to look at.

Apple is attempting to create a monopoly or at least using monopolistic practices and they are violating fair trade practices, therefore the Apple Eula is illegal.

How is it illegal to install software you own. You're not stealing anything, only breaking the EULA.

EULA violations have never been tested in a court of law. So, there's no precedent or case history to look at.

Apple is attempting to create a monopoly or at least using monopolistic practices and they are violating fair trade practices, therefore the Apple Eula is illegal.

How can a company with less than 50% of the market (way less) be consider a Monopoly. There are other options available on Apple systems, you are not locked into running OS X in anyway... Apple's decision to limit THEIR intellectual property to THEIR equipment is their right and until someone legally challenges, and wins, against the Apple EULA (Not some 80's decision given how the landscape of copyright and IP laws have changed since then) it is still a violation of the EULA to install OS X on anything other than official Apple (or Apple Licensed) hardware.

How can a company with less than 50% of the market (way less) be consider a Monopoly. There are other options available on Apple systems, you are not locked into running OS X in anyway... Apple's decision to limit THEIR intellectual property to THEIR equipment is their right and until someone legally challenges, and wins, against the Apple EULA (Not some 80's decision given how the landscape of copyright and IP laws have changed since then) it is still a violation of the EULA to install OS X on anything other than official Apple (or Apple Licensed) hardware.

Can I read EULA on the box of OS X (when buying)?

Yes: It might be valid and stand a chance in court.

No: It doesn't mean ****.

I think there was a case in part where Microsoft lost in similar fashion?

where is this court decision document that everybody is citing, iv searched and couldn't find it, but i also dont know the *Who VS. *Who either.

and a rulling in 84 ( or whatever year ) vs current Tech i way different, which is why they redid the DMCA

dhan: MS lost a case where they were limiting what could be installed on the OS by manufactures ( OEM's were installing Netscape Communicator instead of IE on the desktop ) not hardware related from what i remember

I never could get it to install. I tired several different versions, but it would always just reboot just when it's about to load Darwin. I tried asking on several forums dedicated to this kind of stuff, but no one could ever figure out why as it should be able to install on my system easily.

wow, you went and bought several versions of OSX and none of them would install on your PC, that must really suck, spending all that and getting now where

How is it illegal to install software you own. You're not stealing anything, only breaking the EULA.

EULA violations have never been tested in a court of law. So, there's no precedent or case history to look at.

Apple is attempting to create a monopoly or at least using monopolistic practices and they are violating fair trade practices, therefore the Apple Eula is illegal.

then again, you could say the same about installing XP on more then one machine, so its that ok to discuss?

<snip>

dhan: MS lost a case where they were limiting what could be installed on the OS by manufactures ( OEM's were installing Netscape Communicator instead of IE on the desktop ) not hardware related from what i remember

I was not talking about the Netscape/DOJ case. I faintly remember someone suing MS because they couldn't read EULA beforehand or something like that.

Apple EULA (Not some 80's decision given how the landscape of copyright and IP laws have changed since then) it is still a violation of the EULA to install OS X on anything other than official Apple (or Apple Licensed) hardware.

Breaking the EULA is a breach of contract, which is a civil matter. Doesn't matter how you try to paint it, it's not illegal.

Nothing illegal about breaking a contract; you can't go to prison for that. It's a purely civil matter, so you can be sued sure, but it's not a matter of breaking the law.

In fact, as the law goes, it's less serious than not paying a parking fine.

Simply put, "a 1984 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision held that a software publisher can't require consumers to run an operating system on a specific type of hardware." The US Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, so at this point it is legal for anyone who owns a copy of OS X (Leopard) to install it on any other hardware. The only thing Apple can do is refuse you support. That's where we come in.

Have you got a link to the entire decision? The other thing I can't find is where other laws such as the dmca come in. As mostly with law there are certain pieces that alow something whilst others forbid it: inconsistency. There's also a chance that this decision is overruled by newer pieces of law and decisions. Were those kind of things also checked?

In other words: are you absolutely sure that this decision from 1984 is the only thing that tells something about OS X on non-Apple hardware? Since it's a bit strange that in 24 years time no one has ever used it against Apple and it's also strange because this decision would affect nearly all electronics in the US in some way (it would mean that every single OS out there has to be crossplatform which is quite impossible).

There's also Darwin which is what OS X uses as a base. Darwin is free and you can run it on a pc if you want to. Specific parts that make up the rest of OS X are not free. So in what regard is Apple not fulfilling that 1984 decision? They've had Darwin for years which you can install on non-Apple hardware.

Full citation is Digidyne Corp. v. Data General Corp., 734 F.2d 1336 (9th Cir 1984), cert denied, 473 U.S. 908 (1985)

DATA GENERAL CORP. v. DIGIDYNE CORP. , 473 U.S. 908 (1985)

The Mac OS X end-user license agreement prohibits its use on hardware other than that sold by Apple. It reads, "You agree not to install, use, or run the Apple software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."

A little legal history now. Way back in 1978, a company by the name of Digidyne brought suit against Data General, alleging that it was restraining trade by "tying" its RDOS operating system to its Nova minicomputer hardware. (Digidyne sold Nova clones.)

The case wound its way through the courts. A 1984 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision held for Digidyne; the case was later denied rehearing by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was a convoluted court case, but the bottom-line result was that Data General could not prohibit the use of its operating system on someone else's hardware. To use the legal term, you could not "tie" hardware and software. Related cases have involved prohibiting the use of specific supplies (such as punch cards) with a specific vendor's hardware.

Continue reading here.

I believe, and apparently a lot of other people do as well, that this case right here is why Apple hasn't put a stop to the OSx86 Project, the Psystar Mac Clone project and various websites from discussing this. Apple couldn't win without this case first being overturned by the US Supreme Court.

Full citation is Digidyne Corp. v. Data General Corp., 734 F.2d 1336 (9th Cir 1984), cert denied, 473 U.S. 908 (1985)

DATA GENERAL CORP. v. DIGIDYNE CORP. , 473 U.S. 908 (1985)

...

Thanks for the link. (Y)

Put the link in the first post, where it mentions the ruling?

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F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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