You mean those hacked ISOs from TPB for 3 year old OSX releases?
How can I, or anyone else for that matter, be sure they are safe to use and represents runtime behavior of the latest ever-changing (read: breaking) OSX?
It’s not as easy as you make it out to be.
The Hackintosh community has plenty of very knowledgeable individuals who know what they're doing. If someone was trying to pass malware around they would be found out and ostracised very quickly.
You can also find the direct links to Apple's servers if you search. Hint: InstallESD.dmg and swcdn.apple.com .
Why does different rules apply to OSX?
Also: DMG-files can’t be used unless you’ve already purchased that $1000 machine you don’t really want/need. It’s completely unsupported in any meaningful sense outside OSX.
So more roadblocks.
You know how I get a Windows ISO? I download it from Microsoft. Ubuntu? Download it from canonical. Etc etc.
Can we all agree that it is Apple who put up all these roadblocks?
No other OS vendor makes it harder/more expensive to support their platform than Apple does.
And then you can’t really blame developers for not bothering. It’s all on Apple.
...and if you've been around and done enough, you would know that "unsupported" doesn't always mean "can't be done". The ones who know it can will hack around, play and investigate, explore the limits, and ultimately become better developers by developing these skills of critical thinking and problem solving. Contrast this with the cookie-cutter developers who won't think beyond what they're told and give up at the slightest difficulty.
I ain't no Apple fan myself but I can sure test something in macOS if I really need to. Give this a read...
https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/329828-making-a-boot...
Sure, but that was the 90s. Now everyone in the world is connected to the same network, and any security flaw can have critical, global consequences.
Basically, having a "wormable" build and deployment pipeline may have been tolerated back then, but it sure isn't now.
> and if you've been around and done enough, you would know that "unsupported" doesn't always mean "can't be done"
Yes, I'm sure it can be done.
> The ones who know it can will hack around, play and investigate, explore the limits, and ultimately become better developers
That's disingenuous. You only have so much time available, and you cannot do everything which is technically possible. You have to prioritize.
My free and underfunded open-source projects are going to invest the efforts I have capacity for into making a better product for the users, not learning all the ins and outs of running a pirated OS on hardware Apple clearly doesn't want it to run on.
Basically: My point was Apple is putting up lots of roadblocks which no other OS-vendor is, and that if they stopped doing that, maybe you'd see more projects bothering to support MacOS as a build-target.
And really... As a user, would you be happy to be told that the software you are asked to install and trust was built on a hacked OSX copy downloaded from the internet which the developer has no way of verifying if is trustworthy or not? I'm going to assume not.
So why are you making the argument that developers should do just that?
