How you use Mac OS X is up to you (in the EU)
If you buy Mac OS X, then how you use it is up to you.
Sure it's illegal to copy it but you can run it on any hardware you choose. The hardware conditions of the Apple EULA is not enforceable in the EU, apparently - as this commentator suggests:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/14/openmac_advertised_for_39999.html#comment-1048710
Quoted here for convenience
"Oh dear no, not this again!
1) The reason Apple cannot stop anyone installing a retail copy of OSX on anything they want is the same reason Microsoft cannot stop anyone running a retail copy of Office on anything they want. It is also the reason Black and Decker cannot stop you using DIY drills in the way of trade, and the reason why Vauxhall cannot stop you installing after market parts in your old Cavalier, and the reason why Faber and Faber cannot stop you reading the Collected Poems of TS Eliot in the bathroom by making it a condition of sale that you agree not to.
It is because post-sales restrictions on use are not enforceable in the EU. Not by EULA, not by signed document at time of sale, not if you have to dance it to a jig and sing your agreement in Mandarin before leaving the store. You cannot relinquish your statutory rights as a condition of buying a product, and one of them is freedom from post sales restrictions on use. Read those guarantee forms vendors invite you to send in sometime. See that part about your statutory rights not being affected? Think that's there out of the goodness of their hearts? Its not, its there because its the law.
2) And no, you did not just license it, you bought a copy. As when you bought your copy of the Collected Poems. Or you bought that copy of the Rasumovsky Quartet. Or you bought that drill. Calling something a license not a sale does not make it so. If it walks and quacks like a sale, that is what it will be held to be.
3) And come out of your dream world about "OSX is written for the hardware, and consequently it is far more reliable. OSX is basically a hand tailored suit made in Hong Kong whilst windows is a mix clothes from Marks , Oxfam and things left on a bus. Nothing quite fits...."
OSX relates to its perfectly standard though mostly mid range hardware in exactly the same way any other OS does. It uses drivers. You may not be familiar with these things, they are bits of software written mostly by vendors which permit an OS to address the hardware in question. Driver quality is important. But there is no material difference in how any modern OS relates to hardware and drivers. Thinking that OSX has somehow a more intimate relationship to an nVidia graphics card than Windows or Linux is idiotic. And by the way - its not that the OS was written for the peripheral hardware. Its that the drivers were written for the OS.
Or maybe you are thinking of the processors? Cannot be. Surely you do not think that OSX was written for the Core 2 in some different way than Windows or Linux was?
Please wake up there!
In conclusion. The Apple hardware is no better than anyone elses. It is however a more expensive solution to most computing problems, a more unbalanced set of components, and often is crammed into monstrous industrially designed cases. Perforated aluminum must be one of the worse materials ever for floor standing cases. Well, concrete might be a bit worse. The overheating problems with the laptops are legendary. You will mostly find low end or even obsolete graphics cards coupled with the most expensive processors around, mediocre memory, and too little of it, and very middle range disk drives. Power supplies are at best adequate. You'll find, as with the Mini, hardware features, like the ability to carry it around in your coatpocket, that hardly anyone needs, but which cripple performance though they improve appearance in some circles. It is no more and no less a hodgepodge than any other middle range Intel based machines, just rather more expensive, and less well balanced. Maybe its more of a hodgepodge in fact.
Prediction: this will never come to court. Just as MS will never sue someone for running retail copies of Office under Wine, even though the EULA says it has to be run only on Windows. Why? Because they know they would lose. As would Apple. Now whether this particular company can be bullied out of what it is trying? We'll see. Maybe. This stable door was opened in law however when the first retail copy of OSX was put on sale. Too late to close it now."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
