Why can’t a macOS be installed in a Windows computer?

macOS, also known as Mac OS X, is a proprietary operating system developed and maintained by Apple Inc. for use on Apple’s Macintosh computers. This operating system is not designed to be installed on non-Apple hardware, such as a Windows computer. This is because macOS is specifically built to work with Apple’s hardware and software ecosystem, and is therefore not compatible with the hardware and software of a Windows computer. Additionally, Apple has put in place technical and legal restrictions to prevent macOS from being installed on non-Apple hardware.

Apple don’t want that to happen.

Not because they want to extract more money from hardware sales (Apple hardware is actually cheap for the quality you get anyway), not because they wouldn’t sell OS X as a product if they could.

It’s really simple: they did the math on the support costs of random third party hardware, and the numbers came up “nope”.

Apple actually did this long before OS X was a thing; for a short while you could actually get a licensed non-Apple MacOS computer.

But the support costs killed it.

To actually do this and make money, they’d have to sell OS X for a couple of thousand dollars, or maybe a subscription at about $50/month. That’s to pay for the three or four thousand developers and ten or so thousand support people they’d have to hire to deal with all the random crap hardware out there.

And it still wouldn’t meet their quality targets anyway.

So how can Microsoft do it?

They get the OEMs and hardware manufacturers to deal with most of it. Which they mostly do badly, but people have somehow become used to the resulting mess.

Making the OS itself free does mean that they don’t want people to install it on third party hardware because that would mean zero profits from the extra user (unless they use services such as iCloud in a premium fashion — more than just what’s given free).

I guess that makes the hackintoshing phenomenon an issue. Now, when the support for the last Intel based Mac ends hackintoshing will be a real issue (I mean, some explicitly limit themselves to High Sierra because of some NVidia GPUs that aren’t supported on newer versions at all…). But for now, if you have good, compatible hardware, you can reap the benefits just fine.

I am currently a hackintosher but intend to get an actual MacBook Pro (Intel based) soon. Wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t get a good hackintosh. So I’d say, don’t fight those who try it out like this and then migrate to actual Apple products, since that’s actually a profit vector. Only fight those that do it despite that.

The better question to ask is “How does Linux do it?”. You can find drivers for most of “the random crap hardware out there”… You can “google yourself” the support for most of the issues you’d run into, unlike Windows, etc. Support is a “thing” mostly for corporate users. Companies need someone to sue in case they’d somehow lose a penny because of hw/sw issues.

Using Windows would be much better than hackintoshing. Windows has its issues, it is not as reliable as macOS. However, Windows is much more flexible than macOS. It is much more programmer friendly than macOS. Most of the advantages of macOS will cease to exist once you take it out of the integration with Apple hardware.

You can, not so easily, run the OSX on a windows machine as you would run a second version of windows or Linux or any other OS. My current machine has around 4 different OS in 2 drives. The machine was originally assembled keeping in mind running it on OSX, endearingly known by the community as Hackintoshs. I did run an OSX version of Snow Leopard for a few months but didn’t have much use of it as I already own a MacBook Pro. A fun project but not without hastles.

Invest in your future today by enrolling in this Azure Fundamentals - Pass the Azure Fundamentals Exam with Ease: Master the AZ-900 Certification with the Comprehensive Exam Preparation Guide!

Also, I did shift my 10+ year old MacBooks drive into the machine, before writing this reply, just for fun. Given the changes over time, the OSX failed to recognise half the peripherals which is solvable, but would need a lot of work.

You can. Such computers are called a “Hackintosh.” The procedure is totally unsupported, but I suppose it can save the user some money, when it works.

It’s not that it can’t. It’s a violation of the end-user license. If you’d like to give a try, just google out Hackintosh. I am not aware of any prosecution if you do. Definitely nothing like the infamous Microsoft initiated BSA raids on companies and individual users.