[zeugma]

Really the best thing that could happen would be the realization that it’s time to sell macOS licenses to all comers again.

This is something I'd really like to see, especially if it were to be targeted towards virtual machines. I'd love to have OSX running in a VM on my Linux workstation. Heck, Apple could even offer just a straight-up VM rather than media, and I'd be happy with it. Sell me a vmware container with a full-featured OSX running on it, and I'd be one happy camper. The beauty of this, is it still allows Apple to maintain control over the environment, and not have to support every tiny little peripheral or card out there, because in a VM, all the devices are standardized and virtualized. Apple would only be worried about connecting to the virtual hardware, which is pretty generic. I doubt I'll see this any time soon, but it would allow me to delete a VM of Win7 that I have that performs exactly 1 task - backing up my iPhone.

[dayglored]

> ...sell macOS licenses to all comers...

Much as I like it, there are two killer problems with that suggestion, that will (IMO) forever keep Apple from doing so:

1. Main reason: Apple is a HARDWARE manufacturer, not a software vendor. They sell integrated SYSTEMS of hardware plus software. They "give away" the software because they need to sell the hardware.

2. Other reason: The price of MacOS would be too high for most interested users. MacOS comes with a bunch of large applications (by contrast, Windows does not come with MS-Office), so either Apple would cut those features from the OS to sell it at a Windows-competitive price, or charge something equivalent to Windows+Office. And of course, Linux is free and LibreOffice is free. So where's the profit in selling MacOS at a reasonable price? Non-existent.

There's no way Apple will let MacOS loose on Hackintoshes, much less hardware-free VMs.

I say the above with some sadness, because I'd LOVE to see them do it. But it ain't gonna happen.