I can shed some light on this if anyone is interested, having worked in Apple retail.
Apple have always been about preventing self-repair.
Going back as early as I can remember, by using non-standard, in house components where they could. (they had their own series of RAM that meant you couldn't just put PC RAM in) - that goes back as far as the Performas and iicx 680x0 macs.
In fact, it was PC ram, but with a custom eprom soldered on that made it non-standard.
They never wanted it to be repairable in the hands of the customer.
This is why there were so many lawsuits around the Mac Compatibles that were eventually squashed. - Looked like a Mac, but used PC equivalent hardware with custom firmware patches.
Then up to iBooks where Apple started using Apple-only patterns on the screw heads to deter anyone from trying to get into it. Quickly the tools to open them became available to anyone who could be bothered to purchase them. It was only supposed to be a visual deterrent. iPhones (or any iDevices) where Apple actually glue the components in. Same story with iMacs - where they have positioned several cables along the release mechanisms of the screen, so unless you know where to look for them, you'd ruin your graphics chipset when attempting a repair. These days, macfixit has you covered on those gotchas.
Now we have the T-series chips in macs, so that if you tried to replace internal components with non-apple-certified ones, it detects this and refuses to boot. (won't even get past EFI boot stage). This is done in hardware and is physically soldered in, just like the memory and storage.
Then you have the non-standard nvram storage that only apple use, and nobody else does. Just to be difficult, so you have to pay the Apple tax.
I used to be a huge fan of Apple, but having worked in their repair area (in back of house) as they used to call it. (I probably can't say too much about that as Apple have an NDA). I'd never experienced an NDA before. It's entirely a US concept, but working in sleepy old Norfolk (UK), it was news to me. I was prevented from speaking about their repair goings-on behind the scenes.
Suffice to say, that 90% of the time, they'd just swap out hardware rather than attempt a repair. Of course the customer was delighted they were getting a new device, but in reality it was because the old one is designed unrepairable - more and more so now. Lots of it went to landfill and they made a big publicity push about how their phones were recycled and shredded for rare-earth materials. That's not the case for their desktops, laptops, cables, power adapters, etc. All that ends up in landfill of developing countries with people scavenging through it to scratch out a living, while being exposed to mercury and who-knows-what inside.
When Apple hardware costs what it did (and it's even worse now), against what it costs them to make, it is easy to see why they have the money in the bank that they do. They also rake in an unbelievable amount from subscriptions (Applecare, iCloud, AppleTV... the list goes on).
I feel I don't owe them any brand loyalty and they of course don't care what I do to my machine personally. If I made a modification to anything I'd just bought though, and took it in for repair, they'd flatly refuse to look at it. Also, if your device is more than 2 years old, it's deemed 'legacy'. When you've spent over £2k on it - Apple stuff is great when it works, but expensive when it doesn't.
But just like anyone with money to burn, like a millionaire buying a bugatti - Apple reckon that if you can afford their products, then you likely don't care about the cost. If you do - go buy a PC. That was, and essentially still is (as far as I've been well informed by those who still work within Apple retail), the general feeling.
As far as what you do to your mac on your kitchen table - again, up to you.
But, if you are repairing macs at scale and making a business from it - then advertising the fact, it would be a different story. Expect a snotty letter, knocks at the door, and a court summons.
Compare that to if you take a newly purchased Lenovo PC apart for example. Nobody gives a rat's A***. Yes, Lenovo would say your warranty is null and void, but they don't act like d***s about it. You can go and buy whatever graphics card you want, run linux on it, do what you want. It's up to you. It's yours. There's nothing built in to stop you modifying it as to how you see fit. At least you can repair it and keep it going without being forced to buy new.
The analogy with Richmond and the book binding: if the book was made by apple, and you had it rebinded and worked on, you'd get it back - go to open it up, and find it was glued shut. You'd try to open it and the first page would say "Non certificated hardware detected. This book will now close".
This is the same approach now being applied in software with their codesigning and gatekeeper. They'd paint it that codesigning is to protect people from running dangerous apps. In reality it's all about wanting to earn as much as they can from developers via the App Store. Apple take a huge profit from anything on the App Store compared to what developers earn.
If that were the case about keeping the customer safe, you'd have a warning - sure. But have a warning that allows you to 'open anyway'. This used to be the case by right-clicking and choosing 'Open', but that's been done away with too. Increasingly their software is following the locked-down route that their hardware has always been doing.
When the likes of
https://ravynos.com/ say:
"We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem." It's not just me that feels this way.
It's not just Apple spouting this schtick though. Microsoft are doing it with Windows 11, saying that hardware must support a TPM to allow windows 11 to install. At least you can bypass that with a registry edit, but you shouldn't have to. It's all about selling new hardware at scale, when ultimately they are seeing a drop in users running Windows. About 6 years ago, Microsoft used to have about 90% of the userbase, now it's closer to just about 80% with macs taking about 15% and linux (or other OSs) the other 5%. But that does not tell the true story. In reality, all Chromebooks are running linux (albeit a google flavour of Debian), and server infrastructure used all over the world does not factor in those figures. Where servers have to be reliable and up 100% of the time, it's no coincidence that anything vital that has to keep running is increasingly linux based. All IOT devices (internet-of-things) - smart fridges and the like, use Linux (not that I want any of that, as security is very much an afterthought, but that's beyond the point and doesn't need to be the case). Even Apple carplay is a linux variant underneath. Think of any car you can imagine manufactured in the last 5 years - the engine management diagnostics use an embedded linux. If those figures were taken into account, you'd see that Linux tips the scales in use globally and is actually the most used OS. We all use linux everywhere daily without even realising it. You are using it now as you write this - your router runs Linux, as probably does your ISP.
Got a streaming box? a nintendo switch? a playstation? an Android device? Seen an ad on a changing billboard? A smart TV? - all forms of Linux, and that's only scratching the Surface (pun intended)
Anyway, with Apple's hardware and software approach - that's the reason I'm so against the Apple mentality - for all their talk about being more and more environmentally conscious, behind the scenes it's quite a different story. They may talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk.
This is why they are so upset about being forced into having to use USB-C as their phone charging plug, rather than lightning connectors and the cables that are made of cheese. (these cost only a couple of $ to make, but were selling for over £20 when I worked there). Plus there's a small verification chip inside the lightning cable that the phones used to detect, so if you bought a cheap cable from eBay, the phone would pop up a message saying "Charging with this accessory is unsupported"). Again, there was nothing wrong with this cable and if the phone's software wasn't looking for that chip, then it would charge. It was put in place purely to make Apple more money.
There's lots of examples of that, and some I probably still can't mention.
If I come across as perhaps being negative about Macs, or Apple in general - it's only because I have this (and more) in mind.
I'm a bit despondent about the state of desktop-OS anyway - if you ask most kids to point to a computer, they'll pull out a phone or a tablet. Only rarely a laptop, and some phones can rival what was a dedicated gaming tower of a few years ago.
Perhaps I yearn for the days when we all had greater control over our hardware, and maybe this is why I favour Linux and keep going on about why we should be supporting that as a priority and Windows over anything else.
Yes, it's nice to be able to say we also support Macs - but there will come a point where we can't support new ones. Does that mean I want to wash my hands of Mac support? I honestly don't know how I feel about it. I'd like to keep support for it going, but it'll have to come with a note that says "This will not run on Arm-only apple hardware" - and I'm sure Rosetta 2 will only be around for as long as Apple see fit. As I've mentioned countless times, they could pull support for it in their next major OS update and I would not be at all surprised. Same as they did with Rosetta 1 all of a sudden. (Although developers were warned of this for a year beforehand). Plus, if Apple keep making it harder and harder for non-app-store developers to actually develop for the platform, that will force my hand and I'll have no choice. At that point OpenXTalk will only run on MacOS 10.9 to MacOS 15/16 say. Anyone who's purchased a new mac, or one that Apple have axed Rosetta2 from, would then find they are unable to run OpenXTalk and would look for alternatives. (Commercial Livecode if they wanted a comprehensive xTalk IDE). That is, and continues to be the only viable option.
When I bang on about wanting to develop alternatives, that's exactly why. Competition is always good, and there's so much legacy cruft in the IDE (as proved by openxion which can weigh in under 15MB and is capable of understanding a basic subset of the language). Granted, it's only a basic subset, but if you doubled it to 30MB, you are still well under the 100s of MB that the current LCC engine takes. There's bindings built in that are unneccessarily included into the Mac build if you are running on Windows, and vice-versa.
This is why, tonight, I've just created a GUI with zig. I cross-compiled it on Linux, and have just built for PPC Mac, MacOS 8.6, MacOS intel x64, MacOS Arm aarch64, Linux x32 + x64, Windows x32 and x64 all on the same machine, and all with a code project that weighs in under 2.5MB.
All it does it make a blank window with the following:
That's all it does - but it incorporates wxWidgets as a proof-of-concept and also draws a native button on all those targets above, just to illustrate how it can be done.
If I tell it to do anything else, it currently locks up on Windows, unexpectedly quits on MacOS 8.6, quits without a message on Linux (and obviously I can't even begin to test the Arm MacOS version).
That's not surprising as I've only programmed it to understand on mouseup and beep. That's all it has, and there's not even any error collection - hence the crash. But, this is my focus when I'm not OpenXTalk Lite scripting. Zig language is already a damn sight easier than C++ and the cross-compiling is so easy I think my 10 year old daughter could do it (in fact I know she can as she already knows some Python). I'll get screenshots and a demo video of something put together if anyone is interested in seeing it in action when time allows. It's not very impressive at the moment quite frankly, but it can be done.
(edit) for anyone who cares:
https://tsites.co.uk/otherstuff/mac-os-9-test.mp4
https://tsites.co.uk/otherstuff/mac-os-x-10.4-test.mp4