Yes, apple is selling products that consists of hard- and software. Decoupling the software from the hardware would hurt the brand.
To end-users, I'd agree. A consumer is buying Apple's software more than the hardware.
Developers and/or service providers who run stuff on MacOS (or need to support MacOS) are not where Apple makes their money. In fact, Apple needs the developers more than they need their own software (iOS without the App Store? MacOS without non-Apple applications?). You would think Apple would want to make it easy to develop and run software on MacOS, not the other way around.
Allowing developers to virtualize MacOS would be extremely helpful. Apple allows you to install MacOS on a VM as long as its running on Apple hardware. You can install MacOS on VMware Workstation / ESXi without much trouble and it runs fine (and could run better with minimal support!), but you're breaking the license if you're not on Apple hardware.
A customer like Amazon being required to purchase and inefficiently run (power, space, ect) hundreds of Mac Minis instead of simply being able to provide virtual instances is such a waste.
