Says it's a Mac/iOS build platform. Since it's a commercial service they're probably complying with the license and thus using actual Mac hardware, and in turn the only ECC option is the really awful value, outdated Mac Pro. Seems more likely they're using Minis instead, or at least mostly Minis. An unfortunate thing about Apple hardware (says someone still nursing along a final 5,1 Mac Pro for a last few weeks).
These are seemingly MacOS only which doesn’t really qualify for the vast majority of data center uses. They’re here to build software for Apple devices and that’s pretty much it.
This sounds like they're trying to prevent people running farms of Mac minis AWS style, rather than using them as a server. But a highly paid Apple layer may still disagree.
Apple obviously doesn't want companies like AWS to be renting Mac Minis as some sort of VDI solution. That's consistent with the (shitty) practices of Microsoft with respect to Windows, which confines Windows 10 hosting to Azure services.
Given the nature of Mac, an AWS MacOS service is unique in that it's very clear who the manufacturer of the underlying hardware is. Apple, given it's control-freak nature wanted to have a model that accommodated both their needs and the provided a clear, multi-provider model to do what developers need.
It was one of the few CI providers that supported MacOS.
Since iOS apps can only be legally built on apple hardware, if you were an iOS developer and didn't want to maintain your own mac minis, you knew about them and the few other providers.
Somewhat surprising since unlike their customers, there's no license restriction to Apple running macOS on different hardware. Maybe they didn't want to maintain a separate fork only for internal use. And having their own OS makes it more challenging to port apps to AWS/Azure.
They mentioned the main use case when they launched the initial Mac ec2 instances.
Any company that does something on iOS/macos needs mac hardware to run builds on, there is no other (legal) option. The status quo (even at very large companies) is some mac mini's under someones desk/in a closet somewhere.
This is basically replacing the cost of that setup (ie the oncall for it/hassle). The AWS service is even more expensive than things like MacStadium because you also get AWS network connectivity and other features.
Some services are built around racks of Minis and Pros. Online tests for iOS apps and I don't remember what image processing service that needs to use OSX.
"These are just rentable Mac Minis, not VMs. This will have only one use case and that's for build servers."
It's difficult for me to believe that a hyper-scaled cloud deployment like AWS will rent individual mac minis to people. It sounds like a business idea I would have and then come to realize how labor intensive and inefficient the entire thing was.
At the same time, I wonder why there is not a well developed, well documented cross-compiling toolchain available for (whatever you are doing with a mac build server) ? Why not use your local (laptop) mac to do the dirty work and then run a (very complicated) cross compiling chain on a much cheaper, non mac, cloud instance ?
Well, technically it doesn't have to be Apple hardware. They could be running hackintoshes, which would obviously be against the EULA of OSX. Another possibility is virtualization. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but I think the OSX Server EULA allows virtualization since 10.7. So setup any linux server off the shelf and virtualize OSX Server instances on it and you have your cloud building blocks.
Interesting. I guess it's not the first but does the MacOS EULA really allow for this? Or does AWS have a special license? Which would beg the question as for the need of real hardware. (Sure you can break a EULA but at some point it would violate ToS and Apple could easily block updates).
> The instances are launched as EC2 Dedicated Hosts with a minimum tenancy of 24 hours.
This almost sounds like they are using first sale doctrine to just lend it for a day. Like I can lend a movie but I can't make my own movie theater (right?).
Also I'm very curious of these are in-tack macs or shucked and put in a frankenstein case of dozens.
How does that not fit in “auto build arrangements”? You have a Mac as a build server to build Mac software just like you need a Windows Build server to build a Windows app.
If your business can’t afford a $700 Mac Mini, you’re not running a business.
Besides, are you not doing any local testing in the simulator?
Build farms is what I used them for. Currently we rent three Mac Pros from MacStadium and run our OS X VMs there, which is much nicer than a bunch of minis. I hate Apple's OS X license.
Apple clearly isn't interested in others offering macOS servers on non-Apple hardware, their licensing practices make that clear. If not to run macOS, AWS customers have no reason to demand M1 cores, and AWS has little reason to want to buy M1 chips over their own designs. And Apple and AWS are not the kind of companies to go in a deep partnership with shared designs etc over something like this.
Can't run in a VM, that's against the license. So there had better be something rack-mountable, with redundant network and power, and a separate management port, or this isn't a server, just some app you run on some hardware that you hope won't get jostled much (or stolen, or "Hey, that Mac that's been in the corner hasn't been used in years, so I ...")
There has to be a license change coming, or new hardware, or this is just . . . wow.
I don't think OP is saying there is literally no hardware on which to run the OS, just that by restricting it to Apple products and then not producing any actual server-grade hardware, the offering seems pretty pointless.
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