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Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

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Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#191

Post by fxtentacle »

saagarjha wrote: post #186
QuinnyPig wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really fail to see what Brian Stucki did wrong? He’s subject to the whims of Apple licensing way more than AWS is.

The license changes basically allow nobody other than MacStadium to exist–throughout the blog post he gloats about how their business model is a hand in the new EULA's glove. And, of course, MacStadium been in contact with Apple to work this out, as he mention at the end. What has clearly happened is Apple asked them what the EULA should look like, or suggested a EULA based on what MacStadium is doing, and they went…

I disagree.

I'm pretty sure that MacStadium didn't limit their rental to one customer per hardware box out of spite for their customers, but because that's what Apple expected of them. So their were being held to a higher standard than some of their competitors, who had much higher profit margins by putting multiple customers on one machine.

So I think he is justifiably happy that Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone.

The fact that Apple's official rules are close to what they were doing adds additional credibility to this interpretatio, because it suggest that they were following Apple's guidance before it became legally easy to enforce

I wouldn't put any blame for how these rules look like on MacStadium, because if Epic cannot negotiate with Apple on eye level, I'm confident that MacStadium never will. It's probably more like they received their future laws as dictated by their fruit-shaped God.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#192

Post by apapli »

awinter-py wrote: post #133
kerng wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need it for compiling. There are plenty of cross platform frameworks that dont require to develop with xcode - and that's good in my opinion. I built all my apps this way and faced the same problem as OP - so had to buy a Mac mini. It was the cheapest option ~8 years ago and I still use it today for the same purpose - just for compiling. I assume there are probably more of us.

how are you developing for ios without frequent compiling and testing?

Expo.io is good enough for my needs. Cross platform, just run it on my iPhone and and android simulator. Also, the way expo works is that not all updates need to go through the App Store approvals. I can quickly dev/test/release once I have the app container approved by the relevant store.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#193

Post by saagarjha »

markonen wrote: post #189
saagarjha wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license changes basically allow nobody other than MacStadium to exist–throughout the blog post he gloats about how their business model is a hand in the new EULA's glove. And, of course, MacStadium been in contact with Apple to work this out, as he mention at the end. What has clearly happened is Apple asked them what the EULA should look like, or suggested a EULA based on what MacStadium is doing, and they went…

Apple's angle here is that everybody who needs a Mac has to buy or rent one. That seems super obvious. It also happens to align them with people who are in the business of selling or renting Macs, sure. But the point is not to screw AWS or MacStadium's competitors. The point is to sell Macs.

The obvious side effect of selling more Macs is that it hurts AWS and MacStadium's competitors. Developers don't want to buy more Macs from Apple that they don't need. Apple knows this and has known this for decades and so their actions are essentially the same as telling developers to suck it up and buy new Macs.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#194

Post by apapli »

qppo wrote: post #103
kerng wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need it for compiling. There are plenty of cross platform frameworks that dont require to develop with xcode - and that's good in my opinion. I built all my apps this way and faced the same problem as OP - so had to buy a Mac mini. It was the cheapest option ~8 years ago and I still use it today for the same purpose - just for compiling. I assume there are probably more of us.

How do you deal with platform specific bugs? What about testing? About 50% of my MacOS usage is replicating bug reports from users. I don't know how I would do that without having one on my desk.

My needs are simple enough that the standard inclusions in expo.io work without complication. I could imagine more complex apps need a more involved dev setup but not in my case.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#195

Post by tobylane »

nanagojo wrote: post #137
tekacs wrote: post #91

It seems like this directly ties back to Apple’s recent policy changes [0]. The details line up exactly, including: - You must rent them for at least 24 hours at a time. - You must rent out one machine per end user. I just feel sorry for all the smaller providers who have done this for years. I wonder if this was Apple’s update prompting AWS, or AWS pushing Apple to make the change — or both. [0]: https://blog.macsta…

Azure piplines has had the ability for quite a while to use macos agents...

GitHub Actions, which is mostly a copy of Pipelines, has Big Sur while Pipelines doesn’t.

Someone points out Circle let’s you ssh in, while afaik GHA and Pipelines don’t. Is this a key difference?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#196

Post by saagarjha »

fxtentacle wrote: post #191
saagarjha wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license changes basically allow nobody other than MacStadium to exist–throughout the blog post he gloats about how their business model is a hand in the new EULA's glove. And, of course, MacStadium been in contact with Apple to work this out, as he mention at the end. What has clearly happened is Apple asked them what the EULA should look like, or suggested a EULA based on what MacStadium is doing, and they went…

I disagree. I'm pretty sure that MacStadium didn't limit their rental to one customer per hardware box out of spite for their customers, but because that's what Apple expected of them. So their were being held to a higher standard than some of their competitors, who had much higher profit margins by putting multiple customers on one machine. So I think he is justifiably happy that Apple created a fair competition by…

I have no problem with MacStadium's business model; in fact, I have seriously considered renting Macs from them in the past specifically because of their service of providing a dedicated machine for an extended period of time. In that case we were looking at running extended builds and the cost of downloading Xcode, then our source tree, then running a build for hours on a per-hour service was fairly competitive with what was being offered by MacStadium. That we didn't choose it was mostly chance and external factors.

What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium, at least in the near future, and remove services like AWS from consideration completely. Brian's claims that they were simply offering their services in a way that "felt right with what Apple would have wanted" is marketing drivel. I don't care if I am getting a single core out of four, I'm not trying to browse Safari on this machine. Just run my builds and give me what I pay for; that's how CI works for literally everything else.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#197

Post by tpetry »

absolutelyrad wrote: post #165
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget the bandwidth premium you pay at Amazon AWS. Paying these premiums is all in the furtherance of a good cause called “Bezos getting another hundy billion to his name”.

Yup, the bandwidth at the big clouds is far too expensive. It makes more sense to host somewhere else if you're a consumer company.

Funnily bandwidth pricing at Oracle Cloud is the cheapest of all major clouds. Its kind of ironic as every product oracle sells costs your „first born son“.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#198

Post by mbreese »

saagarjha wrote: post #172

An interesting offering from Amazon that is crippled by Apple and MacStadium, who deserve to be raked over the coals for their recent EULA changes. Just read the post on MacStadium's blog: https://blog.macstadium.com/blog/developers-big-sur-and-vind... Under the new agreement, you must: * Rent to only one organization * Rent for 24 hours at the minimum * Use it for some set of "approved" development work …among other…

The thing that Stucki is celebrating can be summed up with this line from the blog post:

> I’m happy to have an absolute guideline from Apple

Before this, it was a legal grey area. Now at least the rules are spelled out and are clear. More importantly, they are the same for everyone. I think we could all argue over what the "right" limits might be (or if there should be any), but at least MacStadium, AWS, and whomever else wants to rent out cloud-based Macs now know where they stand.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#199

Post by apapli »

kalleboo wrote: post #166
apapli wrote: post #19

Interesting. The deciding factor for our family when buying a Mac or Windows 10 device for my wife’s small business was actually my need to upload iOS apps for review by apple. I’m an after hours hobby developer, and use a windows desktop. It’s powerful and has all the tooling I require. And it supports all the games I want to play from the steam store. So - I think apple will lose a little bit of business from peopl…

The pricing makes this pointless for small businesses. $1/hour and minimum tenancy of 24 hours means each time you're updating your app you're spending $26. After 25 app updates you could own a brand new Mac Mini (assuming you never need to spend an extra day testing). Buying a used Mac makes even more sense. MacStadium also already rents out Mac Minis starting at $59/mo. I think the Amazon offering only makes sense…

Agree, but my needs are simple and I develop using expo.io. So once my app is published often minor changes can be pushed straight through to my app without App Store approvals. So it would be $26 per upload (ouch), but my “upload” may only be once every few months so I’d easily be ahead.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#200

Post by apapli »

usmannk wrote: post #22
apapli wrote: post #19

Interesting. The deciding factor for our family when buying a Mac or Windows 10 device for my wife’s small business was actually my need to upload iOS apps for review by apple. I’m an after hours hobby developer, and use a windows desktop. It’s powerful and has all the tooling I require. And it supports all the games I want to play from the steam store. So - I think apple will lose a little bit of business from peopl…

How are you developing iOS apps without xcode?

expo.io
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