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Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

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Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#181

Post by casperb »

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…

As far as I know, before these changes selling virtualized macOS was not allowed at all. That is what Brian was celebrating, to see some approval.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#182

Post by QuinnyPig »

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…

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

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#183

Post by QuinnyPig »

dfabulich wrote: post #149

Amazon lists the price of mac1 instances (running on rack-mounted Intel Mac Minis) at $1.083 per hour, $9,487 per year. You have to pay for 24 hours up front, after which they bill by the second. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/dedicated-hosts/pricing/ They don't yet display any reservation pricing for mac1 instances, but they do offer a "savings plan." https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/pricing/ If you pay for three yea…

44% off if you go for the instance savings plan. “Only” $450 a month that way.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#184

Post by Closi »

Twirrim wrote: post #114
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of hilarious. This is barely cloud computing compared to the rest of ec2, which has per-second billing...

It's going to be out of their hands on this one. Apple have pretty strong EULAs. Microsoft's licensing for clouds is also a pain in the arse. You (the cloud platform) have to pay for a full months license the moment an instance is created. The way it's structured you have some wriggle room, e.g. you have your placement algorithm land new instances on where Windows instances have already been in a given month, so you…

> Microsoft's licensing for clouds is also a pain in the arse. You (the cloud platform) have to pay for a full months license the moment an instance is created.

This is exactly how I would expect the licensing to work.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#185

Post by ampdepolymerase »

thayne wrote: post #140
Twirrim wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be out of their hands on this one. Apple have pretty strong EULAs. Microsoft's licensing for clouds is also a pain in the arse. You (the cloud platform) have to pay for a full months license the moment an instance is created. The way it's structured you have some wriggle room, e.g. you have your placement algorithm land new instances on where Windows instances have already been in a given month, so you…

Strategically it makes sense. Apple is a hardware company, so making it difficult to run their OS in the cloud means more people need to keep buying their hardware. Microsoft has their own cloud, where they don't have to deal with the license requirements they force on other cloud providers, which gives them a competitive advantage over their competitors (when it comes to windows servers). The key is that these compa…

Does Microsoft have to follow its own EULA? Will it be an antitrust violation if they don't?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#186

Post by saagarjha »

QuinnyPig wrote: post #182
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…

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 along with it. There is no way they didn't know that this would hurt everyone else's business (actually, he mentions this in the article, so he is writing this with full knowledge of that fact).

Even if MacStadium was not involved in this at all, making a blog post about a change that hurts your competitors and talking about how you are somehow better than them and deserve to exist is remarkably poor taste.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#187

Post by saagarjha »

casperb wrote: post #181
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…

As far as I know, before these changes selling virtualized macOS was not allowed at all. That is what Brian was celebrating, to see some approval.

As far as I am aware, the new changes are clarification to the old terms, which didn't really say much at all. The situation where you have a clear "no" is significantly worse than the one where there's no specific rule prohibiting it. Many companies can and have decided that the latter was good enough to offer a service off of; no company with a competent legal department is going to offer such a service now.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#188

Post by chx »

rualca wrote: post #173
zelly wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build your own AWS

Plenty of cloud providers don't charge for bandwidth until you hit an anti-abuse ceiling. For example, Hetzner offers a 20TB bandwidth cap per node. You don't need to buy AWS to get same prices on network.

Hetzner dedicated servers (which start below 30 EUR mind you) do not have bandwidth caps for two years now. https://www.hetzner.com/news/traffic-limit/

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#189

Post by markonen »

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…

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.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#190

Post by headmelted »

lokimedes wrote: post #122
nnx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird limitation. Hopefully Apple updates this.

They still think of themselves as a hardware firm, this restrains usage elasticity to a level where system hardware scaling is a dominant cost driver rather than system performance. Besides the inefficiencies of physical space at AWS sites, it is also a fine business for the cloud provider as it generates a less volatile usage pattern than normal. As Apple is acting as a monopolist by dictating the same terms to ever…

I vividly remember a video interview with Steve Jobs from a long time back when he was clear that Apple is not a hardware firm, it’s a software firm, and admitting that it took him far too long to realise that.

So this is hard to defend other than gouging.

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