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Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

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Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#231

Post by tiborsaas »

em500 wrote: post #226
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…

Not a lawyer, I do wonder if such terms would hold up in court. I can see the case for EULA around virtualization when you're running multiple instances of macOS. But say I just buy a bunch of Mini's and rent (full access to) them out (bare metal, full system) per hour, rather than 24hr. Or for non-"development" work, whatever that means. Could Apple really put up a good case in court? It seems unlikely that they cou…

This does sound absurd, how would people react if a car manufacturer would try to raise arbitrary limitations against car rental businesses?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#232

Post by nl »

saagarjha wrote: post #211
nl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium Why can't any business rent out physical Macs on a 1:1 basis on the same terms as MacStadium? It looks like they can, and if so then it's nothing favorable to MacStadium specifically: it's just not favorable to fractional renting like AWS.

You cut that quote off a bit early.

"What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium, at least in the near future"

I don't see what the bit I left off ("at least in the near future") changes.

There's nothing structural that favors MacStadium over other businesses with the same model.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#233

Post by caspper69 »

pjmlp wrote: post #176
lokimedes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They are mostly an hardware firm that packages a nice experience in the box. Nope, 12% of market share isn't a monopoly.

How about being the only way to even build an application for 50% of the U.S. mobile market?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#234

Post by saagarjha »

sudhirj wrote: post #230
kbumsik wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AWS are offering the first ever officially supported macOS virtualisation AWS is offering dedicated bare metal Mac Minis for rent with virtual NICs and virtual storage powered by AWS Nitro, there is no macOS virtualisation.

Technically no, but the word has come to mean something different. Because even bare metal instances come under the same APIs, security, architecture and usage model as the other "real" VMs, the difference is very slim now. We can think of them as VMs of a specific size with a minimum billing time and get on with using them with our existing tooling.

Virtualization means virtualization. Nobody's changed the definition of a VM.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#235

Post by RantyDave »

dvtrn wrote: post #71
dharmab wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, Apple might gain revenue from iOS and macOS builds becoming more accessible, allowing more small businesses to support their hardware.

Alternatively, Apple might gain revenue from iOS and macOS builds becoming more accessible Wishful thinking: resurrect the xserve. Give me that 1U Apple appliance so I can stop stacking up Mac Minis (we have an incredibly non-trivial amount of iOS development happening across multiple divisions. Current Mac Mini count: 8)

There's a "blade" chassis in there somewhere. Something that takes a big stack of macbook air logic boards...

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#236

Post by BillinghamJ »

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…

This seems like an absolutely bizarre take on the situation. You don't really think Apple added those EULA terms for MacStadium now right? They were clearly added for AWS! MacStadium just happens to be happy that there's crystal-clear red lines.

These rules are 100% down to Apple, absolutely nothing to do with AWS and MacStadium in terms of decision-making.

Apple don't want the perceived value of their machines to become lower, want to make sure there's no possibility of performance issues due to multiple tenancy, and want to make sure this doesn't become a way for people to have a personal Mac without having a Mac.

Maybe in another year or two, assuming nothing came out of this which Apple didn't like, they might loosen the rules slightly.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#237

Post by yoz-y »

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…

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

Thing is he's only happy because those rules are good for them. The way he talks about renting partial CPUs being somehow 'wrong' and makes them look like a ripoff is misleading. Just because you can get a VPS or hourly billed CPU time does not mean you can not get a full machine as well. But cost matters a lot, especially to smaller developers.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#238

Post by oefrha »

tobylane wrote: post #195
nanagojo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Someone points out Circle let’s you ssh in, while afaik GHA and Pipelines don’t

That's mostly a convenience feature, you can ssh into GH Actions' macOS instances through something like an ngrok tunnel, or run a terminal sharing tool within to basically do the same. See for instance https://github.com/fastai/fastmac. I doubt that's a key difference.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#239

Post by philo23 »

withinrafael wrote: post #220

GitHub has been doling out tiny macOS runners in virtual machines for a bit now [1] (seemingly in violation of macOS SLA), and these were hosted on MacStadium [2]! So for MacStadium to come out and pretend they were following the rules the entire time is disappointing. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20200511183317if_/https://github.... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20201108115438/https://docs.githu...

As weird as it is, I think as long as they provide an entire physical Mac you’re free to run as many macOS virtual hosts on it yourself as you want to. At least that’s my understanding of the EULA explained in the MacStadium blog post.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#240

Post by saagarjha »

capableweb wrote: post #229
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…

> What has clearly happened is Apple asked them what the EULA should look like It's clear that you have never worked with Apple. This is not how Apple does business. Apple sets the terms and you either agree or GTFO.

Apple will work with you if they think it is beneficial to them.
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