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Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

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Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#241

Post by kgantchev »

saagarjha wrote: post #212
mbreese wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whomeve…

The legal gray area where Apple specifically called out their service by name in a presentation and how great their Mac Minis would be for their usecase?

Who else was offering Mac Mini rentals prior to this change? MacStadium appears to be the only major player in the space prior to Amazon jumping in.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#242

Post by BillinghamJ »

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...

They would have been VMing on top of the machine provided by MacStadium.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#243

Post by BillinghamJ »

philo23 wrote: post #239
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.

Yeah I think the issue here is more likely GitHub not following the EULA

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#244

Post by saagarjha »

nl wrote: post #232
saagarjha wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Other than MacStadium already having that business model and their competitors that are hurt not having that model. They'd need to put in effort to transition at the very least.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#245

Post by BGStucki »

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…

Brian Stucki here. If I had the power over Apple that you think I do, I definitely would have pushed for iPhone Socks first.

Joking aside, the software license agreement was certainly a cause for personal celebration. It might be helpful for you to compare macOS 11 to previous versions. (Linked in my post.) If I/MacStadium did anything, we showed that there was a need for this sort of service and that both Apple and developers would benefit with some official way to do it. Amazon joining is further proof of that.

I’ve always pushed for the safe road at MacStadium (and my company Macminicolo before that) even if it meant losing out on gray area business. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve answered “but what if Apple shuts this service down?” Not anymore.

With the new Eula, the guidelines are now set. Doing everything above board paid off.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#246

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

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.

> but the word has come to mean something different

No, it hasn't. If you're using "VM" to include bare metal, then you are using the wrong term for something. The definition of the word "virtualization" has not changed.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#247

Post by cowsandmilk »

yarcob wrote: post #213

At a first glance this sounds exciting: We use a lot of different versions of macOS and Xcode for building our apps. We have one dedicated Mac, and about 5 VMs on a second Mac that we use for building our software. Keeping everything up to date is a pain. So if we could just rent Mac VMs that would be nice. But this is pretty much useless. You get only a single machine for a really high price. Theoretically I could r…

I’ll be interested in how long they keep OS versions. This would be really compelling for me if I could run 10.11+ rather than just 10.14 and 10.15.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#248

Post by oefrha »

kgantchev wrote: post #241
saagarjha wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal gray area where Apple specifically called out their service by name in a presentation and how great their Mac Minis would be for their usecase?

Who else was offering Mac Mini rentals prior to this change? MacStadium appears to be the only major player in the space prior to Amazon jumping in.

Macminicolo has been around since at least 2005. They were acquired by MacStadium in 2016 though.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#249

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

inopinatus wrote: post #214
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…

Those numbers actually make the AWS instances a shoo-in for my current development purposes. The cost of housing and managing a unit of hardware is nonzero. Actuals vary wildly by location, purposes, and sector; but if everyone can get their heads out of the hobbyist-tinkerer mindset for a moment and consider that lifetime TCO is a real and meaningful consideration for businesses, then the component that isn't buying…

> Since my duty cycle for a Mac Mini is rather less than 20%, the economics even of on-demand instances immediately make sense,

Are you factoring in the 24 hour minimum AWS charges for a Mac Mini?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#250

Post by saagarjha »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #236
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 be…

The terms seem to be a perfect fit for MacStadium and a poor fit for everyone else, including AWS. Do you think AWS wants to bill by the second…with 24 hours up front? Does this match their business model at all?

It's really not Apple's business to try to protect people from "performance issues due to multiple tenancy". People who buy these things already know how this works.

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