Amazon EC2 Mac Instances • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#291

Post by pbronez » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:27 PM UTC

lultimouomo wrote: post #266

BGStucki wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get that you're happy because Apple has now explicitly permitted what you were doing. I'm less clear on why you're happy that they didn't allow more stuff, like renting by the minute or for arbitrary purposes. You seem to depict companies that were doing this as "below board", while you as "above board". This is certainly true now, but before the changes both would have been a grey area - I don't see much of a diff…

Regulations benefit incumbents. That holds whether the regulations are national laws or corporate policies. When you make new rules, the established ecosystem adapts and doubles down while new players have a harder time getting started.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#292

Post by scns » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

patrec wrote: post #256

inopinatus wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, What are you doing with macs that naturally works out at ~one continuous 24h period per work-week on average? Turn on CI once a week Thursday midnight, and no one goes into the weekend before all test failures are fixed?

Maybe start the Mac CI monday morning, and fix errors then? Would lead to a more enjoyable weekend IMHO.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#293

Post by wayneftw » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:32 PM UTC

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 EULA applies to leasing the whole OS. I don't need a whole virtual Mac to run CI jobs. It doesn't sound like there's anything stopping anyone from offering a Mac CI job runner that gets shared with multiple organizations at the same time.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#294

Post by pbronez » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:33 PM UTC

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.

I think you’re using the terms incorrectly. This is “Hardware as a Service” not a “virtual machine.” Yes, AWS Nitro provides extensive management services for both, but they are fundamentally different things even if you access them in similar ways.

The new instance name is “mac1.metal” just like AWS’ other hardware as a service offerings:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-ec2-bare-metal-i...

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#295

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:37 PM UTC

tiborsaas wrote: post #231

em500 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#296

Post by andybak » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:40 PM UTC

lukeramsden wrote: post #290

andybak wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My use case is that I need to build for a recent iOS device but I don't want to upgrade my Macbook to an os version that doesn't support 32bit apps. But the 24hr thing kills it for me. I will never get 24 hours use out of it. Maybe a few hours. Why am I paying for the other 21 hours? Maybe someone can wrap this SaaS in a other Saas and sell timeshares in a virtual Mac.

> Why am I paying for the other 21 hours? Unsure if you've seen the comments elsewhere in the thread but in case you haven't and this is a genuine question - because Apple's EULA forces Amazon to do this.

Yes - I did know that. I guess my question is directed more at Apple. Why stipulate this unless they want to hobble reasonable use-cases or inflate usage arbitrarily.

Is the answer simply "Because they can and they like money?"

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#297

Post by skohan » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

BillinghamJ wrote: post #257

saagarjha wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No I'm sure AWS don't want it either. And it absolutely is 100% typical of Apple to do this kind of thing. They don't want third party companies to provide offerings which might cause them problems or degrade their brand/perception. I'm not at all saying these terms were added to benefit AWS. More that they were a condition of Apple doing this first official cloud partnership.

It's also 100% in line with Apple's recent trends of being hostile to developers. It's absolutely absurd to have to rent an server for 24 hours to do a single build. It's incredibly wasteful to have this much hardware sitting around and doing nothing.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#298

Post by skohan » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

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…

> Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone

I think it could be argued that it shouldn't be Apple's place to set the rules of the competition. If MacStadium is correct, that the best experience is one-user-one-machine, then their business model should win out. It's not fair competition to rule out all other business models.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#299

Post by kgantchev » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

lultimouomo wrote: post #266

BGStucki wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get that you're happy because Apple has now explicitly permitted what you were doing. I'm less clear on why you're happy that they didn't allow more stuff, like renting by the minute or for arbitrary purposes. You seem to depict companies that were doing this as "below board", while you as "above board". This is certainly true now, but before the changes both would have been a grey area - I don't see much of a diff…

> Would I be correct saying that you're happy because in one stroke Apple has moved you from grey area to explicitly permitted, and part of your competition from grey area to explicitly forbidden?

I don't know how any competition would be negatively impacted by Apple implementing these terms, unless the competition was already selling services that were on a short-term basis (below 24 hours).

And to circle back around, this EULA enables MacStadium's hardware hosting competition to enter the market... thus comes Amazon into the playing field. I just don't see how having to compete with Amazon is, all of a sudden, a better deal for MacStadium. If anything, it just highlights the volatile nature of running a business in the Apple ecosystem.

> For the record in no way I think that Apple took this decision to favor you or anyone else except themselves. It just seems that you won a regulatory lottery.

"Congratulations, you're a winner... your prize is to compete with Amazon!" Some would certainly wear it with a badge of honor!

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#300

Post by himinlomax » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #175

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…

Maybe those companies should focus their business in countries where EULAs have zero legal value, like EU countries.

EULA may not have much if any force in some jurisdiction, but that's typically for private individuals. Corporations can reasonably be expected to have lawyers to understand legalese, for one.

Not saying the EULA would definitely be enforceable, just that it's not that simple in this case.