Amazon EC2 Mac Instances • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#311

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

kgantchev wrote: post #299

lultimouomo wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aroun…

Why wouldn't Apple just let people rent out computers for any amount of time, as long as they don't contain music or movies? I can understand why Apple would wan't someone to pay $3.99 to rent a movie for 48 hours, and then sub-rent that movie a couple dozen times. But why do they care about someone running CI?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#312

Post by pbalau » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #249

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

If you are comparing buying the device + the other costs of running the device vs renting from aws, then the 24h upfront is not an issue. You could even consider renting for a year or more.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#313

Post by kgantchev » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #305

pbronez wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not true at all. Anti monopoly regulations, for example, exist for the sole purpose of privileging new entrants over incumbents. The actions against Microsoft, or the breaking up of AT&T certainly did not help the incumbents. An example closer to home is that entrepreneurial activity in Silicon Valley is often attributed to California law forbidding non competes in employment contracts. This is regulation, wi…

> This is not true at all. Anti monopoly regulations, for example, exist for the sole purpose of privileging new entrants over incumbents. The actions against Microsoft, or the breaking up of AT&T certainly did not help the incumbents.

The intended purpose is to help the new entrants, but I don't see Microsoft or AT&T losing anything or their smaller competitors gaining anything after the regulatory action against them.

> An example closer to home is that entrepreneurial activity in Silicon Valley is often attributed to California law forbidding non competes in employment contracts. This is regulation, without which, as you see in nearly every other state, workers are severely bound by their employment contracts in the work they can do while and after being employed by a company.

That's a matter of negotiation. I always (successfully) negotiated with my employer to exclude my personal projects from the contract. I find that employees have a lot more negotiating power than they realize.

> If regulations seem to benefit incumbents, it’s because incumbents exist and therefore can play a role in setting regulations.

I think that's synonymous with the original statement made by OP. You're just providing another reason why it's true.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#314

Post by frankietaylr » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #87

tootie wrote: post #50

"The instances are launched as EC2 Dedicated Hosts with a minimum tenancy of 24 hours" These are just rentable Mac Minis, not VMs. This will have only one use case and that's for build servers. Unless anyone has scalable AppleScript jobs to run?

The 24 hours is dictated by new Big Sur EULA. https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/11/macos-big-sur-adds-leasing-te... From the new EULA (not just for Amazon, paraphrased by 9to5mac): * Apple software and hardware must be leased “in its entirety to and individual or organization” * A lease period must be “for a minimum period of twenty-four (24) consecutive hours” * Customers must now accept software agreements for all instal…

Does Apple gain anything from AWS for forcing it to rent for a minimum period of 24 hours?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#315

Post by danpalmer » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

kbumsik wrote: post #217

oxfordmale wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS are offering the first ever officially supported macOS virtualisation, I would call that a milestone. Given the costs, you would only use these instances for "approved" development work only. It is aimed at larger companies where maintaining a MacBook Mini build server is relatively expensive. Such companies will be using more than one instance of a MacBook mini to have a level of redundancy in case of a failure.…

> 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.

Neither is it first. MacStadium have done this for years.

GitHub Actions, Semaphore CI, CircleCI, Bitrise, they have all done actual virtualisation of macOS for a number of years too. Yes it's a slightly more specialised problem domain, but nothing about this is correct.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#316

Post by gregorymfoster » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

I’m working on https://screenplay.dev, where test every change against a battery of open source iOS apps (Wikipedia, signal, etc). We started on GitHub actions, but found it much cheaper to buys ~4 Mac mini’s and run them in the office. It takes a little love to keep them up to date and stable (maybe an hour a week), but in return we get cheap, debuggable Mac computer. I like that more offerings are appearing, but at this price, we’ll stick to our furnace of Mac mini’s for now.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#317

Post by ftio » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

Someone commented on a previous thread that the M1 Mac mini hadn't changed form factors despite a reduction in component size, lamenting that it had retained the same size and shape as its on-Intel predecessors.

This is the reason.

Datacenter customers (really, any customers racking minis) likely represent a meaningful share of Mac mini sales. Changing the form factor would mean these high-value customers would need to re-tool their racks to support a new design. Even Apple is not immune to the pressure of large customers.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#318

Post by em500 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

ohmaigad wrote: post #309

em500 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing is, they could write anything in the EULA, I was just wondering how much it is actually enforceable (even with a click-through "consent". Second, I wonder on what legal basis they can actually impose usage restrictions of a whole Mac (hardware+software) via an EULA as long as I don't breach any copyright (which I don't think I do if I rent out usage of the entire system for a few hours). AFAICT (again, not…

I have a hard time believing 1.J.[1] could be enforced as it sounds like you cannot sell your MAC, use it in a work or school environment. Apple can't risk to prove the point in court because if it is enforceable no organisation will touch their products.

I think the wording is ambiguous enough that it takes an actual court case to resolve.

In a broad interpretation, the prohibitions on rent/lease/lend/sell of "the Apple Software" would apply to the whole system (harware+software), which would forbid me to sell my old Mac. This would never hold up in court. But in a narrow reading, where the prohibitions only apply to the software, separated from the hardware it does not look like there is anything stopping me from renting out (access to) the entire Mac to a single user[1], for whatever purpose and duration I want. So those 24hr and "development purposes" would be moot.

[1] There's probably more than enough precedence to uphold number-of-users restrictions of software, e.g. Windows Server CALs.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#319

Post by denysvitali » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #278

You cannot use these as servers. You can only use this for: "Permitted Developer services." This is defined as "continuous integration services, including but not limited to software development, building software from source, automated testing during software development, and running necessary developer tools to support such activities." (from: https://blog.macstadium.com/blog/developers-big-sur-and-vind... ) So, no…

Well, you can always develop a Photoshop plugin and test it in a very intensive way. Still not worth the price though

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#320

Post by chippiewill » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #273

phire wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the pricing, 24h minimum and "only developers" restriction. it seems like there are exactly two usecases for this service. 1. You are a big company who needs Mac CI and your IT department has a strict "Cloud Only" restriction. 2. You are a developer for a cross-platform App who doesn't own a mac, but needs access to a real mac every few weeks or months for debugging/releasing.

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.

> Maybe someone can wrap this SaaS in a other Saas and sell timeshares in a virtual Mac.

That's precisely what the EULA prevents, otherwise Amazon would happily sell you smaller slice of time.