Amazon EC2 Mac Instances • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#361

Post by hobs » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #350

saagarjha wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, thanks for weighing in. I'm sure you picked up that I'm pretty mad, but I'll try to tone it down a little bit. I'm not an Amazon employee or someone who is personally harmed by this or anything, aside from being a developer for Apple's platforms who occasionally looks around for CI services. I'm mostly arguing about the principle of the thing. Anyways: I read your blog post back when it came out. Whether Apple to…

> aside from being a developer for Apple's platforms who occasionally looks around for CI services So, you give him all this shit and you're not even using his service? > There's still a huge hole for a service that lets you rent a Mac for the a couple minutes so you can build your Xcode project. It's not your fault that doesn't exist, it's Apple's. If we're talking for CI of builds, sure. But in that case, one would…

I like you and I think your posts are generally high quality, so I am going to say that an elitist "screw people who cant afford an overpriced mac" is not a good thing imo.

Will we get some lower quality apps, sure, do those already exist? yeah. It just sounds like gatekeeping for not much benefit.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#362

Post by siliconmountain » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

scns wrote: post #292

patrec wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ya, weekly builds on Monday morning for a gaming company with multiple teams makes sense. They could slice it up across their teams even for better TCO

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#363

Post by tpetry » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

frankietaylr wrote: post #314

shp0ngle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

AWS needs to buy a lot more mac machines from apple. Without the limit everybody would start a vm for a few minutes to run a ci job and stop the machine. So there is no „sharing“ of a machine within a 24 hour window if you only need the machine shortly.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#364

Post by hobs » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #322

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…

A little dramatic, eh? Apple obviously doesn't want companies like AWS to be renting Mac Minis as some sort of VDI solution. That's consistent with the (shitty) practices of Microsoft with respect to Windows, which confines Windows 10 hosting to Azure services. Given the nature of Mac, an AWS MacOS service is unique in that it's very clear who the manufacturer of the underlying hardware is. Apple, given it's control-…

Microsoft simply doesn't do what you are saying.

Windows 10 hosting is not confined to azure services, you can even bring your own license to AWS, or host your own terminal services, or run your own virtual apps, or literally anything.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#365

Post by tpetry » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #126

brundolf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only one usecase for now. They said M1 is coming soon, which could tip the cost equation (think about what the energy savings mean at AWS scale). Even more interestingly, I wonder if this could be an exploratory step for an Apple that's thinking about designing dedicated cloud chips.

You can get more than 10 times as many ARM cores on a server chip compared to a M1 Mac. There is no way it is more energy efficient or cost effective to run 10+ Macs versus one server. Amazon designs their own chips, too.

But until now nobody was able to build an ARM cpu as fast as apples cou. Every server arm cpu in the past was still a lot slower than intel cpus, despite packing a lot of cores on a chip.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#366

Post by breatheoften » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

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…

I wonder the degree to which this is about apple trying to reduce their services crypto workload? When developers say they "want a mac instance" they often "want a mac instance that can talk to apple services like a normal mac instance" in order to sign apps and such. I'm not sure but I think arranging for that capability probably involves round trips with apple services to get required key signing artifacts into place ...

If instances are totally ephemeral in the same way as we are used to with linux vm's maybe that runs the risk of creating a real problem for apple services?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#367

Post by ftio » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #340

ftio wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's money to be made by not "ditching the entire Apple ecosystem." If you were able to run a business that was fun, that made you money, and that enabled you to help other people have fun and make money (i.e., your employees), would you not do that out of principle? I'm genuinely asking.

> Because there's money to be made by not "ditching the entire Apple ecosystem." That's very shortsighted. You can make money without Apple. And by doing so, you show that you value open, generic compute systems. Also, the prosperity of your business won't be at the whim of Apple.

You could also make money by selling paperclips or by creating satellite constellations. Which path you choose comes down to interest, expertise, and luck/chance.

All businesses have constraints. In this business, you're subject to the Apple EULA. In others, you're subject to government regulation or pricing pressure due to commoditization. That's not short-sighted — no industry is forever, and there's money to be made now. Why not deploy their expertise toward financial success (and, presumably, fun)? There's demand for these services — someone's going to fill it.

For folks who don't value 'open, generic compute systems' over 'putting food on the table', the closed nature of Apple's ecosystem is just the reality they need to deal with. They're not making a moral tradeoff, just a practical one.

Are you suggesting MacStadium and co should shut down their businesses out of principle? Will you employ them once they do? Where will their customers go?

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#368

Post by imtringued » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

caspper69 wrote: post #264

pjmlp wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of said apps are actually nothing more than CRUD Web forms, or crap games easily done with WebGL + WebAssembly, so no it isn't the only way.

I think you are missing the point intentionally. You can't run those apps on an Apple iPhone, but I suspect you knew this. It's ok to take the literal definition of the word monopoly and take it to its logical conclusion, I suppose. The U.S. government will not do that, however.

If you don't like it then leave. That's how Apple operates. I still can't comprehend why people insist on licking Apple's shoe soles but then complain that it tastes awful.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#369

Post by Spivak » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #298

fxtentacle wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but that's copyright for ya. Apple gets to dictate the ToU for macOS. You can say that it shouldn't be Apple's place, and I agree, but macOS isn't free software.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#370

Post by Spivak » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #359

saagarjha wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious side effect of selling more Macs is that it hurts AWS and MacStadium's competitors. Developers don't want to buy more Macs from Apple that they don't need. Apple knows this and has known this for decades and so their actions are essentially the same as telling developers to suck it up and buy new Macs.

If your complaint boils down to not liking what Apple is doing then why are you still using their platform? If you are using it privately then it's on you. If you are using it professionally and your company is paying for it then it's your job and responsibility to put up with it but it also means you're not on the hook for the extra expense of renting a Mac.

Yeah, I think that pretty much nails it. If putting up with all Apple's BS and extra costs puts you in the red on their platform professionally then the business decision seems obvious.