Amazon EC2 Mac Instances • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#81

Post by untog » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #76

wyldfire wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of "other people's computers" it seems to fit well. Nice to be able to build/CI test against macOS without having to provision and maintain apple hardware.

You can also run a MacOS VM in VirtualBox on Ubuntu. No Apple hardware needed. https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

It's against Apple's T&Cs, though. If you're doing it at home by yourself, who cares. But a company that's interested in automated testing etc. isn't going to see it as an answer.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#82

Post by Shakahs » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #32

Shakahs wrote: post #27

MacOS AMI images, EBS disks, VPC networking, 10gbps ENA. Bare metal only, Intel available now, M1 coming soon. This is another game changer. The post says they’re based on Mac Minis, but also use AWS Nitro. Is this custom AWS specific hardware?

Yes, AIUI AWS Nitro is a PCI (in this case thunderbolt?) disk abstraction system that fronts EBS for the host.

That sounds elegant for IO, but I wonder how device level security is handled, out of band management, and firmware updates.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#83

Post by easton » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

ianmobbs wrote: post #48

This could be huge for the ecosystem. For example, there are ways to use third-party iMessage clients (e.g. through Matrix) that require you to keep a server running on your local macOS machine signed in to your AppleID - this could let developers create hosted versions of those services

One Mac (serial number) per instance, so you probably couldn’t host iMessage or other access to Apple Services without getting burned after a couple days (and AWS wouldn’t want you doing it and getting a whole rack of Minis banned from iCloud or something).

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#84

Post by derefr » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #76

wyldfire wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of "other people's computers" it seems to fit well. Nice to be able to build/CI test against macOS without having to provision and maintain apple hardware.

You can also run a MacOS VM in VirtualBox on Ubuntu. No Apple hardware needed. https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

You “can”, in a technical sense, but not legally—Apple’s licensing for macOS only allows it to be run on Apple hardware. (You can run a macOS domU on another OS’s hypervisor, but that hypervisor has to be running on a Mac.) This matters when you’re a corporation.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#85

Post by cercatrova » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #76

wyldfire wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of "other people's computers" it seems to fit well. Nice to be able to build/CI test against macOS without having to provision and maintain apple hardware.

You can also run a MacOS VM in VirtualBox on Ubuntu. No Apple hardware needed. https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

You can't really test apps if there's no graphics acceleration. If you want graphics acceleration, you'll need to run a macOS VM with GPU passthrough using virtio or Proxmox. I did that for a bit until I just gave up and bought a Mac.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#86

Post by detaro » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #76

wyldfire wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of "other people's computers" it seems to fit well. Nice to be able to build/CI test against macOS without having to provision and maintain apple hardware.

You can also run a MacOS VM in VirtualBox on Ubuntu. No Apple hardware needed. https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

Your legal department is going to be stoked when you try that at work.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#87

Post by shp0ngle » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

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 installed software of leased hardware

* All of these changes are only offered for “Permitted Developer services,” which are now spelled out for users

* Developers may now “install, use, and run additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments”

* The “lessor” such as Macstadium is fully responsible for making sure that all of these new requirements are upheld

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#88

Post by floatingatoll » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

mhxion wrote: post #6

> As always, I asked the EC2 team for access to an instance in order to put it through its paces. The instances are available in Dedicated Host form, so I started by allocating a host. Dedicated Hosts ( https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/dedicated-hosts/ ) are more pricey than virtual instances (most EC2) and Dedicated Instances. Not sure if it's possible to containerize/sell as many virtual instances off a dedicated server…

Apple’s licensing terms for macOS permit only the licensing of one unit of Apple macOS running on one unit of Apple hardware to one customer for a minimum term of one day. There is no option to purchase a virtual-machine or other shared-instance license when macOS is involved.

(Nitpicky points: I believe the customer can do whatever they want with their licensed cloud Mac hardware, such as dual-boot different releases of macOS or virtualize to their heart’s content, as long as they are the exclusive user of the Apple hardware underlying any instances of macOS. “One customer per Mac per day, no more and no less” is probably a better summary in hindsight.)

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#89

Post by detaro » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

xyst wrote: post #69

AWS is playing the long game and betting that M1 based servers start to take off. It's very risky (and expensive) but it would pay off if they are correct. They would be first in the market and be years ahead of their competition.

I doubt this is a play at M1 servers. M1 servers on Apple hardware is not what AWS wants people to use when the alternative is other AWS servers. Only for running macOS there isn't an alternative.

Re: Amazon EC2 Mac Instances

#90

Post by cercatrova » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

chadash wrote: post #15

anonu wrote: post #7

What's a serious use case for this?

I have the same question. Why would I want this over a Linux instance (assuming the latter is cheaper)?

You can't build for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS on a Linux machine. Well, not legally / non-hackily anyway.