AWS Brings the Mac Mini To Its Cloud (techcrunch.com) 38
AWS today opened its re:Invent conference with a surprise announcement: the company is bringing the Mac mini to its cloud. These new EC2 Mac instances, as AWS calls them, are now available in preview. They won't come cheap, though. From a report: The target audience here -- and the only one AWS is targeting for now -- is developers who want cloud-based build and testing environments for their Mac and iOS apps. But it's worth noting that with remote access, you get a fully-featured Mac mini in the cloud, and I'm sure developers will find all kinds of other use cases for this as well. Given the recent launch of the M1 Mac minis, it's worth pointing out that the hardware AWS is using -- at least for the time being -- are i7 machines with six physical and 12 logical cores and 32 GB of memory. Using the Mac's built-in networking options, AWS connects them to its Nitro System for fast network and storage access. This means you'll also be able to attach AWS block storage to these instances, for example.
Inception! (Score:5, Funny)
You could buy a Mac Mini every month! (Score:3)
The price is ~$26/day or ~$780/month. That is simply ridiculous. You can get a Mac Mini from other providers for ~$50 a month!!
Re:You could buy a Mac Mini every month! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ridiculous if you need one for a month. It's fine if you only need it for a week, or an even shorter period. Maybe all you really need to do is run an automated test harness once a month for a few hours, then it's a no-brainer.
Re: (Score:2)
The announcement says that there is "a minimum host allocation duration of 24 hours." So using (and paying) for this instance for just a few hours isn't an option at this time. Knowing AWS, they will evolve this in future iterations.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The minimum billing is 1 day; you will be paying essentially $26 per build.
This is down to Apple's fucking ridiculous licensing restrictions. I guess it's progress though, since prior to today it wasn't even technically allowed to sell virtualized OS X.
Re: (Score:3)
...I guess it's progress though, since prior to today it wasn't even technically allowed to sell virtualized OS X.
These are not virtualized. One of the reasons for the high cost is because these are only offered as Dedicated Host instances.
Would've been nice if TFS linked to Amazon's own AWS Blog post [amazon.com] about this rollout, which contains more details.
How does Apple licensing play a part? (Score:2)
This is down to Apple's fucking ridiculous licensing restrictions.
If that's the case, how are you able to lease a Mac mini from MacMiniColo for just $59/month? [macstadium.com]
(around two days cost of an Amazon mini)
Also you can virtualize OS X [stackexchange.com] - on Apple hardware. To a limited extent to be sure, but it's not like it is disallowed.
Yes things would be even better if you could virtualize OS X, but even apart from that the Amazon price seems incredibly high.
Re: (Score:1)
If that's the case, how are you able to lease a Mac mini from MacMiniColo for just $59/month? [macstadium.com]
Well firstly the machines you're comparing are wrong, the equivalent from MacMiniColo is $139 per month and all this really offers is leasing a Mac Mini sitting in their datacenter that you can access and it's for a minimum of one month. Not quite the same thing as the AWS offering.
The EULA for Big Sur also contains arbitrary clauses related to leasing such as:
Apple software and hardware must be leased “in its entirety to and individual or organization”
A lease period must be “for a mini
Re: (Score:3)
The price is ~$26/day or ~$780/month. That is simply ridiculous. You can get a Mac Mini from other providers for ~$50 a month!!
I'll address your question in two parts. About buying a MacMini every month instead of renting:
Amazon's use case is you notarizing/validating code for iOS/tvOS/watchOS/iPadOS/MacOS.
The key word being "notarizing".
Say your EMPLOYER (Company or foundation) is developing a cross platform App. Think Windows+Linux+MacOS. Or iOS+iPadOS+Android (for example think VLC). Or perhaps Android+AmazonAOSP+HuaweiAOSP+tvOS+SamsungBada+LGwebOS+RokuTV. Developing this app will take months, perhaps years.
More often than not,
Re: (Score:2)
Renting them is easier and cheaper.
Citation needed. Because this is flat out false.
If you can find a better bang for buck company to rent apple iron from: Go right ahead! That's a smart move! If enough people/companies do it, perhaps Amazon will lower prices.
This is the only real thing you said that matters.
Re: (Score:2)
Renting them is easier and cheaper.
Citation needed. Because this is flat out false.
I'll not do your business case for you; for that you'll have to pay me. But I'll give you some pointers in the right direction. Remember, we are talking about a MacMini that you use sporadically, as opposed to one that gets full usage, in the setings of a company (I was very clear about that in my original post, going so far as to write "EMPLOYER (Company or Foundation)"), not a lone programmer in a garage...
* Cheaper:
1.) Buying a (bunch of) Mac Mini(s) is a capital expenditure, while renting it/them is an
Re: (Score:2)
you will always have the latest iron.
This is a mistake that testers often make.
You do NOT want the latest iron.
What you want is the oldest, minimum memory, slowest network, piece of crap that any of your customers may be using.
If your app runs on the crappy system, it will have no problem with new hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
They can. The one and original MacMiniColo which literally started as a rack in a colo is still cheaper even if you don't provide your own hardware.
And honestly, if you have money to waste on stuff like MacMiniColo or AWS Mac instances, , you can afford your own Mac Mini full time just in wasted developer time using a virtual Mac instead of a real one. MacMiniColo serves a purpose- there are people who want to serve up Internet services and they know Mac the best so they develop on their own Macs and deploy
Re: (Score:2)
They can. The one and original MacMiniColo which literally started as a rack in a colo is still cheaper even if you don't provide your own hardware.
And honestly, if you have money to waste on stuff like MacMiniColo or AWS Mac instances, , you can afford your own Mac Mini full time just in wasted developer time using a virtual Mac instead of a real one. MacMiniColo serves a purpose- there are people who want to serve up Internet services and they know Mac the best so they develop on their own Macs and deploy the application to their colo.
But development? Sure you do most of it on other platforms, but given the limitations Amazon has, it seems pointless - again, you'd be better off just buying a Mac Mini and keeping it around than wasting even a week trying to set up all the tools so you can release your app cross platform.
If you really must, make it a web app and naturally cross platform.
If you are a lone developer in a garage, sure, a Real Mac Mini may probably be more cost effective than a rented instance.
But if you are a Company (the bigger the more this is true), then a rented instance gets more and more attractive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know how I'd plug my test phone into the Mac Mini if its sitting in Amazon's rack... I only have a 2 foot cable :^)
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMw... [vmware.com]
And that's how you plug your phone to the Mini in amazon's Rack.
there are similar procedures for other providers of VDI.
Please Also notice that is highly likely that Amazon is running an Hypervisor on those Macs, and on top of that is MacOS. That is done in order to rapidly control the machine to get it ready for the next customer once your day is over, and to connect it to the Nytro storage (the only storage option for said machines).
Remember also that apple has no Qualms
Re: You could buy a Mac Mini every month! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We do our iOS and Android builds at Bitrise for free. What possible reason could I have for paying $26/day to AWS?
As I said:
Abut renting mac Iron from other providers:
If you can find a better bang for buck company to rent apple iron from:
Go right ahead! That's a smart move!
If enough people/companies do it, perhaps Amazon will lower prices.
Re: (Score:2)
If you just want a mac in a rack this offer is, indeed, ridiculous(both compared to competing colo-ed minis and in light of the fact that you are paying the full price of the hardware every 2.56 months, which is pretty aggressive); but if you already have a lot of stuff tied up in AW
Trying to wrap my head around this one. (Score:3)
The Mac Mini is a decent little system, but I thought the main selling point was it's small footprint, which means literally nothing when you're talking about a cloud instance. At least not to the end user/developer. Wonder how many people will jump on this?
I will fully admit the cloud obsession some people have doesn't make much sense to me at any rate. I totally get it for shared services, like world-wide chat, web sites, online collaborative projects. But developing for the Mac? Why would you not want to do that locally?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Think in terms of developing a large cross platform project, where you only need the Mac mini for a few hours to do testing and possibly a platform specific build before launch. Then the justification for maintaining a Mac mini locally (which needs to be upgraded periodically, and maintained, etc) becomes difficult when you could just rent it a day at a time.
You may only need it for a couple of hours, but you will need for just a couple of hours many times... realistically, there's going to be more than one version - and even more builds.
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose if they make it easy to contract 24 hour periods that would make sense. If it ends up being a pain to start and stop instances/charging for the instance, that could quickly turn into a nightmare.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought the main selling point was it's small footprint, which means literally nothing when you're talking about a cloud instance.
If you want a headless Mac, the only choices are the Mini or the Pro. A Mini with 6 cores and 32GiB is $1700. A minimum configuration Pro with 8 cores and 32GiB is $6500. As such, many people rack up Minis when they need a cheap cluster.
Why would you not want to do that locally?
In professional software development, builds and tests are usually automated. Many shops work on continuous integration, so every time a change is merged, a full build and test cycle is triggered. If you have many developers working on something, this can be very frequen
AWS is Ripping You Off (Score:1)
From TFA
"AWS will charge $1.083 per hour, billed by the second. Thatâ(TM)s just under $26 to spin up a machine and run it for 24 hours. Thatâ(TM)s quite a lot more than what some of the small Mac mini cloud providers are charging (weâ(TM)re generally talking about $60 or less per month for their entry-level offerings and around two to three times as much for a comparable i7 machine with 32GB of RAM)."
They don't have IPMI's? do they have local video (Score:3)
They don't have IPMI's? do they have local video / usb keyboard / mouse access? with an EXT IPMI?
Modded mac os installed?
Re: (Score:2)
Very Useful in Limited Scenarios (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Due to licensing issues you can't deploy iOS and macOS apps to iTunes Connect using anything other than macOS. So while you can theoretically build and deploy iOS and macOS apps from linux and Windows it's somewhat of a business risk.
We do our iOS and Android builds on Mac hardware at Bitrise (for free) and it integrates nicely into our CI/CD processes at GitLab. Sure, all of this could be run on our own hardware locally (and sometimes we do while testing out new things), but we don't have to worry about ou
Re: (Score:2)
I hadn't thought about that. Add that to the ever-growing list of reasons I'm glad I don't develop apps for iOS devices. My patience with licensing restrictions and proprietary locking mechanisms is becoming thinner than my hairline.
M1 servers? Linux Port to M1 Patreon launched (Score:2)
It'll be interesting to see if Apple launches its own server blade with itself as primary customer and the likes of Amazon and others as secondary.
That kind of low watt, low density, low heat, cpu power would be perfect for servers.
This guy has launched a Patreon [patreon.com] to sponsor his work in porting Linux to Apple Silicon. [macrumors.com]
Linus doesn't seem enthusiastic but I think it won't be long before we see Linux and Window both ported to Apple Silicon.
Think of the money they would have saved (Score:2)
Think of the money they would have saved if these Mac Minis didn't have the ultra-expensive machined Aluminum chassis installed.
Reminds me of when SGI put those super-expensive blue LEDs on their server hardware, and when Mac servers were also installed with expensive aluminum chassis and expensive LEDs for use in a closed machine room.