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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

Is there some licensing issue with Apple that requires this minimum monthly usage?

It appears aws is charging $1/hr with a 24 hr minimum which is similar to every other provider out there that is offering MacOS instances.

I was excited to see that AWS was offering these as I assumed it would be priced just like everything else - hourly with no minimums.

I literally need access a few hrs a month for submitting binary updates to the app store. And I suspect there are a lot of other users with this same use case which may explain the consistent policy of minimum monthly usage.

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Big Sur's licensing states:

3. Leasing for Permitted Developer Services. A. Leasing. You may lease or sublease a validly licensed version of the Apple Software in its entirety to an individual or organization (each, a “Lessee”) provided that all of the following conditions are met: (i) the leased Apple Software must be used for the sole purpose of providing Permitted Developer Services and each Lessee must review and agree to be bound by the terms of this License; (ii) each lease period must be for a minimum period of twenty-four (24) consecutive hours;

It seems that if you could still buy macOS separately you could buy more copies than computers and lease these out for 24h while sharing the hardware with much higher granularity which would lower the cost significantly.

However it seems that no version of macOS since Lion (2011) is available to be purchased standalone anymore.

It is a shame that Apple forces such a wasteful and inconvenient process but it is more profitable for them and apparently they are legally allowed to do so.

I suppose you could purchase older, broken machines that come with a license.

Yes, this is directly from the macOS T&Cs: https://blog.macstadium.com/blog/developers-big-sur-and-vind...

It's also per-instance, so if you use one to run a build or automated test suite and tear it down afterwards, it costs you 24 hours each time. Some simple napkin math: if you average running two builds/test runs per day, not including weekends, you'll pay somewhere over $12k/yr. Crazy.

We test some cross-platform software with an installer, and there's automated tests for every Windows version since 7, dozens of various Linux distros/versions (including x86 and ARM), but we never got around to automating Mac largely because of the complexity with getting back to a "clean" environment (eg: what you get with a fresh EC2 image). Having relatively few users compared to all other platforms plus the cost being a couple of orders of magnitude higher, I doubt we'll take advantage of this. Too bad.

Couldn't you keep the instance the first time every day ? I don't know Macs that much but I assume that AWS could offer a way to wipe it without breaking the instance.

Disclosure: I work for AWS and am part of the team that built EC2 Mac instances

The 24 hours minimum is applicable to the allocation duration a Mac1 Dedicated Host, and not to the instances running on that host. Put differently - once allocated, a Mac1 Dedicated Host can only be released from your account after 24 hours. You can however can launch, stop, start, and terminate as many mac1.metal instances with fresh macOS AMIs on that host as you need while that host remains allocated to you.

Additionally, Savings Plan (https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/) on Mac1 instances can provide up to 44% savings over On-demand prices for longer term commitments.

Ok that sounds promising. I haven't really used dedicated instances so I'll have a closer look at this. Thanks!

> It appears aws is charging $1/hr with a 24 hr minimum which is similar to every other provider out there that is offering MacOS instances.

How much per month? Around $720?

You obviously expect to pay over the odds for cloud VMs, but that's really expensive. I would have thought someone as big as AWS would have been able to negotiate more favourable terms, but it seems not.

Given I'd expect a lot of these to be used as iOS build servers, it's worth noting that Azure DevOps gives you 1,800 build minutes on the free tier, which AFAIK you can use with their MacOS agents.

AWS might as well have negotiated good terms, but why give those to customers? People use AWS even if cheaper alternatives exist.

Mac Stadium charges $720/year.

You'd probably have less TCO if you just buy a mac mini and sell it when a new generation comes out. If you take good care of it you can sell it for 30% of the original purchase price.

For one device sure. If you need a small fleet then you have to pay someone to manage them and that gets more expensive for quite a while.

That seems... expensive.... Wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy a mini?

Just checked - yes it is after about 2 months.

Isn’t that true for all EC2 instances? That’s not why one buys EC2

This, although I think the 24 hour minimum set by apple kinda undermines the scalability asset.

Obviously the 24 hour minimum means you’d be better buying one for most CI uses, which I think is what most people want them for.

However I think I remember a image can that also manipulated used apple hardware for the metal api? They would still benefit from the ability to scale on at least a daily level.

From an AWS employee:

https://twitter.com/WindexCowboy/status/1333876188385841158

> The use of the Dedicated Hosts concept keeps the license requirement decoupled from the instance life cycle. While you do need to allocate the Mac for a minimum of 24 hours, you can launch and terminate a fresh mac1.metal instance on that box as many times as you like.

Yes...ish.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25562532 for a huge caveat: scrubbing the old instance takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours.

So there are time constraints that make this far from ideal.

Amazon's cloud offerings are generally quite expensive compared to owning yourself. That's why such a small part of Amazon's revenues can be such a large part of their earnings.

Also consider purchasing a refurbished mac mini.

I bought one on ebay for $350 2 years back, I've added 16 GB RAM and a samsung evo SSD. At a total cost ~$500, this old mac mini is a beast.

Yes, that has been my plan for a while. But due to low memory on older systems, you can't upgrade to the newest versions of MacOS.

I had just assumed they were not user upgradeable. So knowing now that they are, I'll have to take a look again.

Aren't you paying for the network access as well as not having to manage the hardware? Rack space, networking and usually cooling etc all add up.

Macstadium seems to be offering pricing of $59 per month, which is much more competitive versus buying the hardware outright.

CI services like Travis and Circle do Mac/iOS builds and give each job a minute or two at a time — I guess this is different because it’s a service rather than “leasing” the machine?

Well, Apple is a hardware company first and foremost, their business model is to sell you a Mac regardless of how little you use it. Letting a third-party rent a single hardware unit to hundreds or thousands of people per month and capture most of the profit while doing so is against their business model, so not surprisingly they try to prevent that from happening.

How do you test the updates without a Mac? Sorry I’m sure I’m missing something

Yes, Apple requires a 24-hour minimum.

Yes. It's licensing.

So when I buy a mac mini at Best Buy, am I somehow agreeing to that policy?

When you click accept in the initial setup that has a link to T&Cs that informs you can return it for a refund if you don't agree.

How legally enforceable clickwrap such as that is varies from country to country.

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