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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

Alternative theory: Apple doesn't offer an M1 server. Github doesn't offer an M1 build server because M1 servers don't exist.

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Apple also doesn’t offer an x86 “server” yet Azure DevOps offers Mac build servers.

Yes because Microsoft got a special license from Apple that allows for the virtualization of Mac OS on non Apple hardware...

The rest of us is still running on racks of Mac Minis

This isn’t true.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/cloud-hosted-mac-agent...

> Please be aware that during this preview, our Mac hardware is hosted in third party datacenters in the United States and your build and release data could cross geopolitical lines. After each build completes, its macOS VM is reimaged, leaving no trace of your data on the agent. For more information, see where VSTS data is stored. Our Mac datacenters will expand to other geographies soon

Better link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agen...

>Agents that run macOS images are provisioned on Mac pros with a 3 core CPU, 14 GB of RAM, and 14 GB of SSD disk space. These agents always run in the US irrespective of the location of your Azure DevOps organization.

It sounds like they're just using MacStadium.

Do you have a source for this claim? As far as I’m aware Azure racks mac minis and has no special license, but I’d be fascinated to be wrong.

AWS offers Mac M1 instances, using Mac Minis. It seems like Github could do it.

Mac Minis aren't servers though - they suck in terms of redundancy, density, form factor, "lights out" management. It's fascinating the effort made by some ( like AWS, Mac Stadium, Scaleway) to try to force Mac Minis and Pros to be server-ish.

And Apple's EULA makes them basically unusable as short term rented servers, there's a minimum of 24h which is ridiculous.

True, but if they're "server enough" for AWS, I think that says something. The 24 hour thing is a problem though.

You can't cross compile on an x86?

Some things can be cross-compiled, sure.

But a lot of projects have tests they want to run on their target platforms.

If you build your Linux release on Windows, you might accidentally release a .zip where your binaries aren't executable. If you set up cross-compiling to Mac 5 years ago and tested it then, perhaps in the meantime code signing has become mandatory. If you build and test on Linux and release to Windows, perhaps you'll get tripped up by filenames becoming case-insensitive.

Some projects are keen on testing on all target platforms to flush out issues like that.

M1 Mac Mini farms easily solve that question

The comments on the github issue claim Apple ToS says you need to rent the machine to customer for 24h at a time.

”(ii) each lease period must be for a minimum period of twenty-four (24) consecutive hours;

(iii) during the lease period, the End User Lessee must have sole and exclusive use and control of the Apple Software and the Apple-branded hardware ”

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSMonterey.pdf (Section 3.)

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