#Used mac minis how to#
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The cost is $1.083 per hour, billed by the second, which is around $26/day. The company says it will make new AMIs available each time Apple updates its OS. The AWS Macs hold 32GB memory and are connected to Amazon’s Nitro system. It thinks demand for Intel-based Macs will remain for as long as those Macs are in use.

#Used mac minis install#

Amazon says it will install M1 Mac minis in its data centers early next year. The new Macs are based on Intel i7 processors, rather than the powerful M1 Apple now puts inside the Mac mini. M1 Macs will be available on AWS next year Here's a somewhat amusing video Amazon made around the new service. You can access the Mac(s) using both SSH and VNC for remote desktop use.

#Used mac minis how to#

You can use these AMIs as-is, or you can install your own packages and create custom AMIs (the homebrew-aws repo contains the additional packages and documentation on how to do this).”Īmazon will make macOS Big Sur support available at some point. The AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) for EC2 Mac instances are EC2-optimized and include the AWS goodies that you would find on other AWS AMIs: An ENA driver, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), the CloudWatch Agent, CloudFormation Helper Scripts, support for AWS Systems Manager, and the ec2-user account. “Mac instances run macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina) and can be accessed via command line (SSH) or remote desktop (VNC).

#Used mac minis full#

What’s important is that the service means developers are gaining cloud-based access to a full Mac mini, which should help them to build and test their software. The Macs can be used to build render and CI/CD farms for Apple environments, and to consolidate development of cross-platform Apple, Windows, and Android apps onto AWS to help speed new software to market. “With the launch of EC2 Mac instances, we’re thrilled to make development for Apple’s platforms accessible in new ways, and combine the performance and reliability of our world-class hardware with the scalability of AWS.” Why is Amazon doing this? “Apple’s thriving community of more than 28 million developers continues to create groundbreaking app experiences that delight customers around the world,” said Bob Borchers, Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing, at Apple. “With EC2 Mac instances, developers can now provision and access on-demand macOS compute environments in AWS for the first time ever, so they can focus on creating groundbreaking apps for Apple’s industry-leading platforms, rather than procuring and managing the underlying infrastructure.” “Our customers tell us they would love to have their Apple build environment integrated with AWS services,” said David Brown, Vice President of EC2, at AWS. The service aims to “speed up the dev lifecycle’ for apps developers on Apple’s platforms. These Mac instances can be used to build, test, package, and sign Xcode applications for the Apple platform including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and Safari.

The times, they are a-changingĪmazon’s 'Mac mini as a service' is available now, reflecting Apple's continued growth in enterprise computing. It marks the first time AWS has offered to run macOS on demand in the cloud and can be scaled, accessed on a pay-as-you-go basis and lets developers access dozens of additional AWS services. AWS has become the latest enterprise player in the Mac space, offering up Mac minis in the cloud to developers seeking cloud-based infrastructure.