[JCM9]

This is really not looking at the math in the right way for those that are the target market. If you just want an M1 instance just because sure just go buy one and keep in plugged in all the time in your basement. That’s not the target market.

Imagine you’re developing an app in regulated market and need to have Macs for CI/CD There’s a lot more to this than just keeping some Mac mini’s under your desk. How are you managing physical security in your environment? Do you have all the associated certifications in place? Can we see your last audit? Who’s fixing this when something breaks? What about your in house IT folks that done want to build out a whole new operation to manage Macs now? What if next week you need 5x as many instances but only for 2 days? That’s what your paying for in the price here, not just the cost of the instance itself and power.

When faced with all those requirements and challenges the pricing looks inexpensive.

[nojito]

Apple already offers this for Devs.

https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

[chris37879]

As of like 2 months ago, sure. And even then it's still in beta now. We've been using Macs this way since long before Apple decided to grace us with their nonsense implementation.

[mattferderer]

So does MS with Azure Devops & GitHub: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/ecos... https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/pipelines-xcode/blob/master...

It's great that there are finally multiple ways to do this without needing to buy a bunch of Macs just for compiling.

[xvilka]

Still not on GitHub Actions though: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/issues/2187

[cavisne]

This feature doesnt seem to be compliant with MacOS's 24 hour per customer limit, so I suspect it will disappear at some point (or change to be more like AWS's offering)

[oblio]

If you're already using AWS it's a no-brainer to avoid a second vendor if you don't have to use them for other reasons.