Develop, build, test, and sign Apple apps on Amazon EC2
Turbo Boost is a feature available on high end intel processors. When a mac is running tasks that are high on processor demand it can boost frequencies to greater levels which results in better performance. However this can cause the CPU to thermally throttle because of accumulated heat, and quick battery drainage. Turbo Boost is a feature available on high end intel processors. When a mac is running tasks that are high on processor demand it can boost frequencies to greater levels which results in better performance. However this can cause the CPU to thermally throttle because of accumulated heat, and quick battery drainage.
Amazon EC2 Mac instances enable customers to run on-demand macOS workloads in the cloud for the first time, extending the flexibility, scalability, and cost benefits of AWS to all Apple developers. With EC2 Mac instances, developers creating apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Safari can provision and access macOS environments within minutes, dynamically scale capacity as needed, and benefit from AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing.
- Jun 10, 2020 The 2012 Mac Mini held a special place in many hearts thanks to how easy it was to upgrade. It remains Apple's last properly upgradeable Mac Mini, and even in 2020 can be a pretty handy little computer with the right bits inside.
- Dedicated Mac mini Packages and Pricing. With our dedicated Mac mini server packages you manage all of the software while the engineers at Mac Mini Vault maintain the networking and hardware. All of our dedicated Mac mini servers are connected to the network at 1 Gbps. There are no long term commitments, and you can cancel any time.
Powered by AWS Nitro System, EC2 Mac instances are built on Apple Mac mini computers featuring Intel Core i7 processors, and offer customers a choice of macOS Mojave (10.14), macOS Catalina (10.15), and macOS Big Sur (11.2.1). Access the Amazon EC2 Mac User Guide here.
Benefits
Quickly provision macOS environments
Mini Racing Game
Time and resources previously spent building and maintaining on-premises macOS environments can now be refocused on building creative and useful apps. Development teams can now seamlessly provision and access macOS compute environments to enjoy convenient, distributed testing and fast app builds, bringing additional choice to developers so they can use Mac as their trusted platform, on-premises or in the cloud. EC2 Mac instances offload the heavy lifting that comes with managing infrastructure to AWS, which means Apple developers can focus entirely on building great apps.
Reduce costs
EC2 Mac instances allow developers to launch macOS environments within minutes, adjust provisioned capacity as needed, and only pay for actual usage with AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing. Developers save money since they only need to pay for the systems that are in use. For example, more capacity can be used when building an app, and less capacity when testing.
Extend your toolkits
EC2 Mac instances provide developers with seamless access to dozens of AWS services so they can more easily and efficiently collaborate with team members, and develop, build, test, analyze, and improve their apps. Similar to other EC2 instances, customers can easily use EC2 Mac instances together with AWS services and features like Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network security, Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for expandable storage, Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) for distributing build queues, Amazon FSx for scalable file storage, and AWS Systems Manager (SSM) for configuring, managing, and patching macOS environments.
Features
Built on Apple Mac hardware
Amazon EC2 Mac instances are built on Apple Mac mini computers, featuring 8th Generation 3.2GHz (4.6GHz turbo) Intel Core i7 processors with 6 physical/12 logical cores, and 32GiB of Memory.
Enabled by the AWS Nitro System
The AWS Nitro System is a rich collection of building blocks that offloads many of the traditional software-defined functions to dedicated hardware and software to deliver high performance, high availability, and high security. Amazon EC2 Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as fully integrated and managed EC2 instances to provide 10 Gbps of VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of EBS storage bandwidth.
Scaled on highly reliable infrastructure
EC2 Mac instances are designed so that customers can build critical applications with confidence. AWS has the most secure, extensive, and reliable global infrastructure for running workloads that require high availability, and is recognized as an industry leader for uptime standards. EC2 Mac instances enable your macOS workloads to benefit from the scale, elasticity, reliability, and experience that AWS’s secure, on-demand infrastructure has offered to millions of customers for more than a decade.
Product Details
| Instance Size | vCPU | Memory (GiB) | Instance Storage | Network Bandwidth (Gbps) | EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) | EBS IOPS (16k block) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mac1.metal | 12 | 32 | EBS-Only | 10 | 8,000 | 80,000 |
Pricing
EC2 Mac instances are available for purchase as Dedicated Hosts through On Demand and Savings Plans pricing models. Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement. Through On Demand, you can launch an EC2 Mac host and be up and running within minutes. At the end of the 24-hour minimum allocation period, the host can be released at any time without further commitment. With Savings Plans, you can save up to 44% off On Demand pricing with a 3-year commitment. Both Compute and Instance Savings Plans are available. For more information on Dedicated Hosts, please see the Dedicated Hosts product page. In addition to the table below, you can also access EC2 Mac pricing on the AWS Pricing Calculator for Dedicated Hosts.
- North America (N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon)
3-year term Purchase Option On-Demand Instance Savings Plan Compute Savings Plan Terms Pay-as-you-go All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront Price per Hour $1.083 $0.611 $0.650 $0.702 $0.764 $0.780 $0.842 Savings over On-Demand N/A 44% 40% 35% 29% 28% 22% 1-year term Purchase Option On-Demand Instance Savings Plan Compute Savings Plan Terms Pay-as-you-go All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront Price per Hour $1.083 $0.849 $0.867 $0.910 $1.019 $1.040 $1.083 Savings over On-Demand N/A 22% 20% 16% 6% 4% 0% 3-year term Purchase Option On-Demand Instance Savings Plan Compute Savings Plan Terms Pay-as-you-go All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront Price per Hour $1.354 $0.764 $0.812 $0.764 $0.955 $0.975 $1.053 Savings over On-Demand N/A 44% 40% 35% 29% 28% 22% 1-year term Purchase Option On-Demand Instance Savings Plan Compute Savings Plan Terms Pay-as-you-go All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront Price per Hour $1.354 $1.062 $1.083 $1.137 $1.274 $1.300 $1.354 Savings over On-Demand N/A 22% 20% 16% 6% 4% 0% 3-year term Purchase Option On-Demand Instance Savings Plan Compute Savings Plan Terms Pay-as-you-go All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront Price per Hour $1.207 $0.681 $0.724 $0.782 $0.852 $0.869 $0.939 Savings over On-Demand N/A 44% 40% 35% 29% 28% 22% 1-year term Purchase Option On-Demand Instance Savings Plan Compute Savings Plan Terms Pay-as-you-go All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront All Upfront Partial upfront No Upfront Price per Hour $1.207 $0.947 $0.996 $1.104 $1.136 $1.159 $1.207 Savings over On-Demand N/A 22% 20% 16% 6% 4% 0%
Customers
'Intuit is a mission-driven, global financial platform company. Its products - including TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Mint - are designed to empower more than 50 million consumer, small business and self-employed customers around the world to improve their financial lives. EC2 Mac instances, with their familiar EC2 interfaces and APIs, have enabled us to seamlessly migrate our existing iOS and macOS build-and-test pipelines to AWS, altogether improving developer productivity. We’re experiencing up to 30 percent better performance over our data center infrastructure, thanks to elastic capacity expansion, and a high availability setup leveraging multiple zones. We’re now running around 80 percent of our production builds on EC2 Mac instances, and are excited to see what the future holds for AWS innovation in this space.'
Pratik Wadher, VP of Product Development, Intuit
Listen to Pratik Wadher, the VP of Product Development at Intuit, describe how and why Intuit is using Amazon EC2 Mac instances.
“FiLMiC, Inc. is the creator of the award-winning mobile cinema camera app, FiLMiC Pro. With a global team of filmmakers, photographers, creatives and software developers who share the same passion for mobile cinema and content creation, FiLMiC has designed what has become the industry's most sought-after app that transforms a simple mobile device into a cinematic film camera. Amazon EC2 Mac instances give us the ability to scale up our continuous integration build farm in order to quickly go through development, testing and TestFlight stages. This leads to better velocity and more time working on the fun stuff.”
Seth Faxon, iOS Development Manager, FiLMiC
“At Ring, we are committed to making home and neighborhood security accessible and effective for everyone while working hard to bring communities together. EC2 Mac instances will allow us to migrate our Apple build infrastructure to AWS, unlocking the scalability, reliability, security, and capabilities of AWS for all our Apple developers. These EC2 Mac instances will also let us quickly scale up our Mac build fleet whenever we need it, simplify cross-platform app development through consolidation on a single infrastructure provider, and ultimately accelerate innovations for thousands of our Apple customers.”
Joshua Roth, CTO
Mini Racing Adventures
Resources
Turbo Machines Mini Racing Mac Os Catalina
Amazon EC2 Mac Instances now support macOS Big Sur
Integrating EC2 macOS workers with EKS and Jenkins
November 30th, 2020
Use Amazon EC2 Mac Instances to Build & Test macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS Apps
Get started with AWS
Instantly get access to the AWS Free Tier.
Explore and learn with simple tutorials.
Begin building with step-by-step guides to help you launch your AWS project.
Posted On: Nov 30, 2020
Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Mac instances for macOS are generally available. Built on Apple Mac mini computers, EC2 Mac instances enable customers to run on-demand macOS workloads in the AWS cloud for the first time, extending the flexibility, scalability, and cost benefits of AWS to all Apple developers. With EC2 Mac instances, developers creating apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Safari can now provision and access macOS environments within minutes, dynamically scale capacity as needed, and benefit from AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing.
Today, millions of Apple developers rely on macOS and its innovative tools, frameworks, and APIs to develop, build, test, and sign apps for Apple’s industry-leading platforms that serve more than a billion customers globally. With EC2 Mac instances, developers are now able to leverage the flexibility, elasticity, and scale of AWS so they can increase their focus on core innovation such as developing creative and useful apps and spend less time on managing infrastructure. Customers can also consolidate development of Apple, Windows, and Android apps onto AWS, leading to increased developer productivity and accelerated time to market. Similar to other EC2 instances, customers can easily use EC2 Mac instances together with AWS services and features like Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network security, Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for fast and expandable storage, Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) for distributing build queues, Amazon FSx for scalable file storage, and AWS Systems Manager (SSM) for configuring, managing, and patching macOS environments. The availability of EC2 Mac instances also offloads the heavy lifting that comes with managing infrastructure to AWS, which means Apple developers can focus entirely on building great apps.
EC2 Mac instances are powered by a combination of Mac mini computers—featuring Intel’s 8th generation 3.2 GHz (4.6 GHz turbo) Core i7 processors, 6 physical/12 logical cores, and 32 GiB of memory - and the AWS Nitro System, providing up to 10 Gbps of VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of EBS storage bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt 3 connections. Amazon EC2 Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as a fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage just like any other Amazon EC2 instance. EC2 Mac instances are available in bare metal instance size (mac1.metal), and support macOS Mojave 10.14 and macOS Catalina 10.15, with support for macOS Big Sur 11.0 coming soon. Customers can connect to Mac instances via both SSH for Command Line Interface and active remote screen sharing using a VNC client for a graphical interface.
EC2 Mac instances are available today in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), and Asia-Pacific (Singapore) AWS Regions as EC2 Dedicated Hosts with a minimum host allocation duration of 24 hours. EC2 Mac instances are available for purchase On-Demand or as part of Savings Plan (1 year and 3 year). Learn more about AWS Mac instances here or start a machine today in the AWS Console.