The Hyperscaler Amazon Web Services (AWS) now also offers Elastic Compute Cloud Instances (EC2) with macOS. The Amazon data centers are using Mac mini, which can be used to develop, test and sign applications for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and watchOS. The hardware is provided exclusively for one customer during use, so it does not have to be shared with several users as is the case with other cloud solutions.
Amazon currently uses fourth generation Mac minis with a Intel Core i7-8700 processor, 32 GB of RAM and a 10 Gigabit network connection. In retail cost one such Mac mini currently costs 2,250 euros.
Mac minis with M1-SoC from 2021
Next year, Amazon will also be introducing Mac minis with its proprietary M1-SoC in their Cloud offer. Whether these are the already introduced models with "only" 16 GB memory and without 10 Gigabit Ethernet or whether Amazon is waiting for new Mac minis with higher performance is not known yet.
Either macOS 10.14 Mojave or 10.15 Catalina is used as the operating system. The connection is made via SSH and command line or via remote desktop use via VNC. Soon, macOS 11.0 Big Sur should also be offered. In addition, the AWS storage services can be integrated in order to already use the Amazon Cloud existing Data to be able to use.
26 dollars per day
The minimum usage period of 24 hours costs US$26. After that, Amazon will charge a fee of one US dollar per hour on a per-second basis. Mac minis are currently available from AWS in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland) and Asia (Singapore) data centers.
