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I disagree. I'm pretty sure that MacStadium didn't limit their rental to one customer per hardware box out of spite for their customers, but because that's wha

I disagree. I'm pretty sure that MacStadium didn't limit their rental to one customer per hardware box out of spite for their customers, but because that's what Apple expected of them. So their were being held to a higher standard than some of their competitors, who had much higher profit margins by putting multiple customers on one machine. So I think he is justifiably happy that Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone. The fact that Apple's official rules are close to what they were doing adds additional credibility to this interpretatio, because it suggest that they were following Apple's guidance before it became legally easy to enforce I wouldn't put any blame for how these rules look like on MacStadium, because if Epic cannot negotiate with Apple on eye level, I'm confident that MacStadium never will. It's probably more like they received their future laws as dictated by their fruit-shaped God.

saagarjha 6y ago
I have no problem with MacStadium's business model; in fact, I have seriously considered renting Macs from them in the past specifically because of their service of providing a dedicated machine for an extended period of time. In that case we were looking at running extended builds and the cost of downloading Xcode, then our source tree, then running a build for hours on a per-hour service was fairly competitive with what was being offered by MacStadium. That we didn't choose it was mostly chance and external factors. What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium, at least in the near future, and remove services like AWS from consideration completely. Brian's claims that they were simply offering their services in a way that "felt right with what Apple would have wanted" is marketing drivel. I don't care if I am getting a single core out of four, I'm not trying to browse Safari on this machine. Just run my builds and give me what I pay for; that's how CI works for literally everything else.
- nl 6y ago
  > What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium Why can't any business rent out physical Macs on a 1:1 basis on the same terms as MacStadium? It looks like they can, and if so then it's nothing favorable to MacStadium specifically: it's just not favorable to fractional renting like AWS.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    You cut that quote off a bit early.
    - nl 6y ago
      "What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium, at least in the near future" I don't see what the bit I left off ("at least in the near future") changes. There's nothing structural that favors MacStadium over other businesses with the same model.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Other than MacStadium already having that business model and their competitors that are hurt not having that model. They'd need to put in effort to transition at the very least.
        nl 6y ago
        That's nothing like a monopoly in anyway though. It's just a business that had the correct business model.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        …that Apple randomly selected, so now they’re the only thing that handled this right now. It’s a monopoly in that they are the one that exists and other things cannot, legally, since they had a business model that they must now change.
        imtringued 6y ago
        What makes you think that Apple selected this business? Don't you think it's more likely that this business simply reduced it's risk exposure by asking Apple what it's plans for Macs in data centers are? Apple is making the rules, not some third party company that is following them.
- skohan 6y ago
  > Brian's claims that they were simply offering their services in a way that "felt right with what Apple would have wanted" is marketing drivel. It's not only marketing drivel, it's a downright strange statement. I mean with which other product would you consider the wishes of the anthropomorphized business which created the product in terms of how you use it? Normally the product is meant to serve the consumer, not the other way around.
yoz-y 6y ago
> So I think he is justifiably happy that Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone. Thing is he's only happy because those rules are good for them. The way he talks about renting partial CPUs being somehow 'wrong' and makes them look like a ripoff is misleading. Just because you can get a VPS or hourly billed CPU time does not mean you can not get a full machine as well. But cost matters a lot, especially to smaller developers.
skohan 6y ago
> Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone I think it could be argued that it shouldn't be Apple's place to set the rules of the competition. If MacStadium is correct, that the best experience is one-user-one-machine, then their business model should win out. It's not fair competition to rule out all other business models.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Sure, but that's copyright for ya. Apple gets to dictate the ToU for macOS. You can say that it shouldn't be Apple's place, and I agree, but macOS isn't free software.
  - skohan 6y ago
    I'm not arguing this isn't legal. I'm arguing against the previous commenter's assertion that this is justifiable.

saagarjha 6y ago

I have no problem with MacStadium's business model; in fact, I have seriously considered renting Macs from them in the past specifically because of their service of providing a dedicated machine for an extended period of time. In that case we were looking at running extended builds and the cost of downloading Xcode, then our source tree, then running a build for hours on a per-hour service was fairly competitive with what was being offered by MacStadium. That we didn't choose it was mostly chance and external factors. What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium, at least in the near future, and remove services like AWS from consideration completely. Brian's claims that they were simply offering their services in a way that "felt right with what Apple would have wanted" is marketing drivel. I don't care if I am getting a single core out of four, I'm not trying to browse Safari on this machine. Just run my builds and give me what I pay for; that's how CI works for literally everything else.

nl 6y ago
> What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium Why can't any business rent out physical Macs on a 1:1 basis on the same terms as MacStadium? It looks like they can, and if so then it's nothing favorable to MacStadium specifically: it's just not favorable to fractional renting like AWS.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  You cut that quote off a bit early.
  - nl 6y ago
    "What Apple did here is create a monopoly for MacStadium, at least in the near future" I don't see what the bit I left off ("at least in the near future") changes. There's nothing structural that favors MacStadium over other businesses with the same model.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Other than MacStadium already having that business model and their competitors that are hurt not having that model. They'd need to put in effort to transition at the very least.
      - nl 6y ago
        That's nothing like a monopoly in anyway though. It's just a business that had the correct business model.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        …that Apple randomly selected, so now they’re the only thing that handled this right now. It’s a monopoly in that they are the one that exists and other things cannot, legally, since they had a business model that they must now change.
        imtringued 6y ago
        What makes you think that Apple selected this business? Don't you think it's more likely that this business simply reduced it's risk exposure by asking Apple what it's plans for Macs in data centers are? Apple is making the rules, not some third party company that is following them.
skohan 6y ago
> Brian's claims that they were simply offering their services in a way that "felt right with what Apple would have wanted" is marketing drivel. It's not only marketing drivel, it's a downright strange statement. I mean with which other product would you consider the wishes of the anthropomorphized business which created the product in terms of how you use it? Normally the product is meant to serve the consumer, not the other way around.

yoz-y 6y ago

> So I think he is justifiably happy that Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone. Thing is he's only happy because those rules are good for them. The way he talks about renting partial CPUs being somehow 'wrong' and makes them look like a ripoff is misleading. Just because you can get a VPS or hourly billed CPU time does not mean you can not get a full machine as well. But cost matters a lot, especially to smaller developers.

skohan 6y ago

> Apple created a fair competition by clearly spelling out the legal rules for everyone I think it could be argued that it shouldn't be Apple's place to set the rules of the competition. If MacStadium is correct, that the best experience is one-user-one-machine, then their business model should win out. It's not fair competition to rule out all other business models.

Spivak 6y ago
Sure, but that's copyright for ya. Apple gets to dictate the ToU for macOS. You can say that it shouldn't be Apple's place, and I agree, but macOS isn't free software.
- skohan 6y ago
  I'm not arguing this isn't legal. I'm arguing against the previous commenter's assertion that this is justifiable.