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I'm no expert, but I'm stunned that it costs more than $10,000 a year to connect a single computer to a corporate network such that AWS Macs become cost competi

I'm no expert, but I'm stunned that it costs more than $10,000 a year to connect a single computer to a corporate network such that AWS Macs become cost competitive. I've never worked in a big enterprise organization but I just can't wrap my head around the inefficiency required to make that math work.

NineStarPoint 6y ago
I could see it being reasonable if a medium to large companies entire infrastructure was cloud based, and they only needed a handful of mac minis. Alternatively, a company who needed them only a handful of days a year for some reason I can’t immediately think of. Otherwise I agree. 24 hour minimum removes immediate scaling as an option, and for anyone who already has their own infrastructure the cost is prohibitively high. My hope would be that with time, at the very least the 24 hour minimum would eventually be removed, and ideally the price will come down too.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  a company who needed them only a handful of days a year for some reason I can’t immediately think of Perhaps it's good for render farms. Instead of building a giant render farm that sits idle between productions, you spin up a render farm only when you need one.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Aren't most renderers compatible with Linux or Windows, where you can get much larger instances?
minhazm 6y ago
It would be cheaper if you had your own data center already or an office space sufficiently large to store these Mac Mini's. But if you have neither and are operating out of say AWS, then it becomes more expensive to rent space to put these Mac Mini's into, especially if you don't need it all the time. In that way it can actually be "cheaper", because it's compared to the cost of building out the infrastructure required to support your own hardware.
woah 6y ago
I don’t understand how you are confused. If I need to check if my app works on m1, I can now spend $24 to do that instead of $650 or whatever it retails for.
- cjaybo 6y ago
  So these are for people who want to do quick compatibility testing? For that use case, how does it not make more sense to go with MacStadium? If you end up needing to test for two days instead of one, you're already in the pricing territory where you could have gotten a full month of usage from MacStadium.
  - 0x44 6y ago
    > how does it not make more sense to go with MacStadium? If you're already in AWS, your deployment infrastructure and tooling is already configured and tuned for AWS. Deploying a Mac EC2 instance is just adding another target. Whereas deploying to another provider is an unknown amount of work to integrate with their API (if they even have one). The wall-time cost of people's time and effort vastly outweighs the marginal savings you'd get by going with a low-cost provider.
    - Technically 6y ago
      Presumably if you're making a mac app (or ios app), you're not targeting EC2 at all. Even if you have a server component to your mac app, the deployment infrastructure is completely unrelated to the client pipeline—it's tough to see how you could integrate any AWS benefits into this pipeline. If you're just writing a server, there's no need to deploy to a mac, and indeed it would be extremely expensive. Where exactly would this shared infrastructure come into play? The single use case that makes sense to me is an infrequently-used CI server for a cross-platform app—something already offered at better rates from CI providers.
  - inopinatus 6y ago
    I will spend more time trying (with no great chance of succcess) to obtain authorisation to establish an additional commercial relationship, and corporate billing/card approval, and the time burned on this instantly exceeds any amount of money they could possibly save me.
mritun 6y ago
I work in a large company. The problem is not the first time setup. The problem is essentially what “uptime” you can provide. Once you setup an infrastructure many people come to depend on it. Lets say two teams lose half a day when that CI/CD mac mini goes down then paying for a cloud provider to manage many instances and “sharing them ondemand” makes a lot of monetary sense. Of course, paying a cloud provider may or may not make sense for hobbyists. Personally, I pay for cloud storage - thats super hard to get right.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  For what Amazon is asking, one could have both an extra hot _and_ an extra cold standby locally, so it still doesn't make economic sense for a large company.
  - inopinatus 6y ago
    In a very substantial number of enterprises; the cost of procuring, validating, installing, powering, cooling, fire-rating, commissioning, maintaining, writing up, handing over, revising, reporting, auditing, approving, and very occasionally actually executing those hot<>cold standby procedures, exceeds the entire purchase cost of the cold standby unit.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      Hell, the company will spend more money on agonizing over the question of whether we should buy a $1500 Mac in the first place. Besides, if your cloud spend is already a fuckton, $24 per day extra is not going to make you blink.
      - _alex_ 6y ago
        for real. I used to work at a large company in highly regulated industry with lots of scrutiny on our books. The number of meetings and program proposals it would take just to get finance to agree to the capex of standing up a dozen mac minis would easily dwarf the hardware cost. That's before you get to the actual work. From my experience, saying "we're just going to increase our EC2 spend" is a no-brainer
quicklyfrozen 6y ago
It's a lot easier to click a button on the AWS console then to get approval to buy new capital equipment, or to get approval to use a new vendor (for which we'd likely need legal review, security audits, etc.).
AnHonestComment 6y ago
Here is a rough cost of standing up a Mac test fleet, corporate: 1. 200 Macs at $2-3k each; $500k total. 2. A data center, in the office, with $250k of retrofit. 3. A LAN network that can support 2Tbps cross talk; about $250k. 4. Data center control software; four engineers for a year @ 1M all-in. So you’re talking about $2M just to turn the lights on for a data center test suite, and about $10k/Mac installed. I’d guess $5k/yr is justified in just not having to write you own “EC2 for Mac” or deal with hybrid clouds.

NineStarPoint 6y ago

I could see it being reasonable if a medium to large companies entire infrastructure was cloud based, and they only needed a handful of mac minis. Alternatively, a company who needed them only a handful of days a year for some reason I can’t immediately think of. Otherwise I agree. 24 hour minimum removes immediate scaling as an option, and for anyone who already has their own infrastructure the cost is prohibitively high. My hope would be that with time, at the very least the 24 hour minimum would eventually be removed, and ideally the price will come down too.

reaperducer 6y ago
a company who needed them only a handful of days a year for some reason I can’t immediately think of Perhaps it's good for render farms. Instead of building a giant render farm that sits idle between productions, you spin up a render farm only when you need one.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Aren't most renderers compatible with Linux or Windows, where you can get much larger instances?

minhazm 6y ago

It would be cheaper if you had your own data center already or an office space sufficiently large to store these Mac Mini's. But if you have neither and are operating out of say AWS, then it becomes more expensive to rent space to put these Mac Mini's into, especially if you don't need it all the time. In that way it can actually be "cheaper", because it's compared to the cost of building out the infrastructure required to support your own hardware.

woah 6y ago

I don’t understand how you are confused. If I need to check if my app works on m1, I can now spend $24 to do that instead of $650 or whatever it retails for.

cjaybo 6y ago
So these are for people who want to do quick compatibility testing? For that use case, how does it not make more sense to go with MacStadium? If you end up needing to test for two days instead of one, you're already in the pricing territory where you could have gotten a full month of usage from MacStadium.
- 0x44 6y ago
  > how does it not make more sense to go with MacStadium? If you're already in AWS, your deployment infrastructure and tooling is already configured and tuned for AWS. Deploying a Mac EC2 instance is just adding another target. Whereas deploying to another provider is an unknown amount of work to integrate with their API (if they even have one). The wall-time cost of people's time and effort vastly outweighs the marginal savings you'd get by going with a low-cost provider.
  - Technically 6y ago
    Presumably if you're making a mac app (or ios app), you're not targeting EC2 at all. Even if you have a server component to your mac app, the deployment infrastructure is completely unrelated to the client pipeline—it's tough to see how you could integrate any AWS benefits into this pipeline. If you're just writing a server, there's no need to deploy to a mac, and indeed it would be extremely expensive. Where exactly would this shared infrastructure come into play? The single use case that makes sense to me is an infrequently-used CI server for a cross-platform app—something already offered at better rates from CI providers.
- inopinatus 6y ago
  I will spend more time trying (with no great chance of succcess) to obtain authorisation to establish an additional commercial relationship, and corporate billing/card approval, and the time burned on this instantly exceeds any amount of money they could possibly save me.

mritun 6y ago

I work in a large company. The problem is not the first time setup. The problem is essentially what “uptime” you can provide. Once you setup an infrastructure many people come to depend on it. Lets say two teams lose half a day when that CI/CD mac mini goes down then paying for a cloud provider to manage many instances and “sharing them ondemand” makes a lot of monetary sense. Of course, paying a cloud provider may or may not make sense for hobbyists. Personally, I pay for cloud storage - thats super hard to get right.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
For what Amazon is asking, one could have both an extra hot _and_ an extra cold standby locally, so it still doesn't make economic sense for a large company.
- inopinatus 6y ago
  In a very substantial number of enterprises; the cost of procuring, validating, installing, powering, cooling, fire-rating, commissioning, maintaining, writing up, handing over, revising, reporting, auditing, approving, and very occasionally actually executing those hot<>cold standby procedures, exceeds the entire purchase cost of the cold standby unit.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Hell, the company will spend more money on agonizing over the question of whether we should buy a $1500 Mac in the first place. Besides, if your cloud spend is already a fuckton, $24 per day extra is not going to make you blink.
    - _alex_ 6y ago
      for real. I used to work at a large company in highly regulated industry with lots of scrutiny on our books. The number of meetings and program proposals it would take just to get finance to agree to the capex of standing up a dozen mac minis would easily dwarf the hardware cost. That's before you get to the actual work. From my experience, saying "we're just going to increase our EC2 spend" is a no-brainer

quicklyfrozen 6y ago

It's a lot easier to click a button on the AWS console then to get approval to buy new capital equipment, or to get approval to use a new vendor (for which we'd likely need legal review, security audits, etc.).

AnHonestComment 6y ago

Here is a rough cost of standing up a Mac test fleet, corporate: 1. 200 Macs at $2-3k each; $500k total. 2. A data center, in the office, with $250k of retrofit. 3. A LAN network that can support 2Tbps cross talk; about $250k. 4. Data center control software; four engineers for a year @ 1M all-in. So you’re talking about $2M just to turn the lights on for a data center test suite, and about $10k/Mac installed. I’d guess $5k/yr is justified in just not having to write you own “EC2 for Mac” or deal with hybrid clouds.