AWS launches MacOS instances for Amazon EC2

Amazon Web Services has unveiled new Mac instances for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to allow customers to run on-demand MacOS workloads in the AWS Cloud.

The instances (EC2 Mac instances) are built on Mac mini computers to allow developers creating apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Safari provision and access macOS environments within seconds, dynamically scale capacity as needed, and benefit from AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing.

AWS said customers can seamlessly provision and access MacOS compute environments to enjoy 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.

Customers can also consolidate development of cross-platform Apple, Windows and Android apps onto AWS, leading to increased developer productivity and accelerated time to market.

EC2 Mac instances can also be used 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, and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for OS image orchestration.

“Our customers tell us they would love to have their Apple build environment integrated with AWS services,” AWS EC2 vice president David Brown said.

“With EC2 Mac instances, developers can now provision and access on-demand macOS compute environments in AWS for the first time ever, so they can focus on creating groundbreaking apps for Apple’s industry-leading platforms, rather than procuring and managing the underlying infrastructure.”

Apple vice president for worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers said, “Apple’s thriving community of more than 28 million developers continues to create groundbreaking app experiences that delight customers around the world.”

“With the launch of EC2 Mac instances, we’re thrilled to make development for Apple’s platforms accessible in new ways, and combine the performance and reliability of our world-class hardware with the scalability of AWS.”