AWS has recently launched two new Mac instances (M4 and M4 Pro) built on Apple’s latest M4 silicon. The new EC2 instances provide faster CPU performance, enhanced graphics, and increased memory for building iOS and macOS applications.
Mac instances are typically used to build, test, package, and sign applications developed with Xcode for the Apple platform, including macOS and iOS. The first EC2 Mac Instances were announced in 2020, with the second generation added two years ago. Sébastien Stormacq, principal developer advocate at AWS, writes:
Development teams building applications for Apple platforms need powerful computing resources to handle complex build processes and run multiple iOS simulators simultaneously. As development projects grow larger and more sophisticated, teams require increased performance and memory capacity to maintain rapid development cycles.
The M4 Mac instances (mac-m4.metal) are built on Apple M4 Mac mini computers, providing Apple silicon M4 chips with a 10-core CPU (four performance and six efficiency cores), 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 24 GB of unified memory. Apple silicon M4 Pro chips power the EC2 M4 Pro Mac instances (mac-m4pro.metal) with a 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 48 GB of unified memory. Both instance classes provide 2 TB of local storage. On Hacker News, user asimovDev comments:
I wonder, if rack mount Mac Pros weren’t so stupidly expensive, would AWS go with those instead? I can’t imagine it was all too pleasant to have to develop these rack mounting solutions for these minis (unless they used a preexisting one).
While these instances deliver up to 20% better build performance over the earlier M2 series, allowing for running more tests in parallel using multiple Xcode simulators, the new M4 and M4 Pro come with higher costs. They may not be the most budget-friendly option for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines on AWS, as older generations offer a lower cost per host. Corey Quinn comments on Bluesky:
AWS now rents you a Mac Mini for $7000/year. But don’t worry – they slapped “Pro” on it and added some Nitro magic. Still cheaper than buying a Mac Pro from Apple, I guess?
For installing the development tools and framework, Stormacq warns:
Select an EBS volume with minimum 200 Gb for development purposes. The 100 Gb default volume size is not sufficient to install Xcode (…) Alternatively, you can choose to install your development tools and framework on the low-latency local 2 Tb SSD drive available in the Mac mini. Pay attention that the content of that volume is bound to the instance lifecycle, not the dedicated host.
As with previous releases, EC2 Mac instances are available for purchase as dedicated hosts, either on-demand or with savings plans. While billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second, there is always a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS SLA.
M4 and M4 Pro Mac instances are currently available only in the US (Northern Virginia and Ohio) and support macOS Sequoia version 15.6 and newer AMIs.
