Amazon Web Services (AWS) latest addition to its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud service (opens in a new tab) (EC2) will now allow users to rent and run an M1 Mac Mini in the cloud.
First implemented in 2006, EC2 allows users to run virtual machines in the AWS Cloud, and this new instance, dubbed Mac2, aims to help developers build apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Safari.
Mac2 will cost around €0,65 per hour and offer users a Mac mini computer connected via Thunderbolt interface to the AWS Nitro system, with an Apple Silicon M1 chip with 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores, 16 GB memory and Apple's Neural Engine 16. .
What will it bring me?
The virtual machine connects to your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), boots from Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, uses EBS snapshots, Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), security groups, and can work with other AWS services like Amazon. CloudWatch and AWS System Administrator.
This is not the first time that Amazon has offered virtual Macs through its EC2 service, it already offers x2-based Mac EC86 instances, however it claims that the new instances offer up to 60% better price performance than these.
Interested?
You can learn how to launch a Mac EC2 M1 instance from the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) by going here (opens in a new tab) to view Amazon's blog post on the theme.
If you have any additional questions that need clarification, head over to this FAQ (opens in a new tab) that the cloud hosting giant has put together.
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