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AWS upgrades its Apple Mac stack for extra cloud power

September 20, 2023
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the general availability of its fleet of new Mac Minis, powered by the Cupertino giant’s high-performance M2 Pro chips.

With the addition of Apple’s latest models on its platform, AWS EC2 customers can now choose between Intel Core i7 x86 CPUs or two of Apple's own SoCs: M1 and M2 Pro.

AWS says it envisages these customers building, testing, packaging, and signing applications for Apple hardware including Macs, iPhones and iPads, and Apple Watches.

M2 Pro Macs now available via AWS EC2

AWS has ordered in a fleet of M2-powered Mac Mini models with performance in mind, each featuring a 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 32GB of memory, and a 16-core Apple Neural Engine.

They also support up to 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC network bandwidth and up to 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth thanks to high-speed Thunderbolt connections.

This configuration would cost at least $1,999 for customers directly from the Apple website, making the whole idea of renting a Mac especially attractive. 

It’s unclear why AWS opted to go for the M2 Pro chips rather than the Mac Mini’s cheaper M2 chips, but as far as we can tell, it’s only the Pro versions that are available.

AWS says that developers can use macOS Ventura on their rented Macs. We asked the cloud company whether it would add support for macOS Sonoma when Apple drops its next OS at the end of September, but did not receive an immediate response. M1-powered Mac Minis have previously been available with beta OS versions, so it’s likely that the same flexibility would transfer to the latest hardware.

M2 Pro Macs are available to rent from AWS now, but due to Apple’s licensing terms, customers will have to commit to 24-hour periods, starting at $37.44 a day (via The Register). They’ll also only be available in US West (Oregon) and US East (Ohio), but more locations are expected to be added soon.

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