AWS starts renting cloudy M1 Mac minis

Amazon Web Services has pressed Apple's M1 processor into service in a new elastic compute cloud instance type: the Mac2. For $0.65 an hour the Mac2 provides a dedicated Mac mini with four performance cores, four efficiency cores, a dozen vCPUs, and 16GB of RAM. Bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store tops out at 8Gbit/sec and …

[Charlie Clark]

Good idea

The machines can be used as build and test systems for MacOS specific software. Used correctly and you're not going to get near 6 weeks continual use.

but electricity consumption looks to the most likely reason

Why? I thought most of the big data centres were already mainly running from their own renewable power and storage as, given their size, this is signfiicantly cheaper than buying the power in and reduces the need to hedge. Though, in any case the power draw would have to be significant to affect the price. More likely is that Apple has offered a rebate for bulk buying, perhaps to shift inventory ahead of M2 machines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good idea

I agree that Apple cut a deal to get rid of old kit.

But the other, definitely more Bezos-esque reason is that Apple isn't challenging Amazon in the cloud. Google and Microsoft are which ruled out Chrome OS and Windows kit.

[Mark 65]

Re: Good idea

but electricity consumption looks to the most likely reason

Why? I thought most of the big data centres were already mainly running from their own renewable power and storage as, given their size, this is signfiicantly cheaper than buying the power in and reduces the need to hedge.

Their savings are not your savings but their increased profits.