Thread by @QuinnyPig

And so I begin the Late Night AWS #requinnvent tweet thread: Corey Quinn's own version of AWS's own version of Cloud Next.

To make it more like the #reinvent I gave my kid $20, watered down my drink, and spent the last 3 hours standing in line outside my home office yelling.

(These will be aggregated among some other things at requinnvent.com.)

The #reinvent livestream is up, playing music reminiscent of that time I tried to give my dial-up modem a bath.

Whatever unholy system they built the #reinvent site out of, it's streaming from CloudFront. This is a "with their shields or on them" moment for @awscloud!

We're getting closer. The music is less "screechy thing that sounds great at a party but disconcerting at 8PM when I'm alone in my home office" and more "I'd listen to this while driving if I paired it with aromatherapy candles." #reinvent

We start with Dr. Matt Wood to kick us off. Last year at #reinvent he showed us his piano recital. What will he have in store for us this year?

"This year #reinvent is three weeks instead of one. We tried to make it six but the Cloud Services Groundhog threatened to unionize."

"One year we drove a tractor trailer onstage."

I'm frantically checking outside to see if they're about to ram my house with another one.

"I don't care if it's a photo from #reinvent past, you can't use it because it has the wrong logo." --someone in @awscloud's slide compliance group

Dr. Matt Wood don't care. Dr. Matt Wood don't give a shit. He sees a slide he wants and he uses it!

The logistics of doing a full remote conference are super fraught. His dinner guests always looked at Dr. Matt Wood like he was deranged for setting up his living room this way, but who's laughing now? #reInvent

Setting two simultaneous world records for "largest virtual toast" and "saddest world record."

Now a #reinvent musical guest introduced by the @awscloud VP of AI, "Zach Person" who is totally a real person.

This is an upgrade from the #reinvent House Band insofar as Zach Person held firm on the "keeps his own name while performing" contract term.

Out of spite Zach is performing in front of @Azure's Snowmobile equivalent.

Okay, credit where due. This music is great. #reinvent

And now they bring up Dave Brown to make the first announcement.

As is tradition, he begins by rehashing everything EC2 has done in the past year or three citing customers like @SmugMug. @DonMacAskill glows happily in his twitter feed. #reinvent

Dave Brown's been moonlighting as an Amazon delivery person.

"What if we could build a new EC2 instance that ran macOS?"

This is no longer #reinvent. It is now #WWDC. The video resolution improves measurably as a result.

EC2 Mac instances are available now. #reinvent

"These natively run macOS and are powered by Nitro and actual Mac Minis."

Holy crap that means you can mount EBS volumes on them, among other things. #reinvent

I adore @MacStadium but I was surprised to hear they had the muscle to drag Apple to the table. This explains much. blog.macstadium.com/blog/developer… #reinvent

Filmic's CTO is a reference customer for these. @FiLMiCPro apparently does a lot of iOS builds on Macs mini squirreled away in various closets in the office.

Single sign-on, nitro security chip, VPC support obviously.

Intel chips, Mojave and Catalina support. Big Sir coming soon. 12 vCPUs, 32GB of RAM, EBS storage only, 10Gbps, massive EBS performance. #reinvent

This is a dedicated host. I really, really hope that this entry in the @awscloud console is wrong, or there's a $1500 per month surcharge for this puppy just because. #reinvent

It's clear that @awscloud is great at improving things. They took a look at @Apple's pricing, said "sure it's expensive, but it's not complicated" and then got to work. #reinvent

This is pretty clearly envisioned as a CI/CD system, not "a macOS workspace in the cloud."

Just like every shitty software shop that insists on local development, @awscloud has apparently had a team focused on how to make a Mac look more like an EC2 instance. #reinvent

Dr. Matt Wood comes back to give a few parting tips on which #reinvent sessions to attend, as well as on home decor.

"Thank you and goodnight." Now let's tear into this EC2 Mac nonsense...

Okay, that's enough from a guy who figured the way to make EC2 Mac instances look cool was to preface the announcement with that time they drove a freaking truck on stage.

You've gotta keep them for at least 24 hours once the instance is provisioned as per Apple's licensing requirements. So this does get a bit spendy if you only need it a few times a day.

The dedicated host fee is straightforward. The dedicated instance fee of $2 per region per account is what I'm wondering about.

That's $1500 in "because we said so" fee if I'm right. These instances have to run in dedicated tenancy mode, so I think it hits you.

This is the thing I'm talking about. From aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/de…

As per @jeffbarr's blog post, you have to first allocate a dedicated host, then provision a dedicated instance onto them. I don't see how this doesn't get charged that fee unless "metal" instances are somehow being treated differently. #reinvent

Hmm. The plot thickens in a tool tip. This may bypass the $2 an hour charge after all.

It's clear @macstadium is the price to beat; a similarly specced Mac Mini there runs you $139 a month.

But AWS has already passed your infosec team's requirements and is a click away. MacStadium has the required checkboxes but is a new vendor. Hmm... #reInvent

Okay, I've checked with a few people, torn the offer files and pricing APIs apart, and have come to the reluctant conclusion that @awscloud is deliberately not telling us how much these EC2 Mac instances cost yet.

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These are $1.083 an hour in the primary US regions. #reinvent

So $790 a month if you leave it running all the time.

I reiterate that @MacStadium is $139.

Savings plan pricing not available yet, but if you assume theoretical max of 72% on a 3-year commit, that's $221 a month for @awscloud's version.

You could also buy ~4 similarly configured Macs Mini a year for that.

Yes, yes, you get a lot with @awscloud that you don't get in your sketchy office closet but that's still a heavy lift.

Remember too that you can't just run this thing when you need it for build runs. 24 hour minimum once the host is allocated, and it'll bill you $26 every time that happens. It'll add up quickly.

To enterprises this is "who cares, this solves a major pain" money, but it's pretty clearly not for indie devs from what I'm seeing. #reinvent

The real interesting question is "where's this going?"

With Arm instances (Graviton2) and Arm--sorry, "Apple Silicon" developer workstations, what does the future look like? JOIN US FOR #REINVENT 2022 AND FIND OUT!

https://twitter.com/tedivm/status/1333652218763907072?s=20

One thing to point out. The Apple license for this covers "Developer Services," not "running a Mac desktop in the cloud as per WorkSpaces." This is clearly intended for CI/CD/Buildfarm workflows today.

My iMac kernel panicking during this thread tells me it's time to wrap it up (and wonder how Mac Minis doing this in AWS will be handled). I'll be doing more #reQuinnvent shenanigans tomorrow morning. requinnvent.com for more!