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Comment by miniman1337 | Hacker News Reader

Isnt it against the Apple EULA to sell VMs of Macos? Love the creative problem solving with the HW.

> A well-known limitation is that Apple only allows two macOS VMs per physical Mac. It can be a Mac Pro with 24 cores and 192 GB memory, yet it is limited to running only two guest VMs. This limitation leaks into our product offering: we can only slice Mac resources in two halves. So we run instances with 6 or 12 cores on 14-core Mac Minis and 8/16-core instances on 18-core MacBooks (we reserve a couple cores for management overhead).

I don't know about selling, but Apple permits up to 2 virtualized Macs to run on a Mac. If they are circumventing this limit that would be an issue, but it doesn't sound like they are.

Ah okay - and the 24 hour minimum rental time doesn't apply to VMs? Im just curious how they are getting around the limits that Mac Stadium and AWS have.

They aren't getting around any limitations. How you decide to bill for meeting the limitations is a business decision, and you can do it via either higher average rates and allow more granular rentals to be financially covered that way or by requiring a 24 hour minimum.

I.e. just because Apple requires you to do things in 24 hour increments does not mean your billing has to expose it in exactly the same way.

I dont think thats an correct interpretation of the EULA, they are just choosing to ignore it - https://wiki.licenseware.io/catalog/rules/apple-macos-lease-...

If a business reserves a Mac for 24 hours (and allows no other users for that window), it complies with the EULA, no?

That doesn't mean the business has to charge the user for 24 hours. You could charge for 6 hours and then just let the Mac sit idle and unused the remaining 18.

You're eatting the cost of that unused time, but if its a differentiator that leads to more business than it might still be worth it.

EDIT: To be clear, imagine a case where the user has 24 hour sole access to the Mac. They could use up 24 hours if they wanted. But usage is tracked per hour, and they're only billed after the fact based on how much time they actually were running something during that 24 hour window.

I don’t think they are doing this.

From the wording of the parent comment my understanding is that 24 hour period applies to the MacOS VM, not the hardware itself. Since they split each physical host into at least 2 different VMs the 24 hour period is for that VM. Even stronger case if they also lock the core affinity to the physical layout like Max editions having multiple Pro chips/dies within...

For Amazon EC2 the case is different since it doesn't allow VMs but only possible to get dedicated bare-metal hosts. Obviously Amazon could offer VMs but they would not because the current way allows them to charge 24 hours even if user uses the host only 1 hour. And obviously no body big enough challenging the status quo and impacting AWS' revenue hard enough.

The hack for the 24 hour thing is, of course, as a data center, to form an s-corp and hire employees to work 1 hour per week racking servers and give them a W-2 for a princely sum of just $16.90/week which works out to $878.80/year. Then as a perk of the job, those employees get to access the cluster as a perk of their employment. You can't charge an application fee since it's California, so then you sell interview prep courses for $1,000, and encourage graduates to apply.

Yes but if you read the EULA the two VM limit it does sound like you can't really sell access to VMs:

> except as otherwise provided in writing, signed, or issued by an authorized representative of Apple, to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software, or any prior macOS or OS X operating system software or subsequent release of the Apple Software, within virtual operating system environments on each Apple-branded computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.

In section 3 they also say that if you're renting access to a Mac you can only run one VM, which sounds kinda like that

> Except as expressly permitted in Section 3, the grant set forth in Section 2B(iii) above does not permit you to use the virtualized copies or instances of the Apple Software in connection with service bureau, time-sharing, terminal sharing, relay service or other similar types of services.

To be fair, it was against Microsoft's EULA to sell the OEM version of Windows to individuals who built a computer from parts.

Nobody cared.

GitHub Actions gets around the 24 hour rule by saying you agree to have them as a subcontractor, so you're paying them for their infrastructure and services, not for the minis themselves.

I thought you could also only sell exclusive use e.g only one vm (or two vms to same customer)

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