Commenters call for Apple to address the underlying problem
3 Nov 3 12:48 PM · 4d ago · 4 comments · 1 source · development 3 of 3
HN users argue that Apple should either improve Xcode Cloud, increase Mac Mini production, loosen virtualization limits, or release dedicated server hardware to eliminate the need for improvised solutions.
“Apple needs to fix this by either making Xcode Cloud better, make more Mac minis (or just dedicated server hardware), or even loosening the two-VM limit.”
willmeyersAnner Namespace co-founderNamespace Cloud infrastructure providerApple Hardware and software vendor
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What people said 24 voices · best of 33 · verbatim
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A data center of proprietary laptops was not on my 2026 bingo card…
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> Many of our customers build and test iOS apps. You can't build iOS apps without a Mac.Not true.https://cross-compilers.sjer.redSorry for the clearly vibe-coded website. I use this to build a few iOS/macOS apps for personal use.It started a few years ago (pre-AI) when I pieced together a toolchain for cross-compiling C/C++/Fortran from a Linux…
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The way Apple handles hosting is extremely infuriating, yeah. At least it's laptops now, and not the "trash can" Mac Pro. Nothing rackmounts better than something that's round!
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> Under certain conditions, an external USB NIC stops working and acts as if it is not powered and shows no link. Trying another cable, another NIC, another switch port, no luck. But a quick visit to Network Preferences, deleting and recreating the “network service” in MacOS Settings brings it back to lifeI too have this really annoying issue…
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It's a shame the Xserve was discontinued. I'm still a bit surprised that Apple doesn't license macOS to run in VMs on cloud devices. The shortage and cost of cloud-based CI is a problem for the ecosystem, a version of macOS that ran on Graviton in a VM would address this. I presume their worry is that people would get macOS VMs and not buy Macs…
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Chock full of technical details, thank you to the authors! Got a few takeaways for using my own mbp remotely.But if you read between the lines it is fascinating what isn't said - about Apple's customer focus.These folks have no advocate at Apple; they worked all this out on their own. At this scale with hardware from Framework or Lenovo or Dell…
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I still don't understand why Apple is hostile to modern CI. Everything about their development environment feels chained to manually triggered unit tests and manual device testing. Anything remotely automated hits walls like what this page describes. I've mostly left that world, so I don't care anymore, but Apple was always the worst platform to…
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At work we develop MacVisor https://scaleninja.com/macvisor/MacVisor solves a lot of the headless virtualization use cases, brings advanced networking with VLAN, per network firewall (pf based), snapshots, backups and features probably more suitable for Namespace like deployments. It also has an in built MCP server, and a mvz CLI.It supports…
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The somewhat irritating thing is they have custom server hardware for the Private Cloud Compute, which presumably is designed for rack-mounting and running at scale in a DC, but that's not available for sale.
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Just a random anecdote:For years, "code review" in iOS meant "email your patch set to a particular email address, which would format your patch and send it to a mailing list". That list would be populated with people who could approve or disapprove it.The server that ran that conversion was a MacBook sitting in a pretty random "server" room that…
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>but unfortunately it cannot run macOS (it requires an Apple proprietary environment that third parties cannot, or shouldn’t, try to recreate). There's actually nothing preventing you from implementing everything needed to run macOS in the EULA, it just requires it to run on Apple hardware.
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I recently setup my home lab in a way that kind of replicates their end goals and it wasn't hard:1. Beefy M6 Mini as the server. UTM managed MacOS VMs with screen sharing enabled. 1 VM per project. Set the Mini and VMs to never go to sleep. 2. Secondary Macbook Air -- I screenshare into the VM for the project I want to work on and do work from…
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the worry is probably more about how that’d result in most code testing occurring on hardware that isn’t what apple would sell you (and apple wanting to sell you hardware, even if it’s annoying to deploy in a data center)
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I'm a little surprised that people would rather rent a Mac than buy one. Less so now that Apple raised the prices but for a long time a M4 Mac Mini was $599 which only works out to about 6 months at these prices.Especially since they're not like a regular server, loud and power hungry. They're the definition of quiet and power sipping. I have one…
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There are projects like `osxcross` that allow extracting SDKs from Xcode and then running it on Apple-branded computers. That makes my MBP from 2015 running Linux perfectly legal build machine.
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While the article is chock full of technical details, your comment is lacking. The idea seems interesting, but what's missing is details like cross-compilation performance characteristics compared to native, challenges faced, handling xcode upgrades, taking your project for a spin against popular projects on GitHub that use MacOS runners, etc…
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Can you elaborate more on this? Does that mean I can extract the SDK from macOS 10.9 and then build software for macOS 10.9 on Asahi Linux?
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Funny, I have been using an old 2014 MacbookPro has my homeserver since last year. To be fair, I've installed Linux on it, replaced the battery and set it to only charge to 60% battery. With full disk encryption requiring me to unlock it at every reboot, the built-in display and keyboard comes in handy, and the battery serves as a UPS just in…
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Dang, I hope they sell the older laptops for cheap (less than what they were at time of purchase obviously) on Ebay once they're phased out, wouldn't mind buying a "datacenter mac" if its still viable...I could see them flooding the used Macbook market and selling like hot cakes, but also giving them back "rack" space.
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At TestingBot we’ve recently deployed Mac Mini M6 instances for (automated) testing on macOS using Virtualization.Framework. Never considered Macbooks; what about the battery hazard in a rack? We also host iOS devices, after a couple of months of intense use, the batteries tend to swell up and bump up the screen of the device.
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Try now stacking ten iphones, or as many as you want. The world definitely will get more interesting in the very near futureYesterday I saw AI in a pendrive, which got me wondering if small set-top boxes isolated from the web, connected to TVs or your local WiFi will be the norm of tomorrow
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Apple still runs iCloud with Puppet managed unhardened desktop Linux distros last I heard with most devops engineers having plaintext God access to all of it from their individual engineer ssh keys.They are one of the last companies we should be trusting with hosting infrastructure.
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I run a mac mini server at home and it was quite a culture shock getting that thing to do anything like linux. The password retirement at boot is a hard gate and your server will just not do anything until you unlock it. GREAT feature for desktop and laptops, not so much for a server.
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What interests me is the miniaturization and thinness of the mainboard. Imagine if the mainboards were produced en masse and mated with a perfectly-fitting (liquid-cooled) heatspreader. That could be a very space-efficient blade server for very high density compute.
All 3 developments of Namespace deploys hundreds of MacBook Pros in datacenters… →
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