- AWS Secures Rare Mac Studios While Ordinary Apple Customers Remain Completely Excluded
- Apple’s hidden 256GB Mac Studio setup unexpectedly surfaced via Amazon’s cloud infrastructure
- AI developers exhausted Mac Studio inventory by running local language models on expensive Apple hardware
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acquired a significant number of Apple’s Mac Studio computers, a workstation-grade desktop computer that regular consumers currently cannot purchase due to ongoing RAM shortages.
According to Apple, potential buyers of this device will have to wait more than two months for the device to arrive, as AI enthusiasts have snapped up available inventory to run local language models like OpenClaw, further limiting the already tight supply.
Apple currently sells the Mac Studio with up to 96 GB of unified memory for regular customers – however AWS has announced that it now offers an M3 Ultra cloud configuration with 256 GB of unified memory, a specific configuration that does not appear as an option on Apple’s consumer website.
AWS leverages limited Mac Studio offering
The Mac Studio that AWS racked and stacked features Apple’s most powerful M3 Ultra system on a chip.
The Cloudy M3 Ultra runs on real Mac studios with a 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine.
AWS recommends its Cloud Macs as an ideal platform for developers to create and test applications for all Apple operating systems.
This includes support for visionOS, the software that powers Apple’s much-maligned Vision Pro virtual reality glasses.
Apple allows users to create and run macOS virtual devices, but only on Apple hardware and with only two virtual machines allowed per host device.
The company also limits the use of its virtual machines to four specific purposes, including software development, testing, and personal non-commercial use.
Cloud access comes with limited availability
Availability of these high-end Macs is limited to just two AWS regions, US East and US West in Oregon, leaving customers elsewhere without access to the cloud.
Users in other parts of the world who like a cloudy Mac but need lower latency will have to endure the even on-premises experience of waiting for hardware to appear.
After successfully purchasing a number of Apple’s most sought-after Studio Macs, AWS is turning around and offering them as cloud compute instances to developers who need Apple’s ecosystem for their work.
Whether this arrangement makes financial sense versus simply waiting for the two-month-plus shipping delay depends entirely on how urgently a developer needs access to Apple’s latest hardware.
For those who can’t wait, AWS has become the only game in town to get M3 Ultra computing power before the end of summer.
This temporary monopoly applies regardless of the price the cloud giant decides to charge.
AWS has not yet added the new M3-based Mac instances to its EC2 listings, so pricing remains unknown.
It’s also still unclear whether Amazon has changed its approach from only offering bare metal Macs to providing macOS virtual machines.
Via the register
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