Xcode Cloud subscriptions now available for developers

AppleInsider

Developers can now sign up for Xcode Cloud subscriptions, Apple's collaborative app building service designed to help developers work together on shared projects.

Credit: Apple

In an email sent out to developers seen by AppleInsider, Apple says that anyone who configures a workflow in Xcode will get 25 hours of compute time per month at no extra cost until the end of 2023.

If developers need additional hours, they can purchase them via subscription in the Apple Developer app for iPhone and iPad.

Xcode Cloud allows development teams to collaborate more efficiently, especially while working remotely. It automatically builds apps for all Apple devices and platforms, freeing up a developer's Mac to accomplish other tasks.

It also allows developers to test apps on simulated current Apple hardware and makes it easy to deploy builds via TestFlight.

In June 2021, Apple began rolling out Xcode Cloud to developers for beta testing.

During WWDC 2022, Apple provided details about Xcode Cloud to developers, alongside new APIs such as WeatherKit.

Read on AppleInsider

blastdoor

How does the work completed in a “compute hour” compare to, say, an hour of M1?

daven

blastdoor said:

How does the work completed in a “compute hour” compare to, say, an hour of M1?

From the Apple Developer website,

A compute hour is an hour of time used to execute a specific task in the cloud, such as building an app or running automated tests. For example, running 5 tests of 12 minutes each equals one compute hour. Xcode Cloud runs tests in parallel with other actions, such as analyzing, archiving, and building, so you’ll get results quickly.

====

so it is hard to say. It will depend on what you are doing and only using it will show how it performs. 

edited August 2022

danox

Subscriptions what could go wrong, Apple is begging for antitrust enforcement…..

Personal finance classes are needed as part of the core curriculum in all schools as a requirement from the 7th grade all the way thru to the second year of junior college or four college.

The best class I ever took at junior college was a personal finance class first semester right after high school.

edited August 2022

tht

blastdoor said:

How does the work completed in a “compute hour” compare to, say, an hour of M1?

It would depend on the CPUs Xcode cloud is using, which could just be servers services from Amazon, Google or Microsoft. Could be Xeons, could racks of Mac mini's, could be Epyc. Maybe they are buying from MacStadium or set it up with their own hardware. Hopefully someone will spill the beans.

25 hrs goes buy really really fast. It's basically a number to try out the service.

paul_b

Twenty Five (25) hours of compute time!  Wow, lets code Dungeons and Dragons in black and white - that's not even coding one hour per day in a month - "Hey guys lets put our code on the cloud so it can be compromised - Great idea!" - Did I mention Open Source has been sharing code for 45 plus years.

dewme

danox said:

Subscriptions what could go wrong, Apple is begging for antitrust enforcement…..

Personal finance classes are needed as part of the core curriculum in all schools as a requirement from the 7th grade all the way thru to the second year of junior college or four college.

The best class I ever took at junior college was a personal finance class first semester right after high school.

I don’t see anything here that Amazon, Google, or Microsoft aren’t already doing around their SAAS and PAAS offerings, as Tht noted. I’m sure there are some incremental cost and administration savings versus using a straight pay-as-you-go system.

I do completely agree that personal finance, budgeting, financial accountability, or whatever we want to call it, should be instilled as a core curriculum from middle school on up. It’s interesting that the mayor of the small village I live in made the same statement you made in this month in his monthly newsletter. It’s a basic survival tool.

At higher levels and for more advanced students, courses that introduce the fundamentals of time-value-of-money should also be considered  mandatory. One of the most useful classes I ever took at the undergrad level was Engineering Economics, which is time-value-of-money applied to engineering and business decisions, e.g., build vs buy, amortization, payback, etc. Ironically it was an elective for most engineering students, which I find quite astounding. I suppose a lot of people pick it up on the job or through necessity, like getting a car loan or home mortgage, but why stumble blindly in the dark when you don’t have to?

In fact, individuals and organizations who have a firm grasp on engineering economics principles will probably have a much easier time figuring out whether Apple’s XCode Cloud subscriptions make sense for their business. 

fidonet127

Paul_B said:

Twenty Five (25) hours of compute time!  Wow, lets code Dungeons and Dragons in black and white - that's not even coding one hour per day in a month - "Hey guys lets put our code on the cloud so it can be compromised - Great idea!" - Did I mention Open Source has been sharing code for 45 plus years.

That isn’t the point of this. Xcode to do the programming is still free. This is for compiling, testing, etc. People put their photos and other documents on the cloud, why is this different?

crowley

The article didn't mention it, but the costs are:

25 compute hours/month 
Free (through December 2023, then US$14.99 per month if you choose to subscribe at that time.)

100 compute hours/month
US$49.99/month 

250 compute hours/month
US$99.99/month 

1000 compute hours/month 
US$399.99/month

From: https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

I'm not sure why this is particularly useful unless it is substantially faster than on a local machine, and Apple don't seem to be making any claims about that.

edited August 2022

blastdoor

tht said:

blastdoor said:

How does the work completed in a “compute hour” compare to, say, an hour of M1?

It would depend on the CPUs Xcode cloud is using, which could just be servers services from Amazon, Google or Microsoft. Could be Xeons, could racks of Mac mini's, could be Epyc. Maybe they are buying from MacStadium or set it up with their own hardware. Hopefully someone will spill the beans.

25 hrs goes buy really really fast. It's basically a number to try out the service.

Yup -- it could be almost anything, which is why I asked. 

Sounds like nobody here knows, either. 

zimmie

crowley said:

The article didn't mention it, but the costs are:

25 compute hours/month 
Free (through December 2023, then US$14.99 per month if you choose to subscribe at that time.)

100 compute hours/month
US$49.99/month 

250 compute hours/month
US$99.99/month 

1000 compute hours/month 
US$399.99/month

From: https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

I'm not sure why this is particularly useful unless it is substantially faster than on a local machine, and Apple don't seem to be making any claims about that.

It's not so much that it's faster, though it is. It's more that it lets you run your tests somewhere else without tying up your local machine for 20+ minutes. It's faster because it can run many tests in parallel. An M1 MacBook Air, for example, doesn't really have the RAM to run tests in an iPhone simulator and iPad simulator and Watch simulator all at the same time, so you have to run them serially.

blastdoor said:

tht said:

blastdoor said:

How does the work completed in a “compute hour” compare to, say, an hour of M1?

It would depend on the CPUs Xcode cloud is using, which could just be servers services from Amazon, Google or Microsoft. Could be Xeons, could racks of Mac mini's, could be Epyc. Maybe they are buying from MacStadium or set it up with their own hardware. Hopefully someone will spill the beans.

25 hrs goes buy really really fast. It's basically a number to try out the service.

Yup -- it could be almost anything, which is why I asked. 

Sounds like nobody here knows, either. 

Right now, Xcode Cloud VMs are amd64. The hardware identifier of the VMs is MacVM1,1. Each VM has four cores, 16 GB of RAM, and a framebuffer connected to a virtual 1080p display. It isn't yet known which specific processors are used, but it's likely to be Xeon Ws in rackmount Mac Pros.

auxio

crowley said:

The article didn't mention it, but the costs are:

25 compute hours/month 
Free (through December 2023, then US$14.99 per month if you choose to subscribe at that time.)

100 compute hours/month
US$49.99/month 

250 compute hours/month
US$99.99/month 

1000 compute hours/month 
US$399.99/month

From: https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

I'm not sure why this is particularly useful unless it is substantially faster than on a local machine, and Apple don't seem to be making any claims about that.

It's really about the automation and maintenance side of things.  As a developer, I'm iterating and testing my app against the particular hardware configuration that I've set in Xcode.  However, to ship my app, I may need to build and test on 20 hardware configurations.  Sure I could set up a local Xcode server to run those 20 builds on each code change, but then I need to configure and maintain that server every time there's an Xcode or macOS update, deal with hardware upgrades, failures, etc.  Basically you're paying Apple to maintain a build server for you.

blastdoor

zimmie said:

Right now, Xcode Cloud VMs are amd64. The hardware identifier of the VMs is MacVM1,1. Each VM has four cores, 16 GB of RAM, and a framebuffer connected to a virtual 1080p display. It isn't yet known which specific processors are used, but it's likely to be Xeon Ws in rackmount Mac Pros.

Thanks! That’s very interesting.

Apple using Mac Pro for their own cloud services could improve the economics of the Mac Pro very nicely.