How can we improve Azure Virtual Machines?

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Mac OS X Virtual Machines

Several, non-Microsoft/non-Azure, cloud-hosting services offer either dedicated, or virtualized machines running Mac OS X (with the OS running on Apple hardware, due to Mac OS X licensing). Examples include http://macstadium.com/, http://xcloud.me/, and http://www.macincloud.com/, among others.

Being able to provision a Mac OS X machine on Azure, using Azure pricing, and potentially, Azure Virtual Networking, would be useful for developers wishing to set up build machines for iOS apps, and potentially other use-cases.

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David Ludwig shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

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  • Lam Le commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I support this. It seems really helpful in my company's scenarios. I am not sure why Microsoft/Azure does not even include this to be on their roadmaps.

  • P.S. Birchgroove commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Admin, the only way I see Azure running macOS Sur is if you have Apple designed and approved racks running ARM Silicon virtualized on rack systems, because they will need to ramp up their testing to 3rd parties. lol.

    They cannot easily replicate RISC with ML & AI on CISC very easily.

    Maybe take the initiative because this will be a future problem especially since I am an Software Developer using MS VS 2019 on a Mac using C# CORE and once the .NET CORE CIRCLE CLOSES so Linux & MacOS GUI is abstracted along with WIN10, so single code can run on Win10, MacOS & Linux, but now we got a new "monkey wrench" MACOS ARM with hooks into ML & AI cores and option on other programs to transcode to Azure ML.NET system for deployment. LEVERAGE AZURE ADVANCED AI/ML.NET SYSTEMS, for non-ARM Macs. lol.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I agree. I wish Azure allowed you to test different platforms for testing software including Mac. They can do Linux already

  • Lam Le commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I configure agents for my Azure Pipelines scenarios. Many projects require a macOS agent. It would be a lot better if I can set up macOS VMs on Azure, alongside with others Ubuntu and Windows VMs.

  • Ben Wheeler commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I'm confused... https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/pipelines/ states that Azure Pipelines provides:

    "Linux, macOS, and Windows agents—hosted by Microsoft. Simplify managing hardware and VMs by using Microsoft cloud-hosted agents. Get full CI/CD pipeline support for every major platform and tool."

    Doesn't that mean that Azure offers virtualized machines running macOS? What am I not understanding?

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Why would you not build this? Seems like a natural since you're putting so much effort into XAMARIN. I, for one, don't want to go out and purchase another piece of hardware, let alone a MAC, just to target my users who have an iPhone.

  • David Ludwig commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hélder Pinto, I find your link interesting from a technical perspective, however, presuming that Microsoft is backing their servers off non-Apple hardware, it would be against Apple's licensing restrictions for macOS. That legal-issue, alone, would prevent me, and I imagine many others, from relying on it in a production environment.

  • Mike Binnix commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Would be very helpful even just for testing web apps so we can verify appearance performance in the safari browser on macOS.

  • David Ludwig commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    To be clear, such a feature should, ideally, extend to newer versions of macOS, ones that no longer carry the "X" in their name (and are just called, "macOS", by Apple). :-)

  • Sondergaard commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Would support this. We develop on both Windows and Mac OS, and having for instance Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery hosted on a Mac Virtual machine in Azure would have a lot of appeal.

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