MacStadium’s Orka Platform, a promising alternative to VMWare's vSphere environment for Mac virtualization, is now accessible via the AWS Marketplace. This move provides much-needed support to the rapidly expanding Mac development community, especially after VMware ceased supporting Mac platforms in their popular vSphere virtualization environment.
The Orka Platform, offered by Mac cloud, and SaaS provider MacStadium, allows developers to work on macOS solutions in virtualized, Kubernetes-based environments. It caters to a wide range of macOS development needs, from simple Xcode builds to complex, fully integrated CI/CD pipelines, and supports CI build runners like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab, TeamCity, and more.
Developers can now purchase the MacStadium Orka Platform on Amazon EC2 Mac instances, which grants access to the Orka Workspace—a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution that offers enterprise-grade, scalable performance —enabling Mac desktop virtualization through the browser. This comes as a boon to development teams already relying on hyperscale cloud providers like AWS for non-Mac development.
By eliminating extensive manual configuration and maintenance, the Orka Platform simplifies processes for developers building support for Macs within proprietary business applications. The availability via AWS means businesses can access the Mac power they need to expedite tasks without major hardware investments or worrying about underutilized on-premise servers.
Some of the key features of the Orka Platform include:
Tom Schnell, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at MacStadium, highlights the benefits for iOS developers, saying, “Orka Platform on AWS streamlines the iOS developers’ build efforts while delivering a seamless buying and billing process.”
With VMware withdrawing support for Mac platforms, developers were left searching for an alternative, and MacStadium's Orka Platform emerged as the perfect candidate. MacStadium even announced a transition path from VMware to Orka earlier this month. The company's partnership with AWS ensures that Orka Workspace reaches a broader developer community, as AWS is a popular choice among developers and has a reputation for saving time and money, according to a Forrester report.
Today, AWS and MacStadium both offer Mac-as-a-service options, with Intel and Apple Silicon-based Mac minis available in the cloud. Chris Chapman, MacStadium's CTO, expressed optimism for the Mac platform's future, stating, “They are becoming the de-facto standard for laptop, desktop, and smartphones, and you’re really starting to see it become pervasive.”
With MacStadium's Orka Platform made accessible on AWS Marketplace, a new era of Mac virtualization is dawning. This development promises an opportunity for platforms such as AppMaster to provide supporting tools to the growing Mac ecosystem. As this expansion continues, developers may consider AppMaster's no-code platform to create backend, web, and mobile applications with less development effort.
