AWS has added EC2 Mac instances, providing a new way for developers to harness macOS for their workflows.

Development for Apple’s devices is more popular than ever. The Mac was already on the rise, ever since Steve Jobs turned the company around, but the iPhone and the iPad led to a record number of developers flocking to Apple. Add in watchOS and tvOS and the opportunities are virtually endless.

While it’s possible to develop apps using a variety of tools, a Mac is still needed for the final steps of building in Xcode and deploying to the App Store. As a result, AWS’ EC2 Mac Instances provides a viable alternative to investing in expensive hardware.

“To all the thriving community of millions of developers worldwide building applications on Apple platforms, we at AWS bring you the first ever macOS based compute environments in the public cloud,” writes Harshitha Putta. “Yes, you read that right! You can now run macOS applications on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) while enjoying elasticity, scalability, reliability, security, and cost effectiveness. If you are running workloads in your on-premises data center on Apple platforms, you can now use macOS on AWS to achieve cloud benefits.”

The AWS announcement represents an excellent opportunity for developers.