DEVOPSdigest

CircleCI announced enhanced developer support for macOS through dedicated hosts.

This means that the more than 30 million developers who build using Apple systems now have 24 hour, continuous access to a bare metal instance that enables enhanced testing, security, and storage functionalities to help them grow and improve their apps and user experiences.

CircleCI offers superior cross-platform support to provide Apple developers with the flexibility and convenience required to build, test, and ship quality code. As consumer use of Apple products reached record-breaking highs during the pandemic (source), these developers are under more pressure than ever to ensure they are meeting and exceeding expectations in user experience, security, and speed.

Benefits of CircleCI’s dedicated hosts for MacOS allow developers to:

- Monitor performance of multiple platforms in the same pipeline: CircleCI is one of the only CI providers that offer Linux, Windows and Mac support. Teams can run macOS jobs on the same pipeline as their Linux or Android projects to ensure consistency and monitor issues across repos with a single tool. This is a key strength for developers building cross-platform mobile applications, allowing greater flexibility and faster time to market.

- Run resource-intensive builds more efficiently: Unlike other cloud-based CI solutions in the market that rely on Virtual Machines, CircleCI’s dedicated hosts are equipped with 50% more cores and more than twice the storage capacity. Customers are also able to access the hardware’s GPU to enable end-to-end testing, which is especially valuble for teams building video or audio applications. This is a competitive and compelling testing functionality that is exclusive to CircleCI and is not available with any other macOS offering in the market.

- Access secure and clean environments for every build: All jobs will run on a dedicated, isolated host machine for airtight code security. This ensures reliable, repeatable builds every time a job is run, ultimately encouraging developer confidence and productivity.