Is there a limit on number of instances you can have per physical mac? i recall there was a hard limit of 2 because of EULA, unless Apple has changed it. (Cupertino really likes to sell you their Macs)
There's a kernel-level check in the Hypervisor framework that enforces the 2 VM limit, and bypassing it violates Apple's EULA.
Nice technical deep-dive on the how here: https://khronokernel.com/macos/2023/08/08/AS-VM.html
- macOS GUI apps (Xcode, Numbers, Safari, etc.) - macOS desktop automation (screenshots, mouse/keyboard input, accessibility APIs) - macOS CI/CD (building iOS/macOS apps, running XCTest)
...you need an actual macOS VM, which is what Lume provides.
The unattended setup is a large improvement, which also begs the question: Mac OS doesn't have an unattended.xml alternative for its installer?
A closer comparison here is Lumier, which provides a "Docker-like" interface to spin up VMs with a noVNC server: https://cua.ai/docs/lume/guide/advanced/lumier/docker
The key difference: dockur/macos uses QEMU+KVM, which only works on Linux hosts. It can't run on macOS hardware since Apple doesn't expose KVM. See: https://github.com/dockur/macos/issues/256
I thought this was a silly way to do it too, but upon reflection I don’t know if you can zero touch setup a Mac without registering a device in DEP.
You're both right - Apple's official zero-touch setup requires MDM + DEP, which needs Apple Business Manager (and yes, a DUNS number).
But for VMs specifically, DEP doesn't work anyway - VMs don't have real serial numbers that can be enrolled in Device Enrollment Program.
VNC-based setup automation is the only practical option - it's what the ecosystem has converged on for macOS VMs. Lume connects to the VM's VNC server and programmatically tabs, clicks, types through Setup Assistant.