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RemoteMac.io – Dedicated Mac mini

75 points| rootdevelop | 7 years ago |remotemac.io | reply

77 comments

order
[+] comex|7 years ago|reply
FYI, there are a few issues with the copy on the homepage:

- "Mac Mini's" should be "Mac Minis", or "Mac minis" if you want to follow the official capitalization.

- "We only offer genuine, dedicated Apple machines running MacOS" is missing a period.

- "MacOS" should be "macOS".

- "pre installed" should be "pre-installed" or "preinstalled".

- "all your developer needs" should probably be "all a developer's needs" or "all your development needs".

[+] rootdevelop|7 years ago|reply
Thanks for the feedback, we corrected the grammar.
[+] thinkingkong|7 years ago|reply
What I really need is a setup like this with some automated “restore to snapshot” functionality. We use a remote mac mini to do CI on our development environment for new team members. That would be the best.
[+] lloeki|7 years ago|reply
I use GitLab CI runner and VirtualBox for ArchMac. Upon CI job submission, on the first run a linked clone of a base VM is started and a snapshot is made, then the job executes inside of it. On subsequent runs the runner starts from the VM snapshot. Concurrency is supported by doing multiple clones.

A blog post is pending bu here's the doc:

[0]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/install/osx.html

[1]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/executors/virtualbox.html

[+] rootdevelop|7 years ago|reply
That’s a good idea, we’ll see if and how we can add such a feature on dedicated machines.
[+] timcederman|7 years ago|reply
One of the longest running services I'm aware of - https://macminicolo.net/

edit: just noticed they merged with MacStadium

[+] tluyben2|7 years ago|reply
More expensive than any of the competition I am aware off including OP.
[+] phinnaeus|7 years ago|reply
What does Apple use for their servers? Do they just have a bunch of Mac Minis in racks? Or do they have Mac servers they're not willing to sell? Or do they not use Macs as servers?
[+] beamatronic|7 years ago|reply
Custom servers from SuperMicro with absolutely NO custom Chinese military spyware chips.
[+] therein|7 years ago|reply
They use a mixture of AWS, Azure, GCP and dedicated hardware but they all run RHEL.
[+] woolvalley|7 years ago|reply
For mac / ios software, some teams literally do use stacks of mac minis or old laptops in a closet.
[+] saagarjha|7 years ago|reply
For their cloud and services? Linux machines, mostly.
[+] teekert|7 years ago|reply
When all devs need is your software (xcode), but you are so popular they they buy your hardware anyway instead of looking at alternative platforms.

Although I see the why, the how and the need, it is entirely synthetic. In a way Apple forces this incredible waste of hardware that is never seen and could easily be virtualized and time-shared (there are no technical limitations). It's really an opposite-of-green initiative. Although, perhaps the only real alternative would be everyone buying a mac mini and use it even less (in total), which would be even less green...

[+] yardie|7 years ago|reply
At its heart Apple is a hardware company and everything they do is to drive sales of hardware. An iOS developer is forced to have Apple hardware. They could charge for MacOS and they could charge for XCode. But they don’t because the cost of continued development of those applications is subsidized by hardware sales.
[+] willio58|7 years ago|reply
Pretty simple and good idea. For people not wanting to drop the money to get a Mac themselves to use Xcode for app development I could see them using this.

That’s if the latency isn’t too bad, else it would be hell

[+] xienze|7 years ago|reply
Are they using the built in VNC server for remote access? Even on my LAN the performance is absolutely terrible. Using a different server doesn’t help either. I’ve seen lots of folks make reference to getting GPU-accelerated VNC that dramatically improves performance if the Mini is hooked up to a monitor, but in my experience it doesn’t work. The only acceptable remote desktop solution I’ve ever found for the Mac is NoMachine.
[+] Mistri|7 years ago|reply
It's in the Netherlands, so already off to a bad start for US users in terms of latency
[+] oeuviz|7 years ago|reply
Is this supposed to be profitable longterm assuming a ROI of >40months?

€1249.-[0] divided by €29.95/mo plus other infrastructure

[0] https://www.apple.com/nl/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini

[+] orhanhenrik|7 years ago|reply
1249 is for the expensive 2018 base model. The 29.95 price is for the cheaper old (not 2018) model. It will definitely be paid back much faster than that.
[+] zubspace|7 years ago|reply
Does anyone have experience with MacInCloud [1]? The pricings looks alot more flexible with hourly or weekly rates.

[1] https://portal.macincloud.com/select/#/plans

[+] blensor|7 years ago|reply
Macincloud user here. I tried both their plans managed and dedicated and am more satisfied with the managed plan as it seems more performant at a lower cost (but maybe I was just lucky)

I am using it to compile a crossolatform inhouse Qt app for our employees with ios devices.

BTW: Whats the best way to create "private" IOS Apps for a very limited number of users. Recompiling the software every time just because we have to add an UDID for every new user to our development profile is an incredibly tedious amount of work.

[+] Jemm|7 years ago|reply
How do you test on actual devices (iPhone, iPad) when developing on a remote system? Obviously you cannot plug your device into the remote mac Mini's usb port.
[+] rootdevelop|7 years ago|reply
There are several USB over IP solutions, we use Eltima’s USB Network Gate. Otter options include NoMachine.
[+] defied|7 years ago|reply
Placing an order does not work, due to a Javascript error I think: `TypeError: handler.open is not a function`
[+] xhruso00|7 years ago|reply
How bad is running macOS + XCode in virtual machine? Is it that bad?
[+] poloniculmov|7 years ago|reply
I've tried it with Vmware while learning a bit of iOS development. It's not horrible but it is a bit laggy in some places, i had issues with sound dying at random intervals and some animations don't play correctly.
[+] ubersoldat2k7|7 years ago|reply
I tried with a React Native project, so I only used the VM for the builds; yes it's shit. I mean, the whole iOS build process is painful enough. And I never got the VM to work on more than 1024x768.