Rent a Mac in the cloud for development • Hacker News Board

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#21

Post by stevensanderson » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:14 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #13

Conceptually awesome. Poorly delivered. Someone do this right and you will be making money. What I'd like: Personal files/certs etc. on my local HD, then I log in to my cloud mac and it uses my local HD files as an external hard drive of sorts. or even uses dropbox for my files. Is this possible?

I was going to try it out, but once you've registered, you have to raise a support ticket to ask them to put a free trial on your account.

> Step 2 - Experience a Free Trial After registering your MacinCloud website account, please log in and create a new Support Ticket under Help > Support > New Support Ticket. Click New Support Ticket -> MacinCloud Trial -> Sales, and request for a trial. Please attach a note and let us know if you have any specific needs.

Um, no, sorry. I don't have that much patience. Honestly this could be a great service for Windows-based web developers who just need a few hours on a Mac now and then for testing, but the signup process needs to be instant.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#22

Post by alpb » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:14 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #17

roadnottaken wrote: post #15

What kind of Mac developer wouldn't just get a mac?

Someone who doesn't have $1,500? Edit: Well a Mac Mini is $600 (with no monitor), but still... if you could rent a virtual Mac for $20/month that's still over two years before you're money ahead.

I believe lots of iOS/OSX app developers want to make money out of the apps they are planning to develop. So why would someone just not invest money on a computer (which is a really good and hi-quality) machine imho) that is going to make them earn money?

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#23

Post by bambax » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:15 PM UTC

I run OS X on VMWare, it's fast, it's perfect.

I wonder if they're doing the same (virtualized OS X, which works well but is, I believe, against Apple's EULAs) or if they use actual Macs (which would be quite burdensome)...?

Edit: confused iOS and OS X. I feel stupid.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#24

Post by techsupporter » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:16 PM UTC

Khao wrote: post #6

It's ridiculous that this service has plans that allows you to "log in from 9am to 5pm, max 5 hours per day". It looks like it's 1999 all over again where you have online services that are only available during certain hours because the servers are rebooted or turned off every day. This is not "cloud"-like at all, and is especially bad when you don't live in the same timezone.

It doesn't appear to be due to server reboots, instead it's to spread the load. If you're an after-hours coder--doing things as a side project after your day job is finished, or just like being up at night--the 9a-5p plan isn't for you. As someone who is up all night (basically 9p-5a), I appreciate the ability to pay less because I'm never going to use the "peak time."

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#25

Post by geoffc » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:18 PM UTC

Nicely done! We have just launched a similar concept for Windows desktops at leostreamdesktops.com.

I think the growth of tablets is really going to drive the cloud desktop market as people switch to tablets as their primary access device.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#26

Post by wladimir » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:20 PM UTC

alpb wrote: post #22

ams6110 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who doesn't have $1,500? Edit: Well a Mac Mini is $600 (with no monitor), but still... if you could rent a virtual Mac for $20/month that's still over two years before you're money ahead.

I believe lots of iOS/OSX app developers want to make money out of the apps they are planning to develop. So why would someone just not invest money on a computer (which is a really good and hi-quality) machine imho) that is going to make them earn money?

I suppose it's primarily useful for people that develop cross-platform applications and want to test/develop on a Mac as well. Sure, if the Mac is your primary platform then it makes little sense not to buy one.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#27

Post by pieter » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

Interesting idea, but the pricing is just much too complex. By having to choose between monthly/weekly, morning/day/evening and then number of hours there are perhaps 50 different plans available? I'm just too confused to make a choice.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#28

Post by notatoad » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

alpb wrote: post #22

ams6110 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who doesn't have $1,500? Edit: Well a Mac Mini is $600 (with no monitor), but still... if you could rent a virtual Mac for $20/month that's still over two years before you're money ahead.

I believe lots of iOS/OSX app developers want to make money out of the apps they are planning to develop. So why would someone just not invest money on a computer (which is a really good and hi-quality) machine imho) that is going to make them earn money?

have you not been reading? not everybody is an ios/osx dev. web devs need to test on macs sometimes.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#29

Post by delinka » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:22 PM UTC

RexRollman wrote: post #12

Interesting idea. I wonder how the UI would feel, though, given the considering amount of compositing that Mac OS X uses.

It's going to composite everything into a buffer on the Mac just as quickly as normal. Transmitting that buffer across the Internet is going to run into lag. It will be anything from a minor annoying delay to a completely unusable lag. You probably aren't going to do gaming or videos (or Quartz Composer, etc) on your remote Mac.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#30

Post by cygwin98 » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:23 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #17

roadnottaken wrote: post #15

What kind of Mac developer wouldn't just get a mac?

Someone who doesn't have $1,500? Edit: Well a Mac Mini is $600 (with no monitor), but still... if you could rent a virtual Mac for $20/month that's still over two years before you're money ahead.

You can buy used imac or mac mini at around $300. Even 5 year old late 2006 imac, which I got from one of my friends for free, can install Lion and be used for iPhone app development.