Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

macincloud.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 177 posts

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#131

Post by vtail »

gardentheory wrote: post #127
vtail wrote: post #87

So let's see who your potential customer is: - Someone who owns a computer, with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse (of course) - Someone with a decent internet access - Someone who has either invested or going to invested 100's of hours to properly learn the iOS/Mac frameworks - Someone who is hoping to either make a living off his Mac development or threats this as in important hobby - Someone who will be able to af…

This is a good devil's advocate summary, except feasibility of remote development with a GUI. I don't agree with a few of these points though. "Someone who has either invested or going to invested 100's of hours to properly learn the iOS/Mac frameworks" I think a lot of people will just want to experiment with something, or see some app, in my case I need to fix a bug in a desktop app I use. The kind of bug that I th…

You're right - I missed the "feasibility of remote development with GUI" part.

Re: your other comments - sure, I totally see who the service will appeal to some customers. The market is certainly there.

What I'm concerned about is the market _size_: I still believe that any current/future iOS/Mac developers will buy a Mac eventually, and there may be not many people like who only need a Mac to fix an occasional bug in an open-source Mac app, which by itself requires a significant skill.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#132

Post by betterlabs »

vtail wrote: post #87

So let's see who your potential customer is: - Someone who owns a computer, with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse (of course) - Someone with a decent internet access - Someone who has either invested or going to invested 100's of hours to properly learn the iOS/Mac frameworks - Someone who is hoping to either make a living off his Mac development or threats this as in important hobby - Someone who will be able to af…

You are right on the numbers and logic for a specific scenario but you are overlooking the fact that there are hundreds of development teams who primarily work on non-Mac platforms and are getting on to iOS and most of these teams have one Mac that they use to test their iOS apps and they cannot afford to move all their teams to Macs (the cost of a desktop is 1/4th as compared to the Mac in India, for example). All such teams and small / mid sized companies would love this sort of a service and would be willing to pay for it. The pricing needs to be simplified IMO but the service is spot on, for certain market segments. And I believe these segments can make up a big market.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#133

Post by vtail »

dxbydt wrote: post #114
vtail wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's assume you wills spend couple of months learning iOS, and will decide that you're into it. Will you buy yourself a Mac at that point? Assuming yes, you've maybe generated them $100 in revenue. They would need 10,000 people like you to generate their first million in revenue, and they have obviously many costs. Do you think the world has at least 10,000 people interested in iOS development who don't have a ma…

You are trying to count your chickens before they hatch.Before Netflix came along, the thinking was - if you like a movie you will just buy the DVD so you can watch it any number of times. Its just $10, why not just buy it ? Guess what, I watch tons of movies, don't buy a single DVD. If I like the movie I put it on my netflix queue & then watch it right there. If its not available, no skin off my back - there's plent…

With Netflix, their value proposition is:

- Simplicity - it's very simple to select a movie on their website, and you can spare a walk to a DVD rental shop/supermarket. It's even easier to stream a movie.

- Price. $10/month is much cheaper than $15/DVD, if I watch several movies a month and don't plan to re-watch same movies very often

I don't see how that's applicable to the remove development - price argument doesn't work (it's actually cheaper to own an old Mac in the long run) and simplicity could work both ways - it's easier to start with remote development but having a local GUI development is probably easier.

Re: your decision to buy or not to buy a Mac - I just wanted to highlight that on the grand scheme of things - where you want to invest your time, which is your most valuable asset - decision to buy an old mac is an easy one to make.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#134

Post by bschlinker »

brador wrote: post #129
dxbydt wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to count your chickens before they hatch.Before Netflix came along, the thinking was - if you like a movie you will just buy the DVD so you can watch it any number of times. Its just $10, why not just buy it ? Guess what, I watch tons of movies, don't buy a single DVD. If I like the movie I put it on my netflix queue & then watch it right there. If its not available, no skin off my back - there's plent…

Wait. You are a professional programmer at a bank and you don't own a PC or mac at home? Is this common? How do you keep your skills up to speed?

I'm confused as well by this. From my perspective, in order to keep your business and personal lives separate (and private) you need two separate systems to work on. I have no interest in IT possibly being able to log or monitor my interactions with my personal GMail, bank accounts, etc. Since most companies Acceptable Use Policies provides them with the right to monitor all of this and more, it seems necessary.

Other people though don't seem to feel as strongly about keeping their work and personal lives separate...

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#135

Post by eliben »

vtail wrote: post #87

So let's see who your potential customer is: - Someone who owns a computer, with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse (of course) - Someone with a decent internet access - Someone who has either invested or going to invested 100's of hours to properly learn the iOS/Mac frameworks - Someone who is hoping to either make a living off his Mac development or threats this as in important hobby - Someone who will be able to af…

I maintain some tools (mostly open-source) and would like them to work on OS X as well. I run a mixture of Windows and Linux boxes and VMs, and there's no legit way (that I'm aware of) to run OS X inside a VM.

Wouldn't this service be good for me, allowing me to easily test my code on OS X?

A bit too expensive, though.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#136

Post by dxbydt »

brador wrote: post #129
dxbydt wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to count your chickens before they hatch.Before Netflix came along, the thinking was - if you like a movie you will just buy the DVD so you can watch it any number of times. Its just $10, why not just buy it ? Guess what, I watch tons of movies, don't buy a single DVD. If I like the movie I put it on my netflix queue & then watch it right there. If its not available, no skin off my back - there's plent…

Wait. You are a professional programmer at a bank and you don't own a PC or mac at home? Is this common? How do you keep your skills up to speed?

> Is this common?

Well, its not uncommon. From my unscientific survey among my colleagues I'd say ppl who don't own machines is upwards of 60%. Its not hard to see why. Banks work you quite hard anyways. I stare at a PC 8 hours a day. Plus there's the pager so you can respond to calls at night & so on...the association of PC=Work becomes quite hardwired. Last thing I'd want to do is muck around with a computer at home as well. If I buy a PC/Mac, like a desktop with monitor, where do I keep it ? I have to buy a computer desk and computer chair and all that? Dude I live in a tiny apartment 10 minutes from the bank. There's no space. As to keeping up with my skills - I've been doing this some dozen plus years at this point. I will say if you know how to fold and write a parser combinator, you are golden. I know both, so my comp science degree wasn't a total waste. Most of what I do is just some combination of map reduce filter fold partition, occasionally some lazy eval/Stream, some memoization, rest is just standard finance - portfolio theory, capm, derivatives, option pricing, stochastic calculus etc - you learn those at school anyways, otherwise they won't give you a diploma, and the bank won't hire you without a diploma.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#137

Post by joshmlewis »

dxbydt wrote: post #136
brador wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. You are a professional programmer at a bank and you don't own a PC or mac at home? Is this common? How do you keep your skills up to speed?

> Is this common? Well, its not uncommon. From my unscientific survey among my colleagues I'd say ppl who don't own machines is upwards of 60%. Its not hard to see why. Banks work you quite hard anyways. I stare at a PC 8 hours a day. Plus there's the pager so you can respond to calls at night & so on...the association of PC=Work becomes quite hardwired. Last thing I'd want to do is muck around with a computer at hom…

Do you like what you do? Is the pay or reward worth it?

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#138

Post by shaggyfrog »

Your screenshots show an out-of-date version of Xcode. Hopefully that's not the only version you're providing.

What is the "2-Hour Daily Minimum" on the weekly plan or the "3-Hour Daily Minimum" on the monthly plan? Does the customer not have it for the full week or month?

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#139

Post by kin »

Personally, I would use it. I don't feel like shelling $600 for a Mac, I but I would shell $20/month for 6 months and get some work done. Time value of money is worth a lot.

The pricing turns me off however. Keep it simple with free month trial and simple monthly dues after that based off of hours/day. Why do I have to pick a specific time zone? Why do I have to pick a specific time to develop? I understand the need to scale I suppose but, really, forcing users into one time zone doesn't quite help scale if they all pick the same one.

Re: Rent a Mac in the cloud for development

#140

Post by metafour »

If you buy a used mac and end up not liking iOS/Mac development you can most likely sell it for the same amount that you bought it for.

If you're renting time on a mac like it's AOL back in the '90s you're almost certainly losing out in both the short and long terms.

Post reply on HN