Mac Mini in the cloud.
Developers of iOS and MacOS apps can now deploy a Mac Mini in the cloud if they do not want to buy into the Apple hardware ecosystem. You can deploy a dedicated Mac platform for learning application development, developing software, building cross-platform applications, and automating application testing from anywhere with Internet access.
Unlike most cloud compute services, this is not a virtual machine, but a dedicated Mac Mini server that is deployed for your use. There are a few companies offering this service, but we will look at two and break down what they have to offer:
- macincloud.com
- scaleway.com
As with any product from any provider, we advise you to first go and read the reviews before spending money. And read the fine print.
macincloud.com
MacinCloud is a Mac cloud platform that provides on-demand Mac cloud servers, flexible dev workload infrastructure and comprehensive Mac in the Cloud solutions
MacInCloud has three hardware options for your Mac Mini, if you are looking at only the last three versions of OS X. Their pricing is based on a “day pass” with a day being counted as 24 consecutive hours of usage. Mac’s come with pre-install Mac Applications and Tools. These plans do not offer administrator / root access and any additional applications or tools that you need installed will have to be done via ‘n support ticket.
- macOS Ventura 13.x
- macOS Moneterey 12.x
- macOS Big Sur 11.6.x
Based on the operating system you select, the hardware that is available to you is as follows:
macOS Ventura 13.x
- New Mac Mini 2020 Silicon M1
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$20.00 USD
- 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- 8-core GPU
- 16-core Neural Engine
- 8GB of RAM (see Addons tab below to upgrade to 16GB of RAM)
macOS Monterey 12.x
Option 1:
- Mac Mini 2018
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$20.00 USD
- 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3
- 6MB shared L3 cache
- 16GB of RAM (Can upgrade to 32GB of RAM)
Option 2:
- New Mac Mini 2020 Silicon M1
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$20.00 USD
- 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- 8-core GPU
- 16-core Neural Engine
- 8GB of RAM (Can upgrade to 16GB of RAM)
Option 3:
- Top of the line Mac Mini 2018
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$29.00 USD
- 3.2GHz 6-core Intel Core i7
- Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz
- 12MB shared L3 cache
- 16GB of RAM (Can upgrade to 32GB of RAM)
macOS Big Sur 11.6.x
Option 1:
- Mac Mini 2018
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$20.00 USD
- 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3
- 6MB shared L3 cache
- 16GB of RAM (Can upgrade to 32GB of RAM)
Option 2:
- New Mac Mini 2020 Silicon M1
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$20.00 USD
- 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- 8-core GPU
- 16-core Neural Engine
- 8GB of RAM (Can upgrade to 16GB of RAM)
Option 3:
- Top of the line Mac Mini 2018
- 5 day Monthly limit – US$29.00 USD
- 3.2GHz 6-core Intel Core i7
- Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz
- 12MB shared L3 cache
- 16GB of RAM (Can upgrade to 32GB of RAM)
scaleway.com
Scaleway is a French Cloud computing and web hosting company and they boast being Europe’s most complete cloud ecosystem. They have a huge selection of products ranging from Serverless, Containers, to Computer, Bare Metal and Developer api and CLI solutions.
Scaleway offers only one macOS, and the hardware available is thus limited to one configuration. Pricing is at €0.10/hour with a 24-hour minimum due to Apple licensing requirements. They are by far the cheapest option (especially when compared to AWS EC2 Mac instances).
macOS Monterey 12.x
- CPU Apple M1 chip. 8-core CPU. 8-core GPU. 16-core Neural Engine.
- Memory 8GB LPDDR4.
- Storage 256GB.
- Disk type SSD.
At the time of writing, this product was out of stock.
