[HN Gopher] Hetzner Apple Mac Mini Offering
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Hetzner Apple Mac Mini Offering
        
       Author : ftonobo
       Score  : 156 points
       Date   : 2021-10-19 10:09 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.hetzner.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.hetzner.com)
        
       | dhess wrote:
       | Anyone know if they install ARD for remote desktop access? It's
       | pretty difficult to administer a Mac remotely without MDM and/or
       | ARD.
        
         | moepstar wrote:
         | According to a thread on their forum, you get SSH access and
         | can install/activate VNC afterwards (or whatever else you may
         | prefer).
        
       | harshitaneja wrote:
       | My experience is only with AWS, GCP, Azure and Red Hat. This
       | pricing for m1 mini seems quite great to me at ~80$ compared to
       | an aws t3a.xlarge Can this kind of instance be used as a server
       | for deploying web apps? I have never tried hetzner. I couldn't
       | find any information about data transfer costs. As someone with
       | predictable traffic and no need for infinite scalability would
       | you recommend such a setup?
        
       | Lorin wrote:
       | I just want a cheap way to live debug sites in Safari / Safari
       | Mobile without being forced to purchase Apple hardware.
       | 
       | Only reasonable option I've come across so far is buying used
       | hardware. VM under Win10/AMD seems like a PITA.
        
         | password4321 wrote:
         | _Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11
         | /macOS/Linux on Linux_
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797129
         | 
         | 404 points by nixcraft 11 days ago | 117 comments
        
         | pixelcoins wrote:
         | Why not Browserstack?
        
           | G3rn0ti wrote:
           | Debugging iOS-Safari issues on a web page requires:
           | 
           | 1) Access to a Desktop Mac and a Desktop Safari.
           | 
           | 2) An iOS device.
           | 
           | The Safari debugger recognizes a plugged-in iOS device and
           | then allows to debug the iOS safari remotely. That's the only
           | reliable way to find iOS specific JS or CSS issues.
           | Browserstack alone does not help, unfortunately AFAIR.
        
             | jamroom wrote:
             | You actually don't need the iOS device - Safari will also
             | link up to the iOS simulator, so you can do this with just
             | XCode.
        
               | G3rn0ti wrote:
               | But XCode is MacOS only, isn't it?
        
             | presentation wrote:
             | You can try Lambdatest.
             | 
             | https://www.lambdatest.com/feature
        
         | 33degrees wrote:
         | Does browserstack not work for you?
        
         | intrasight wrote:
         | Used totally makes sense. I picked up a Mac Mini with a 27"
         | monitor for $500.
        
           | barney54 wrote:
           | The M1 Mac Mini recently was only $600 on sale.
        
             | treesknees wrote:
             | You can also find a refurbished M1 Mac Mini for under $600
             | on Apple's refurbished store.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | It's a shame that web developers have to spend $500 to buy a
           | bespoke web-browsing machine just to make their sites work
           | better with Apple hardware. If Apple wanted people to treat
           | their browser seriously, they should have simulators and
           | developer tooling to spare.
        
             | asddubs wrote:
             | or just release safari cross-platform.
        
               | password4321 wrote:
               | Last I checked, there is a Windows WebKit/Safari build. I
               | don't think it worked very well though:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20700914#20701334
               | 
               | Edit: Looks like the new URL is
               | https://build.webkit.org/#/builders/67?numbuilds=400 but
               | the build has been broken for almost 2 weeks. The last
               | successful build is the 300MB https://s3-us-
               | west-2.amazonaws.com/archives.webkit.org/win-x... (as
               | explained in the link above, the Apple Application
               | Support libraries are required).
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | derefr wrote:
               | Safari (not WebKit specifically; the rest of the browser)
               | relies on OS libraries. Those libraries would have to be
               | reimplemented for other OSes.
               | 
               | I don't mean that that would be an impediment to porting;
               | Apple have done this before--Safari 5 was available for
               | Windows. (And interestingly, vice-versa, IE5 was
               | available for macOS!)
               | 
               | What I mean is that the differences in implementation of
               | these OS libraries would mean that this version of Safari
               | wouldn't be bug-for-bug compatible with macOS Safari; and
               | therefore, testing on this version of Safari wouldn't
               | necessarily get you what you want, if your goal is
               | finding and squashing 100% of the bugs that testing on
               | macOS Safari would allow you to find and squash.
               | 
               | To use a pretty close analogy, it would be like a
               | development workflow for Windows executable that involved
               | running them under Wine in Linux, and never actually
               | under Windows. You've QAed for the API surface, sure; but
               | you haven't actually QAed the software for how
               | Microsoft's own library _implementations_ work (and the
               | bugs that those implementations introduce.)
        
               | acoard wrote:
               | You're not wrong, but in practice I'd imagine >99% of
               | bugs are in the rendering / webkit layer, _not_ in the OS
               | integration layer.
               | 
               | Sure, if you're making a plugin that plays with bookmarks
               | or 'Read Later', you'd likely run afoul of the issues you
               | mention. But most web devs are concerned just about
               | browser compatibility of rendering their web-app. In this
               | context, as long as web page rendering and JS engine is
               | identical between OS' it's fine.
        
               | derefr wrote:
               | Rendering issues are OS issues too. For example, Safari's
               | font rendering depends on the particulars of macOS/iOS's
               | font-rendering framework. Safari on Windows would
               | presumably use Windows' font-rendering framework, with
               | drastically different results, due to the different
               | frameworks supporting different subsets of e.g. ligature-
               | pair width hinting or hyphenation, thereby causing text
               | to wrap in different places, such that the layout at a
               | given font size + viewport size on Windows wouldn't be
               | predictive of the layout at the same font size + viewport
               | size on macOS. (Which is not even to mention the fonts
               | you'd have by default on Windows and _not_ by default on
               | macOS, that would interfere with the font family cascade,
               | and yet couldn 't be suppressed from the cascade because
               | _some_ macOS systems _do_ have them.)
               | 
               | Or, for that matter, there could be certain exposed
               | -webkit CSS selectors that are really just features of
               | some or another macOS rendering-layer framework, with no
               | Windows equivalent -- the same way that IE's ancient CSS
               | "filters" were really just exposed DirectX features (e.g.
               | filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.blur). For
               | these cases, testing on "Safari on Windows" would
               | essentially just get you what testing in Chrome on
               | Windows already gets you (unless Apple created an entire
               | software renderer that brings in all of macOS's Quartz
               | and all its subsidiary libraries as a big ol' polyfill.)
               | 
               | The point at which Safari is guaranteed to work like it
               | does on macOS, is the point at which you're bringing in a
               | polyfill consisting of 99% of macOS's frameworks. May as
               | well bring in the last 1% as well, and call it a VM.
               | (Ideally a thin-as-possible paravirtualized VM where the
               | display driver is written to directly make DirectX calls,
               | etc. -- but VM client software is already pretty good at
               | providing these sorts of drivers.)
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | acdha wrote:
               | This very much depends on the bugs. In the past I've
               | found many bugs in text rendering (especially related to
               | non-English text[1][2]), layering (inconstent opacity),
               | audio and video playback, etc. which were dependent on
               | the combination of browser, operating system, and, in
               | some cases, hardware. The general trend has been for
               | browsers like Chrome and Firefox to take over more
               | responsibility but that's not what Apple has done in
               | Safari so it looks like a lot more work to say they
               | should duplicate OS functionality to make it easier for
               | Windows-only web developers to test with Safari.
               | 
               | 1. https://chris.improbable.org/experiments/browser/combi
               | ning-h...
               | 
               | 2. https://chris.improbable.org/experiments/browser/javan
               | ese-te...
        
               | savoytruffle wrote:
               | I don't know about the early versions, but I believe the
               | final version of IE for Mac, though also numbered 5, used
               | an entirely different browser engine from that on
               | Windows. Tasman
               | 
               | http://jimmy.grew.al/macie5-twentieth-anniversary/
        
             | syshum wrote:
             | Apple does not believe there are any electronics out side
             | of Apple, nor that there are any web browsers outside of
             | Safari.
             | 
             | Apple believe everyone on the plant should only ever use
             | Apple hardware, and Apple Software, why would anyone not
             | want to run over priced low quality products?
        
               | vxNsr wrote:
               | Meanwhile the CEO uses a windows machine with outlook.
        
               | homarp wrote:
               | origin of the rumor: https://www.wired.com/story/how-
               | email-open-tracking-quietly-... (or if you only want the
               | Tim Cook part: https://news.softpedia.com/news/apple-s-
               | ceo-tim-cook-probabl... )
        
               | maddyboo wrote:
               | Source?
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | Source, though it seems dubious:
               | 
               | https://www.windowslatest.com/2017/12/12/apples-ceo-tim-
               | cook...
               | 
               | Also:
               | 
               | https://www.pcworld.com/article/439674/oops-tim-cook-
               | tweets-... (2014)
        
               | mrweasel wrote:
               | What? Tim Cook use Windows?
        
               | extrememacaroni wrote:
               | BIG if true :O
        
               | servercobra wrote:
               | I'd love a source on that.
        
               | vxNsr wrote:
               | The guy who wrote the book about the making of the iphone
               | sent a bunch of emails to tim cook with tracking enabled
               | and each time it was opened by a windows device. other
               | comments in this thread have more links the story.
        
               | diebeforei485 wrote:
               | His public email address is handled by staff.
        
         | packetslave wrote:
         | Remember that running OS X (including in a VM) on anything
         | other than Apple hardware is _technically_ a violation of Apple
         | 's terms of service.
         | 
         | If you're just doing it for personal use, this probably isn't a
         | big deal. If you're doing it for your business, make sure you
         | consider the risks.
        
         | btian wrote:
         | You can rent from Amazon for $1/hour
         | 
         | It supports remote desktop and everything you would need
        
           | amarshall wrote:
           | Sort of as there is a minimum of 24-hours.
           | 
           | > Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour
           | minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS
           | Software License Agreement.
        
             | swebs wrote:
             | Do those 24 hours need to be continuous?
        
               | schiederme wrote:
               | Yes. It's in the MacOS ToS.
        
           | Aea wrote:
           | You can rent from Amazon for $25.99 a day and then for $1.083
           | an hour after your one day minumum.
           | 
           | > Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour
           | minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS
           | Software License Agreement.
        
         | pmarreck wrote:
         | I have a macOS VM under VMWare running on Windows. It wasn't
         | that difficult, found some guides online by googling obvious
         | search words. The only thing I haven't gotten to work yet is
         | the App Store, but I saw a guide for that, just haven't done it
         | yet. You won't get graphics acceleration btw, but CPU
         | performance is fine.
         | 
         | I believe the trickiest bit was running a macOS serial
         | generation app and copying that value into the VM settings.
         | 
         | (I've purchased plenty of Macs over the years so pls Apple,
         | this is just for dev purposes!)
        
           | rdsnsca wrote:
           | Enjoy it while it last, in 3 or 4 years Apple will drop Intel
           | macOS support.
        
             | disiplus wrote:
             | 3 or 4 years. sure not, they still sell intel macs on the
             | website.
        
             | pmarreck wrote:
             | By then, Windows 11+ will have moved onto ARM and whatever
             | cross binary solution Microsoft is working on should be
             | complete. Also, with emulation/virtualization, it's still
             | perfectly feasible
        
       | freemint wrote:
       | Note that this is part of Hetzners dedicated offers, meaning the
       | first bill is 2 times the monthly rate because setup fees.
        
       | jordemort wrote:
       | This could be an interesting way to run mautrix-imesssage. I
       | wonder if they've got it hooked up to some sort of remote console
       | solution; I've never been able to figure out how to get less-
       | than-wretched performance out of the VNC server baked into the
       | OS.
        
         | gizdan wrote:
         | > This could be an interesting way to run mautrix-imesssage
         | 
         | Wouldn't you be able to have only a single identity? Because
         | unless you can have multiple identities with a single instance,
         | it would be a very expensive way of having iMessage
         | capabilities.
        
           | djrogers wrote:
           | VMs have been a thing in the Mac world for a long time now,
           | and these would be powerful enough to run a bunch of them.
        
             | gizdan wrote:
             | I'm aware, but I thought iMessage had some hardware
             | identifier that was necessary to use it. I guess my
             | understanding was incorrect then!
        
               | KarlKemp wrote:
               | The identifier is part of it, as I remember from my
               | mackintosh days, but it cannot be all: MacOS works well
               | as a multi-user system, including separate iMessage
               | accounts for each user.
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | Apparently mautrix-imessage supports jailbroken iphones. Isn't
         | that much more cost effective (eg. $50 for a used iphone 4s)
         | than paying $50/month?
        
           | sgt wrote:
           | Is it reliable? iMessage is not reliable on Hackintosh (over
           | multiple years) due to security checks etc.
        
             | smoldesu wrote:
             | I never had any issues with it when I was hackintoshing. I
             | stopped around Catalina though, so ymmv I guess.
        
         | yodon wrote:
         | Have you run mautrix-imessage? I'm trying to work through the
         | docs to understand if I could use it as a way to proxy my
         | received imessages (and iOS text messages?) onto my windows
         | device as they arrive.
        
           | jordemort wrote:
           | Yes, right now I run it on an old MacBook Pro, that is
           | otherwise sitting idle. It is very reliable. The only issue I
           | have is HEIC attachments not being displayed on the Element
           | desktop client (due to a lack of support in either Electron
           | or Chromium, I forget what piece was ultimately to blame
           | there.)
        
       | e12e wrote:
       | Curious about how they are "delivered" - ssh login with root
       | access? Anyone know?
        
         | TimWolla wrote:
         | SSH by default according to Hetzner's customer forum [1].
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://forum.hetzner.com/index.php?thread/28493/&postID=280...
        
       | sillycube wrote:
       | Isn't it expensive? But for quick testing (like safari), it may
       | be good
        
       | pachico wrote:
       | The rest of us not using Apple product watch with perplexity all
       | things related to Apple hardware/licences, etc.
        
         | Spivak wrote:
         | I mean if you're developing/testing for AIX you're gonna have
         | to buy/find a vendor that licenses POWER8. I feel like we've
         | forgotten that running software on commodity hardware is the
         | exception rather than the rule for the bulk of CS history.
        
       | kleiba wrote:
       | I have seen mixed reviews about Hetzner online. Does anyone have
       | any enlightening anecdotal evidence in favor or against the
       | company?
        
         | heipei wrote:
         | They are truly great for thrifty do-it-yourself hosting. Don't
         | expect customer support or discounts or anything, but their
         | prices are impossible to beat, and everything works as
         | advertised. The big gotcha is that their only points of
         | presence are in Germany and Finland.
         | 
         | My only gripe would be that running your business on Hetzner
         | can be a little bit scary at times since they have so much
         | unattended automation in place to block abuse. For example, if
         | your server is erroneously sending traffic with private IP
         | addresses out of its public interface, they will block the
         | server without warning. I don't have any other providers to
         | compare this against, so that might just be how it is.
        
           | jventura wrote:
           | > For example, if your server is erroneously sending traffic
           | with private IP addresses out of its public interface, they
           | will block the server without warning.
           | 
           | I had a CS class last semester where the students used some
           | Hetzner cloud servers. I always got an email or two before
           | having the servers IPs blocked. And it were mostly students'
           | faults by choosing easy passwords..
           | 
           | I recommend Hetzner! No affiliation, just a happy user..
        
           | moepstar wrote:
           | >>>Don't expect customer support
           | 
           | To be fair, you can also book a managed server with them.
           | 
           | For their hosted hardware offering, HDD/SSD swaps (or even
           | "we replace everything about your server because it produces
           | random faults _except_ your HDDS ") are within reasonable
           | timeframes (i.e. usually within an hour).
           | 
           | They, however, _will not diagnose this for you_ - that part
           | is on you.
        
         | IceWreck wrote:
         | Have been using them for years, never had an issue.
         | 
         | I have heard that they disconnect you for a couple of hours if
         | youre being heavily DDOSSed tho.
        
         | Cu3PO42 wrote:
         | I've been a customer for years and have nothing negative to
         | say. They are providing exactly the products they are
         | advertising. Even those specs that don't necessarily have hard
         | numbers attached with all products (disk speed, CPU
         | performance) have always been good.
         | 
         | That said, there are some products certain customers expect
         | that they will not sell you (and don't advertise). For example,
         | you won't be able to click a button to deploy Software Y pre-
         | configured by the provider as you might with Digital Ocean.
         | What you'll get is mostly along the lines of "server with the
         | OS of your choice and your SSH key installed on it". If that's
         | what you're looking for, Hetzner is difficult to beat on price
         | to performance.
        
         | iyn wrote:
         | I've been their customer for over 2 years, no problems at all
         | and I'm very happy with their prices and offering. Started with
         | dedicated server and now I'm also using their cloud services
         | for some of my EU-based clients. Can definitely recommend, I
         | much prefer Hetzner vs no-name VPS providers when I need cheap
         | VMs.
        
         | eliaspro wrote:
         | Happy customer for more than 15 years.
         | 
         | I used to run several root-servers and once they started their
         | cloud-offering moved everything over there.
         | 
         | Support was always great (although rarely needed), performance
         | is fantastic, prices hard to beat.
         | 
         | I love the simplicity of their cloud offering which fits my
         | use-cases perfectly and doesn't put the burden of overly
         | complex products, APIs and tools on me as a user.
        
         | lokl wrote:
         | I moved personal projects to Hetzner from Linode several years
         | ago, due to significantly better pricing for the RAM I needed,
         | and I haven't had any problems. I am using a few of their
         | "cloud" shared servers (https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) and
         | backups, can't speak to other services. I'm not doing anything
         | CPU or IO intensive, though.
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | I had a dedicated server in Germany from Hetzner that I was
         | pretty pleased with. Bandwidth was unlimited (I peaked at 1
         | TB/24h).
        
         | RealStickman_ wrote:
         | I've been using a dedicated server (intel gen 3 from their
         | second hand server marketplace) for about a year now and
         | haven't had any problems.
         | 
         | It's only hosting personal stuff though, nothing popular or for
         | business. Uptime has been good so far as well.
         | 
         | One disadvantage might be the Gigabit ports on most servers, if
         | you really need a lot of bandwidth.
        
       | programmer_dude wrote:
       | Is 58.31 = 5831 here? It's doubly confusing: dot instead of comma
       | and separator at the hundredths position.
        
         | ginko wrote:
         | Your nick is programmer_dude and a dot for a decimal point
         | confuses you?
        
           | floatingatoll wrote:
           | Let's not be a jerk to people who are trying to learn. We all
           | started out unaware of things we now consider essential
           | knowledge. For (my) example, timezones offsets can and do
           | include partial hour offsets (+0415 is/was real), and dates
           | should generally be YYYY-MM-DD (when not displayed to end
           | users) for your sanity (and because iso8601).
           | 
           | OP, you can look up the numeric formats for Germany in your
           | system preferences or Excel or similar -- it can help to see
           | them templated out sometimes.
        
             | rudian wrote:
             | The user has been "programmer_dude" for 6 years just on HN,
             | there's no chance that they didn't learn about the dot.
             | 
             | I'm confused as to how they can be confused.
             | 
             | Even in my comma-as-separator country, our calculators have
             | a dot. The only thing that could be confusing is
             | encountering numbers with 3 decimals: 123,456 vs 123.456
        
               | programmer_dude wrote:
               | See my reply to ginko.
        
           | programmer_dude wrote:
           | Yes, it managed to confuse me. Here's how...
           | 
           | 1. I did not notice the M1 was being offered on rent. I
           | assumed it was for sale at the listed price.
           | 
           | 2. Since 58.31 EUR is an unrealistic price for an M1 machine
           | (and since this is a European site) I concluded the site must
           | be using a comma instead of a dot. 5831 EUR is a realistic
           | price for a Mac afterall.
           | 
           | Unfortunately the site is using a dot for a dot despite being
           | European and the M1 is being offered on rent.
        
             | Doctor_Fegg wrote:
             | It's not selling you a Mac mini for EUR58.31. It's letting
             | you rent one for EUR58.31 a month. That's why it says
             | "monthly". Hetzner is a hosting provider.
             | 
             | [edit: this comment written before the parent comment was
             | edited to include point 1]
        
               | programmer_dude wrote:
               | The parent comment was posted with point one, the last
               | paragraph was introduced in the edit.
        
               | pantulis wrote:
               | Love HN's eventual consistency!
        
             | vineyardmike wrote:
             | > 5831 EUR is a realistic price for a Mac afterall.
             | 
             | Not really... the Mac Pro is famous for its high price, but
             | this explicitly says mac mini which is almost exactly an
             | order of magnitude less than 5831 EUR .
        
             | dkersten wrote:
             | > Unfortunately the site is using a dot for a dot despite
             | being European and the M1 is being offered on rent.
             | 
             | You're on the international version of the site.
             | 
             | If you go to the German version, they quote the price as
             | 58,31 EUR:
             | 
             | https://www.hetzner.de/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple
        
         | gizdan wrote:
         | In much of Europe commas are thousand separators, dots are
         | decimal point separators. So what you're seeing is fifty eight
         | euros and thirty one euro-cents.
        
           | moreira wrote:
           | You might be surprised to find that that is not the case in
           | Europe. In fact, apart from China and English-influenced
           | countries, very few countries around the world use dots for
           | decimal points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separat
           | or#Countries_us...
        
             | CameronNemo wrote:
             | But English and Chinese influenced countries comprise a
             | significant portion of the world. The top 3 most populous
             | countries use dots for decimals (China, India, United
             | States) according to your link.
        
               | moreira wrote:
               | You are right, and that is still not "in much of Europe".
        
         | hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
         | 58.31 EUR per month is between 58 and 59 euros per month.
        
         | 0x008 wrote:
         | in German comma = dot, so it is 58.31
        
       | durnygbur wrote:
       | Is Hetzner still sending paper contract over snail mail to use
       | their services? Then requiring the signed paper contract be sent
       | back by post? I haven't cared enough about their offer to check
       | by myself again.
        
         | chuckSu wrote:
         | Are you making up stories?
        
         | sgt wrote:
         | No, but I am sure they can accommodate fax for you.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | in the US I was required to file ID by paper to start an
         | account-- much later the project migrated, my manager
         | apparently stopped paying the bill and it was in my personal
         | name
        
         | Eldt wrote:
         | Just a photo of ID sent digitally for me (I'm in the EU, might
         | make a difference)
        
           | kleiba wrote:
           | Can you opt out of that and ask for a paper contract via
           | snail mail then?
        
         | input_sh wrote:
         | Never experienced anything like that, been a happy user for
         | about half a decade.
        
           | drcongo wrote:
           | Me neither, been using them for 15 years.
        
             | zibzab wrote:
             | They do this for new accounts, obviously it will not affect
             | you guys??
        
         | robjan wrote:
         | They asked for me to send a selfie holding my Hong Kong
         | Identity Card but no other bureaucracy.
        
         | simplyinfinity wrote:
         | I've been using them for the past 7 years, never had to provide
         | anything on paper, but ID/company validation is required.
        
         | dkersten wrote:
         | When did they require this? I haven't used Hetzner in about 8
         | years, but back then, I did not need to do this, I just signed
         | up online with a credit card.
        
         | maltalex wrote:
         | Never ran into that requirement.
         | 
         | I have a bare metal + several cloud instances on Hetzner.
        
       | julienfr112 wrote:
       | scaleway has also an M1 offer
        
       | jermaustin1 wrote:
       | I had actually bought a bunch of M1 Minis that I set up as a
       | video encoding farm. The organization I set it up for moved on,
       | so now I'm sitting with 8 M1 minis. 1 of them is my daily driver,
       | but the other 7 are just sitting there.
       | 
       | I contemplated setting up a rental service for them (something
       | like $40-50/mo?) since I have symmetric 2 gbps fiber to my
       | office, but I just haven't prioritized.
       | 
       | Are people actually interested enough for this to really be worth
       | it?
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | One can get a Mac Mini directly from Apple at $58.25/mo for 12
         | months. Granted, that does not include power and bandwidth but
         | it is also yours after just 12 months. I think a more
         | reasonable price point for lease would be around $25/month. Or
         | $50/mo but user owns it after two years, continuing to pay for
         | power/bandwidth.
         | 
         | Having said that, how would the user access this? Would you
         | have some kind of VMs or how did you imagine it?
        
           | Aulig wrote:
           | I rent mac minis because I need them to compile iOS apps. By
           | renting them from a datacenter I get better uptime & internet
           | speed & reliability than if I just set it up at home. That's
           | why I pay a premium for it.
        
             | 404mm wrote:
             | What kind of access do you get? Is it more about utilizing
             | GUI (with some KVM), ssh or some sort of agent process (eg
             | Jenkins or similar)
        
           | jermaustin1 wrote:
           | I think the benefit of paying $50/mo is that you only need it
           | for a month or 2, or only sporadically, you can just buy in
           | occasionally.
           | 
           | If re-imaging them wasn't such a pain in the ass, I'd offer
           | daily at something silly like $3/day. That way they only need
           | to rent it when they need it, and the 8 minis would stretch
           | farther, but I'd have to automate the re-image somehow, so
           | more work.
           | 
           | User would access it via VNC to a subdomain that is pointed
           | to a VLAN inside my office. They would be full metal to the
           | M1, not VMs.
        
         | schiederme wrote:
         | It requires a bunch of software development to get such a
         | service running. In a Cloud way. Also you need to enroll them
         | in an organization, so the user can not become rough and bind
         | them to their private Apple ID and bricking it.
         | 
         | You could donate them to open source projects for improving
         | their software (either physical or as a service).
        
           | jermaustin1 wrote:
           | > bind them to their private Apple ID and bricking it.
           | 
           | Would this actually brick them? Wouldn't a factory reset (how
           | I've always re-imaged Macs) not wipe that out?
        
             | httpsterio wrote:
             | If the users manage to get the hardware banned from Apple
             | dev tools, then it's as good as bricked in my opinion as it
             | can't function in its' intended fashion and a factory reset
             | doesn't help.
        
               | jermaustin1 wrote:
               | developer tools are linked to your iCloud. Why would
               | apple ban them at the hardware level?
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | A Linux based M1 Max with ECC memory (and no GPU) would be a
       | phenomenal server that could run the vast majority of hosting
       | workloads.
       | 
       | Hosting providers would also love it because it's super small
       | form factor and extremely low on power usage.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | sgt wrote:
       | That 19% you can get back if you are outside of Yurop.
        
         | Svip wrote:
         | Or if you are a business within the EU.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-10-19 23:02 UTC)