4 ms·

I wonder who precicely this is targeted for. The concept is interesting, but doesn't everyone who develops for macos already have a mac? Or is this actually an

I wonder who precicely this is targeted for. The concept is interesting, but doesn't everyone who develops for macos already have a mac? Or is this actually an economic path with respect to cloud computing?

k_bx 6y ago
Our startup relies on server-side HTML rendering in Headless Chrome, and some ImageMagick image manipulation. Due to how optimised these machines are for this use-case, I do plan to evaluate them to replace the much pricier AWS instances.
- catmanjan 6y ago
  Have you tried browserless.io?
  - k_bx 6y ago
    Thanks, might check it out
- bzb6 6y ago
  I don’t see how those things need a Mac
  - bartvk 6y ago
    But they could have a preference for the platform, no?
  - jiofih 6y ago
    A dedicated x86 machine with equivalent performance for those two tasks is a lot more expensive.
    - gallexme 6y ago
      (if i get it correctly it's mostly cause it's a gpu bound task? (hardware acceleration of the browser engine?)) Back in 2017 hetzner offered gtx1080s for around 70€ a month with 64gb ram and and a 4+ghz quad Intel CPU, n 2x 512gb ssd Im sure these days it's not hard enough to find smth with equilavent processing power in that price range Maybe even direct contact with hetzner could help you out these days(they stopped offering them cause of abuse) And if it's not a gpu bound task but badly concurrently cpu tasks Then maybe a game server specific dedicated hosting (they use consumer CPUs with uo to 5+ghz single core performance) wouldn't also be a lot of money N if its a good concurrency task then the amd CPU offering of hetzner beats all(high memory, insanely fast iops, lots of core) , and has a offering for 5950x these days
      - jiofih 6y ago
        5950x is 117€ / month on Hetzner. The M1 actually beats it in single core performance, and is quite a bit faster at running JavaScript for that headless browser due to design optimizations.
  - k_bx 6y ago
    They don’t and currently work on Linux. It just might turn out to be much cheaper to use this one
Thorrez 6y ago
I would guess it's for people who need to run automated tests that their Mac M1 software works. Or maybe there's some program that only works on M1 and they need to run it in an automated manner (a compiler?).
- canofbars 6y ago
  Its almost always cheaper to just buy a mac mini than to rent one out 24/7 though. I think Apple also made a tos change banning renting them by the hour as well.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    Will take a year for the rent to cover the price of a mini, and it includes bandwidth, IP assignment and power. Not a bad deal at all.
  - oblio 6y ago
    If you're a small operation, maybe. If you're a big company you probably want to have a service, not extra hardware you have to manage, and the rental cost is a rounding error for your software development costs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hmsimha 6y ago
> I wonder who precicely this is targeted for. The concept is interesting, but doesn't everyone who develops for macos already have a mac? Maybe, but is everyone who develops for OSX going to have an M1 in 2021-2022? I just bought a refurbished Intel-based Macbook Air (for just $50 shy of what a new M1 Air would have cost) due to concerns about virtualization software compatibility. People developing software to run on OSX may not want to invest in M1 machines this early, and small-to-midsized companies who rely on their Mac farms to run test suites etc. may not want to duplicate their infrastructure just to validate their software on M1, when they can perhaps meet their needs by using elastic M1 services.
zingar 6y ago
One of the obstacles to docker coming to m1 was being able to set up their test pipeline with m1 instances. Beyond that sort of thing I am mystified
pmontra 6y ago
A customer of mine runs a static and dynamic vulnerability analysis service for Android and iOS apps (their customers are the companies developing those apps.) They have Mac Minis to perform some processing that Apple wants to be done only on a Mac.
trollski 6y ago
sheep who cannot do simple math and/or are embedded in a mba genertaed bureacracy. that means 99% of population out there.
benzible 6y ago
I'm doing some work for a company that develops apps on behalf of clients. There are dozens and likely soon, hundreds of apps that sometimes all need to be updated at once. The process is automated using Fastlane but it still takes significant time per app, esp. if new screenshots are needed. We've got this running on a MacStadium-hosted Mac mini. Seems like a perfect use case. Scaleway is a little cheaper but it looks like they don't have any M1s available currently.

k_bx 6y ago

Our startup relies on server-side HTML rendering in Headless Chrome, and some ImageMagick image manipulation. Due to how optimised these machines are for this use-case, I do plan to evaluate them to replace the much pricier AWS instances.

catmanjan 6y ago
Have you tried browserless.io?
- k_bx 6y ago
  Thanks, might check it out
bzb6 6y ago
I don’t see how those things need a Mac
- bartvk 6y ago
  But they could have a preference for the platform, no?
- jiofih 6y ago
  A dedicated x86 machine with equivalent performance for those two tasks is a lot more expensive.
  - gallexme 6y ago
    (if i get it correctly it's mostly cause it's a gpu bound task? (hardware acceleration of the browser engine?)) Back in 2017 hetzner offered gtx1080s for around 70€ a month with 64gb ram and and a 4+ghz quad Intel CPU, n 2x 512gb ssd Im sure these days it's not hard enough to find smth with equilavent processing power in that price range Maybe even direct contact with hetzner could help you out these days(they stopped offering them cause of abuse) And if it's not a gpu bound task but badly concurrently cpu tasks Then maybe a game server specific dedicated hosting (they use consumer CPUs with uo to 5+ghz single core performance) wouldn't also be a lot of money N if its a good concurrency task then the amd CPU offering of hetzner beats all(high memory, insanely fast iops, lots of core) , and has a offering for 5950x these days
    - jiofih 6y ago
      5950x is 117€ / month on Hetzner. The M1 actually beats it in single core performance, and is quite a bit faster at running JavaScript for that headless browser due to design optimizations.
- k_bx 6y ago
  They don’t and currently work on Linux. It just might turn out to be much cheaper to use this one

Thorrez 6y ago

I would guess it's for people who need to run automated tests that their Mac M1 software works. Or maybe there's some program that only works on M1 and they need to run it in an automated manner (a compiler?).

canofbars 6y ago
Its almost always cheaper to just buy a mac mini than to rent one out 24/7 though. I think Apple also made a tos change banning renting them by the hour as well.
- jiofih 6y ago
  Will take a year for the rent to cover the price of a mini, and it includes bandwidth, IP assignment and power. Not a bad deal at all.
- oblio 6y ago
  If you're a small operation, maybe. If you're a big company you probably want to have a service, not extra hardware you have to manage, and the rental cost is a rounding error for your software development costs.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hmsimha 6y ago

> I wonder who precicely this is targeted for. The concept is interesting, but doesn't everyone who develops for macos already have a mac? Maybe, but is everyone who develops for OSX going to have an M1 in 2021-2022? I just bought a refurbished Intel-based Macbook Air (for just $50 shy of what a new M1 Air would have cost) due to concerns about virtualization software compatibility. People developing software to run on OSX may not want to invest in M1 machines this early, and small-to-midsized companies who rely on their Mac farms to run test suites etc. may not want to duplicate their infrastructure just to validate their software on M1, when they can perhaps meet their needs by using elastic M1 services.

zingar 6y ago

One of the obstacles to docker coming to m1 was being able to set up their test pipeline with m1 instances. Beyond that sort of thing I am mystified

pmontra 6y ago

A customer of mine runs a static and dynamic vulnerability analysis service for Android and iOS apps (their customers are the companies developing those apps.) They have Mac Minis to perform some processing that Apple wants to be done only on a Mac.

trollski 6y ago

sheep who cannot do simple math and/or are embedded in a mba genertaed bureacracy. that means 99% of population out there.

benzible 6y ago

I'm doing some work for a company that develops apps on behalf of clients. There are dozens and likely soon, hundreds of apps that sometimes all need to be updated at once. The process is automated using Fastlane but it still takes significant time per app, esp. if new screenshots are needed. We've got this running on a MacStadium-hosted Mac mini. Seems like a perfect use case. Scaleway is a little cheaper but it looks like they don't have any M1s available currently.