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Cloud-Based M4 and M4 Pro Mac Mini Models Now Available

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Developers now have access to cloud-based M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini units via MacWeb, a Silicon Valley-based provider of cloud services.

m4-mac-mini-hands-on.jpg

The company has launched three configurations of the new Mac mini, powered by Apple's M4 and M4 Pro chips. Developers and IT teams can rent these machines for tasks ranging from basic development to advanced artificial intelligence modeling, providing an efficient and scalable infrastructure option without the need to purchase expensive hardware outright. A new Mac mini can range from $599 for a base M4 model to $1,999 for a high-end M4 Pro model with 64GB of unified memory.

The three configurations include the MacWeb Base M4 at $99 per month, the MacWeb Power M4 Pro at $199 per month, and the MacWeb Ultimate M4 Pro at $299 per month. The Base M4, featuring the standard M4 chip, is designed for virtual desktops and small-scale tasks. The Power M4 Pro includes a 12-core CPU and 24GB of unified memory, making it suitable for application development and testing. The Ultimate M4 Pro, MacWeb's most advanced tier, offers a 14-core CPU, a 20-core GPU, and 64GB of unified memory, capable of handling intensive workloads such as AI model training and mission-critical applications.

MacWeb touts the potential of its M4 Pro configurations to support advanced networking capabilities using Thunderbolt 5. According to the company, Thunderbolt 5 delivers 80 Gbps of bi-directional bandwidth, a performance leap described as being up to 800 percent faster than 10G Ethernet. This apparently enables seamless clustering of Mac minis, allowing users to pool resources for distributed computing tasks, including video editing and large-scale software testing.

Companies like AWS has offered similar services in recent years, but MacWeb's integration of Apple's latest Mac hardware positions it at the forefront of the market, along with MacStadium. MacWeb has retained its M2-based offerings for developers with less demanding performance requirements.

Article Link: Cloud-Based M4 and M4 Pro Mac Mini Models Now Available
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/12/11/cloud-m4-mac-mini-models-now-available/
What are the main use cases that make this business viable? Must be only for very short term higher compute tasks in between higher compute custom systems. From the description it sounds like it’s mainly for video fx/rendering but is there that much demand? How can this business even survive?
 
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neotint said:
What are the main use cases that make this business viable? Must be only for very short term higher compute tasks in between higher compute custom systems. From the description it sounds like it’s mainly for video fx/rendering but is there that much demand? How can this business even survive?
Click to expand...
Short-term use, and when you don't have an infrastructure team available to set this up, plus ongoing management of the infrastructure. The costs of an environment aren't just the initial upfront hardware cost.
 
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Spock said:
Sell the Mac mini and make some of your money back.
Click to expand...
Does that recoup the IT costs in getting something set up and managed for a few months? Some of us do our own IT, but not everyone has those abilities. It's likely way less expensive to rent for a few months than to pay for the machines, pay someone to set up and support, and then sell. If not, then buy and sell. Personally, I'd buy and then resell, but I'm comfortable being my own tech support.
 
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neuropsychguy said:
Does that recoup the IT costs in getting something set up and managed for a few months? Some of us do our own IT, but not everyone has those abilities. It's likely way less expensive to rent for a few months than to pay for the machines, pay someone to set up and support, and then sell. If not, then buy and sell. Personally, I'd buy and then resell, but I'm comfortable being my own tech support.
Click to expand...
I think it can depend on the size of the organization as well. I don't think that this is meant for the enterprise market. After you paid the legal team to go over the EULA and then pass the service onto security for evaluation you could most likely buy a couple Mac minis and keep them on-site.
 
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Seconding the rest of the people, need a Mac mini? Buy and actually just keep it, it’s a good machine for the years to come.
Not quite following “the IT setup and time” required, in my experience: turn it on, follow the clicks, enter your Apple ID and be ready to do the job?
 
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I don't see a use case. It's just a VNC or SSH remote-into-the-desktop setup. It's not like they have some additional software layer that allows you to, say, combine 20 Macs into some giant Mac for High Performance Computing (HPC has been a term in the cloud for years). It takes specialized software (such as a video tool) to knowingly farm out all the work to X back-end machines in order to perform better than running that same tool on a single machine.

If someone is going to remote-in to one of these machines for some kind of 90 day use case (because why would you pay for 12+ months at these prices?), I'd love to read the use case. I understand the whole benefit of having the cloud folks manage the systems but your end user would still need to upload Mac data/tools to it...so they're already on a Mac. Why not simply buy those employees local machines? Spending $1500-$3000 on a nice Mac Mini is market price for any kind of corporate employee. Even a small business should be able to budget this kind of money for a project/job role that requires this computing need.
 
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You're not thinking big enough.

Think 70 milion potential customers of your mobile app, 10s of developers, programmers and designers, who starts 3000 builds a day, and needs to have the exact same environment to test, the exact same versions of the whole tool chain across all machines.

www.macstadium.com

Case Study: Capital One

Capital One partnered designed a MacStadium private cloud with mixed Mac and HP Blade infrastructure, Pure Storage, and VMware virtualization to scale as fast as their mobile efforts and time to provision a virtual build/test environment plummeted from 20-30 minutes to mere seconds.
www.macstadium.com www.macstadium.com
 
Good to see that such services are available for those who need it. But I would purchase it outright rather than renting it. And if it is no longer required in the future, sell it.
 
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Spock said:
Sell the Mac mini and make some of your money back.
Click to expand...
Businesses aren't setup for this type of effort. There are transaction costs for everything. It sounds dumb, but spending $1k on a service like this is often less costly to a company than buying something for $500, setting it up and then trying to sell it after you have used it.
 
StuBeck said:
Businesses aren't setup for this type of effort. There are transaction costs for everything. It sounds dumb, but spending $1k on a service like this is often less costly to a company than buying something for $500, setting it up and then trying to sell it after you have used it.
Click to expand...
I don't think this is aimed at business or enterprise markets at all.
 
It's an interesting idea, but the prices are insane. $100/month to rent a base model that costs $600? I get why they need to charge that much (massive overhead), but who would pay that much?
 
This for developers not someone who needs one or two units.

Developers use cloud based computing for many reasons:

💰 Cost-Efficiency
- Pay-as-you-go—no hefty upfront cost!
- Perfect for short-term projects or freelancers.

📈 Scalability
- Scale resources instantly for big builds or tests.
- No worries about hardware becoming obsolete.

🌍 Remote Collaboration
- Access your Mac mini from anywhere in the world.
- Teams can share resources seamlessly.

⚙️ Zero Maintenance
- Say goodbye to hardware upkeep—cloud providers handle it all.
- High uptime with minimal downtime risks.

🔧 Diverse Testing
- Test apps on multiple configurations (M4 vs. M4 Pro) without owning both.
- Ideal for CI/CD workflows.

🛠️ Regulatory Compliance
- Meet Apple’s requirements for macOS-based dev tools like Xcode, hassle-free.

🏠 Space & Energy Savings
- No need for desk space or worrying about energy bills.


#MacMini #AppleM4 #CloudComputing #AppDevelopment #DeveloperLife #Xcode #Scalability
 
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