Thank you MacInCloud for my “A” in my iOS course
I was provided service for this post. I was in no other way compensated. All opinions are my own.
As many of you know, I am getting a Masters of Computer Science from Utah State University. I am taking classes remotely in the evenings. When it came time to take a course in iOS development, I had some problems I needed to resolve.
- I don’t own an computer with an Apple Operating System.
- You can only compile code for iOS on OS X.
So I started considering investing in a Mac laptop, but it was too pricey of an option. Sure as I am already well into my career as a Senior Software Engineer, I could afford it, but just because I have money doesn’t mean I want to waste it. I already have a nice Lenovo T530 from work. I have an older Lenovo T61p that I own (mostly a paperweight since I never use it). I have a nice HP desktop, and my wife has a nice HP laptop. What would I do with another computer?
I looked at a Mac mini and even it was too pricey, so I started looking at used ones. But no matter what I purchased, it was too much money for something that, as a Senior .NET Developer, I likely wouldn’t use once the class was over.
Then I found MacInCloud. MacInCloud is exactly what it sounds like. A Mac in the cloud. I could remote desktop to this Mac and write and compile my iOS apps for my class. With academic plans starting at $16 a month, I couldn’t pass it up.
Well, I used MacInCloud exclusively throughout my iOS course and I am happy to say I got an A. I want to personally thank this company for existing. Some members of my class did pay for the service. I probably should have gotten some feedback from some of them, but they were on-campus and I am a remote student so I didn’t make the effort.
MacInCloud Pros
- Everything I need was already on the box: Xcode, iOS emulator. If I had purchased my own Mac, I would have spend a few hours setting it up, including installing the development tools. But with MacInCloud, those tools were already there.
- The remote control was for the most part quite fast.
- I used Dropbox and stored my files in a Dropbox folder, so everything I wrote automatically synced to my personal machine.
- MacInCloud was the cheapest solution by a long ways. In fact, with the price of a nice Mac laptop, I could pay for MacInCloud’s service for close to two years.
MacInCloud Cons
- Well, it is in the cloud, so it has the same con that everything in the cloud has. When my internet was down, I couldn’t use it. My cable modem needed to be reset a few times and one day Comcast’s service was really bad (less that .5 Mb down one day).
- I couldn’t get the remote control screen to autofit to the size of my local screen.
- The refresh of the screen wasn’t perfect through remote control. Sometimes I had to move a window to get the contents to refresh.
Would I recommend MacInCloud?
Yes. The con’s didn’t prevent me from getting an A in my iOS course. I would recommend it to anybody.
About 18 months ago, my company had a Mac training and didn’t have enough Macs. This service probably existed and if my company had known about it, we probably would have bought a dozen developers a month or two of service.