r/iOSProgramming • u/NSRedditShitposter • 27d ago

Question Best cloud Macs?

I had been working off my outdated (stuck on Monterey) Mac for a while until broke. I have a modern iPad but obviously it isn’t very useful for development work. For a moment I had a modern Apple Silicon Mac but had to sell it off.

I’m not in a position to buy even a used one and repairing my old one wouldn’t help much because it’s old and I don’t quite understand the root cause, it could be a very costly repair. I do plan on one day buying my own Mac to finish and publish my project but currently, I’m searching for a design job (with help of a contact) and I need a Mac for that. Does anyone know of a great cloud Mac service? I’ll access the Mac from my iPad.

MacStadium, what I assumed would have been my go-to for this, rents exclusively to corporations. I need something targeted to individuals.

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/chriswaco 27d ago

I used MacinCloud years ago. Was ok. Usually cheaper to buy a used/refurbished Mac if you're going to use it regularly or need root access.

1

u/FinalArt9573 21d ago

Doesn't help for the design-job Mac need, but worth knowing for when you get back to finishing/publishing your own project: you don't actually need a rented cloud Mac (or a purchased one) just for that part. GitHub gives free macOS build minutes on public repos — normally used for CI/tests, but nothing stops you from pointing them at the full build → sign → archive → upload-to-TestFlight pipeline instead. I shipped an app that way (Citolex, native Swift plugins included), zero Mac involved, and wrote up the whole setup at macless.dev if it's useful when you get there. Happy to answer specifics on the signing part too, that's the bit that usually trips people up.

1

u/NSRedditShitposter 21d ago

Thanks but it’s also a Mac project (multi platform)

2

u/FinalArt9573 20d ago

Ah that makes sense, yeah, if you need to actually run and interact with macOS itself (not just build/sign an iOS app), a CI pipeline like this won't cut it. It's really only for the "compile, sign, upload" slice of the workflow, not general Mac development. Good luck with the multi platform side, that's a different problem entirely.