[freediver]

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?

[jermaustin1]

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.

[Aulig]

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]

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)