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.

1. I don’t own an computer with an Apple Operating System.
2. 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

1. 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.
2. The remote control was for the most part quite fast.
3. I used Dropbox and stored my files in a Dropbox folder, so everything I wrote automatically synced to my personal machine.
4. 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

1. 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).
2. I couldn’t get the remote control screen to autofit to the size of my local screen.
3.  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.