FAQ

A dedicated Apple silicon Mac mini — your own physical machine, not a shared server or a virtualised slice. Nobody else runs workloads on it while you're a customer.

Tiers run from an M1 (Budget, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB) up to an M4 Pro (Max, 24 GB RAM, 1 TB). See the pricing page for the full spec breakdown.

Neither. It's a dedicated physical Mac mini that runs macOS natively on Apple silicon. There is no hypervisor, no container layer, no other tenants. You get the full machine.

This is the whole point — virtualised Mac offerings exist, but they come with caveats. Real hardware means full GPU access, proper Metal performance, and no surprises from shared-resource contention.

Via Tailscale. When your machine is provisioned you'll be invited to a private Tailscale network (tailnet). From that point, your Mac mini appears on your tailnet like any other device — no port forwarding, no public IP to worry about.

Once on the tailnet you have two options:

• SSH — key-based, fast, for terminal work and CI/CD.
• Screen Sharing / Remote Desktop — macOS Screen Sharing (built-in) or Jump Desktop for a fuller experience. Both run over Tailscale.

Full setup walkthrough in the Getting Started guide.

Mostly, yes. You have a standard user account with broad permissions — you can install most apps from the App Store and apps distributed as regular macOS installers without needing admin rights.

For anything that requires an admin password (system extensions, kernel extensions, some developer tools), just ask and we'll install it for you. There's no extra charge for admin installs.

The one constraint: we don't give out the admin password or sudo access directly. This protects the integrity of the managed base image and keeps all machines in the fleet consistent. Pro tier customers get root access — see pricing.

The latest stable release of macOS. We manage OS updates via MDM and apply them on a rolling basis, typically within a few weeks of Apple releasing a new version. We'll give you notice before any major OS updates.

If you need to stay on a specific macOS version for compatibility reasons (e.g. a particular Xcode version), let us know at sign-up and we'll arrange it.

We take a nightly snapshot of your home directory and store it encrypted on Backblaze B2. Snapshots are kept for 14 rolling days.

To restore, open a support ticket with the date you want to roll back to. We aim to complete restores within 4 hours during business hours (UK time).

A few caveats worth knowing:

• Snapshots cover your home directory, not the full system.
• We don't back up full disk images — just your data.
• For anything truly critical, we'd encourage you to maintain your own off-site backups as well.

Yes — this is one of the main use cases. Xcode is pre-installed on request and we can set up the machine for CI runners (GitHub Actions self-hosted, Bitrise, Fastlane, etc.).

Because it's a real Mac running real macOS, there are no compatibility surprises. Simulator runs, code signing, notarisation — it all works the same as your local machine.

Apple silicon is excellent for local inference. The unified memory architecture means even the base M1 can run small-to-medium models (7B–13B parameters) at useful speeds without a discrete GPU.

Popular tools that work well:

• Ollama — easiest way to get started, great model library
• llama.cpp — maximum flexibility and performance
• MLX — Apple's own ML framework, optimised for Apple silicon, fast for fine-tuning and inference

The M4 Pro (Max tier, 24 GB unified memory) handles larger models comfortably. If you're planning to run 70B+ models, get in touch to discuss your requirements.

We're targeting 99.5%+ monthly uptime across the fleet. Machines are on a UPS, on a stable internet connection, and we get paged if something goes offline.

That said — this is a best-effort service, not an enterprise SLA with financial penalties. If you need guaranteed four-nines uptime with contractual remedies, we're probably not the right fit. For most development and automation workloads, 99.5% is plenty.

Usually within 24 hours of confirming your slot and completing payment. We're rolling out in small batches, so provisioning is done carefully rather than at scale.

You'll get a confirmation email once your machine is ready. It links you to your dashboard (where you reveal your credentials), reminds you to install Tailscale on your computer first, and links to the Getting Started guide for the full walkthrough.

Yes. Upgrades take effect immediately and are billed pro-rata for the remainder of the current month. Downgrades take effect at the start of your next billing cycle.

Note that a downgrade may involve migrating to a different physical machine, which requires a snapshot restore. We'll coordinate this with you to minimise disruption.

You retain access until the end of your current billing period. After that, your machine is wiped and reallocated. We'll send a reminder before the wipe so you have time to download anything you need.

Backups are deleted within 14 days of account termination.

Email is the primary channel — reply to any of our emails or use the address on your invoice. We're a small operation so you get a real human, not a ticketing bot.

Max tier customers get a dedicated Slack channel for faster back-and-forth.

Response times: within a few hours for most requests during UK business hours; same day for anything urgent.

In the Cotswolds, UK. Not a data centre in the US, not a cloud provider with a UK availability zone — physical hardware in England.

This matters for latency (particularly useful if you're in the UK or Europe), for data residency (your data doesn't leave the UK), and for legal clarity (UK law applies).