Who Cobalt is for.
The same Mac mini M4 for everyone. What it changes depends on how you build.
Indie developers
Ship your side project without buying a Mac
You don't need a Mac of your own to put an app on the App Store. Build in Xcode on a Cobalt Mac for a day, a week or a month, and stop paying when you stop building.
Get startedWorks from Windows, Linux or an old laptop
No monthly bill: a side project pays only for the days it builds
Admin rights to add CocoaPods, Fastlane or anything else you use
App studios
One Mac per client, billed back cleanly
Sign in to each client's Apple account on that client's Mac alone, so repositories and signing never mix, and upload to TestFlight from the client's own App Store Connect account.
Talk to usA separate Mac per client, attached to its project
Every session in your usage log with its date and price, ready to bill back
Add Macs the week before a launch and drop them after
Bring in App Experts for overflow work once the marketplace opens
In-house teams
One developer or ten, the same setup
Each engineer launches their own Mac from their own account, with the same Xcode, so a build that works on one Mac works on the next. Add your team's tools once, in a setup script everyone runs.
| Solo | Team | |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts | One | One per developer; there is no shared team account |
| Macs | One Mac mini M4 | One Mac mini M4 per developer, launched independently |
| Machine and Xcode | The same on every Mac | The same on every Mac |
| Credit balance | Personal | Personal; balances are not pooled |
| Price per credit | €1, any amount | €1 for every developer, any amount |