Mac mini colocation: ship your own Mac, connect it to local fibre, use it remotely

Mac mini, any generation from M1 onward — M1, M2, M4 and M4 Pro all work. The form factor is small, the power draw is low and there is no internal battery, which makes it the easiest machine to ship and leave powered on indefinitely.

MacBooks are generally not accepted: a battery held at full charge for months swells, and clamshell operation needs extra sleep handling. iMacs and Mac Studios can be assessed case by case, but shipping volume and breakage risk are both high, so packaging and insurance have to be agreed separately.

Before shipping, reset the machine and sign out of Find My so the activation lock is cleared. Without that step we cannot boot it at the far end.

Whichever generation you send, the practical requirements are the same: a working power supply, no firmware password, and a clean macOS install. A machine that still carries an activation lock cannot be provisioned and will be returned.

Once the machine arrives, we turn it into something you can reach at any time. Concretely:

• Rack and verify: unbox, test, power on, attach display and peripherals for initial setup, confirm hardware health.
• Connect: join the local carrier's gigabit fibre, configure routing and access, confirm the egress is residential.
• Keep it online: recover from power and network faults; walk over and power-cycle when the machine or the link hangs.
• Remote assistance: configure Tailscale, SSH and screen sharing; troubleshoot when you cannot get in.
• Handover: connection details, credentials, current egress IP and photos of the install, in one message.

The day-to-day cost of keeping hardware abroad is ours to carry: you do not fly out, do not need a friend on the ground, and do not wait on international couriers.

This section matters more than the previous one, because it draws the responsibility line.

• Data: your files stay yours — no uploads, no backups, no reading them. If troubleshooting needs access inside the OS, we ask first.
• Accounts: the accounts are yours — Claude, Apple ID and GitHub are yours to sign in to and manage.
• Credentials: we will not proactively read your account credentials or files.
• System: beyond the initial setup, no unknown software and no changes to your development environment.

In other words: we supply an attended location and a local fibre line. Everything inside the machine is yours.

Four steps from first message to first login. Most of the elapsed time is international freight.

¥199 per machine per month covers the location, power, fibre, racking and on-site maintenance. International freight and customs are not included. Billed monthly, one month minimum, ending when you stop renewing; the machine can be shipped back at your cost.