Please help us: We're looking for a Mac Mini for our ODL!

Before we step into explaining what we are talking about: Please share this article with your friends, so that we can reach the biggest possible audience. You're going to do us a huge favour this way. THANK YOU!

Why do we need a »big« computer at all?

Developers visiting our ODL for testing their work need to test on as many as possible mobile phones, tablets and other devices in parallel. To accomplish this a »central unit« is needed, which controls all the devices (e.g. using Adobe Edge Inspect or ghostlab).

Why a Mac?

An ODL is not excusively about mobile phones, it is rather about web enabled devices in general. Also »regular« desktop computers count as such, covering the usual operating systems like Windows, Linux and Mac OS. For some reasons it is difficult for us to provide and house dedicated boxes for all these cases. Fortunately there are means of installing and running several operating systems on one single physical machine in parallel. And in general, this is most easily done on Mac hardware as base system. Also, some of the available debugging tools are currently Mac-only (like e.g. ghostlab).

We would like to provide our ODL visitors with the best possible preconditions – a Mac as the cental unit would just be the perfect choice for this.

Why exactly a Mac mini?

Well, the name says it all: It's »mini«. Being the central unit of the ODL isn't specifically demanding, and we are kind of limited in terms of space. Even as the smallest member of the Apple family the Mac mini is capable of doing all what we need, while still being very stowable.

What you can do?

In general, we are thankful for any kind of help! In the simplest case you can do us a favour by sharing this article with your friends via Facebook, Google+, Twitter or wherever you like (please really consider sharing rather than just liking – we're also appreciating every like, but rather no one else will ever know ...). Of course you might also tell your friends about all this in »real« life, beyond Facebook & Co. ;)

Maybe you also know someone (who knows someone ...) who has got a Mac mini, but doesn't use it anymore: Please tell him about us and our ODL!

Or maybe you are in touch with a company that might be interested in a sponsoring and would like to get some advertisement in return: Then please make contact with us!

Finally: We don't necessarily want the Mac mini to be given as a present. Although our budget definitely is very limited – as the whole project is completely non-profit – there are some very little means of compensation available. However, we won't resist as well if someone just wants to please us ... ;)

Thank you!

While setting up the ODL Nuremberg in the last few weeks there have been so many so positive surprises, that we don't want to miss the chance to say thank you to all who have already helped us so generously. We are really very proud of being witness as something truly awesome like this is emerging through the support of some committed ones, and that it is not targeted at profit but at community. If it wasn't like this, we could be pretty sure that no one would ever read these lines. But this way we are rather confident that we could succeed in our search for a Mac mini – with your help. Thanks for that! :)