MacinCloud overview/summary

Remote access through the internet lets us access a computer that someone else owns, but which displays on our computer screen. MacinCloud is one that's fairly straightforward, as these go, and it's useful both for PC users who want to run Vellum, a Mac program, or for older Mac users who want a newer operating system to run the most recent version of Vellum.

• Visit their website: MacinCloud.com
• Vellum license when you're ready to export books: SkinnerBooks.com/vellum

Transcript

[00:00:00] It can feel frustrating as a self-publishing author to have your book written, and then you get to ready to publish it and it’s like, oh, but there’s special book formatting that I need, and, oh, I hear Vellum’s good, but it’s not available for PC. What do I do?

[00:00:19] I know I was bothered by that when I got to the point where I was pretty comfortable formatting for print, but ebooks were a different story. They needed web page coding, of all things. What, I don’t even understand that. And when I heard about this “MacinCloud” site to be able to test out Vellum, I was, I was kind of hesitant. I was kind of skeptical. I was like, do I want to go through the extra hoops to do this?

[00:00:42] But. I didn’t want to take the time to learn coding for the level of ebooks that I wanted, and I deserved better ebooks, and so did my clients. So at that point, my curiosity won and it didn’t take long before I was hooked, and I realized that Vellum really was going to be an asset to what I was doing for myself and for my clients.

[00:01:00] MacinCloud is one of a few options that we have for accessing what is called a remote server. Basically it’s another computer that you access through the internet. So if we take a real life comparison, um, here in the United States, we have facilities dedicated to what’s called self storage or storage units.

[00:01:21] So basically they can range from a locker sized unit to a closet size and all the way up to garage size ones that will fit a car. So the principle is that I’m accessing this remote unit, which isn’t at my house, but I’m storing my things and I’m accessing basically when and what I want to do, but it’s, I don’t use my house keys because this is not my house. This is remote storage away from my house.

[00:01:49] So MacinCloud is like this concept. I’m renting access to a separate computer, which is at a cloud data center, which is one of these huge buildings that house nothing but computers in them. They’re just giant racks. There’s no screens or keyboards, and a lot of them aren’t quite this shiny, but it’s just the brains of these computer units. And so we can access a Mac computer at one of these locations and MacinCloud is one way that we can do that.

[00:02:15] We access these through our internet connections and MacinCloud is what I recommend to new users because it already has Vellum installed, it’s a reasonably priced way for PC users to test Vellum without having to buy another computer that’s new enough to be able to run the most recent Vellum updates, and enough people use Vellum on MacinCloud that it’s pretty easy to get help from some of the self-publisher communities.

[00:02:40] There are different options, and I’ll walk you through signing up, but basically the “Pay As You Go” or the “Managed Server” options are what you want. You won’t need a lot of storage because Vellum doesn’t take a lot to run, and you don’t have to buy the Vellum license until you actually get to where you’re ready to generate your books. So other than the cost in MacinCloud to access and test Vellum, Vellum is free to test.

[00:03:08] Now to go along with the storage unit comparison, if we’ve accessed something here, we don’t just leave the premises, we also do lock up our storage unit. So in this case [MacinCloud], we also have to log out, which is less of a theft issue than it is just a if, if we have any of the Pay As You Go per hours, it will keep ticking if you don’t actually log out.

[00:03:30] These other options have daily limits, which also keep ticking. It’s not as big of a deal if you’re only getting on once a day, but if you’re planning on getting back multiple times during the day, you do need to log out and then leave the premises or leave the the website or the window that you’re using to access MacinCloud.

[00:03:47] I’ll walk you through all the steps of all the access. You will need Dropbox or another cloud storage to be able to access your files. Your computer passwords will not work once you get here because again, this is someone else’s access. You can’t copy paste here. So just a number of little things that you have to get used to for accessing through a remote server.

[00:04:10] I hope this helps MacinCloud make a little more sense, and I may touch on a couple of other options that people have to be able to access from a PC if you’re a little more tech-minded. And if you want to just jump straight in and sign up for yourself, then either the Pay As You Go or the Managed Server options will do what you need, with one of the newer operating systems, and you don’t need a lot of memory or the other add-ons that they offer you.

[00:04:32] The Pay As You Go options do expire after 60 days, but that’s 60 days after your last login. So as long as you’re regularly logging in, it’s going to keep bumping that back for you to be able to keep access to these hours.

[00:04:45] We’ll go into more details in other videos, but I hope this is helpful. Have a great day.