Python and iPhone development on Mac - minimum/recommended hardware ?

Question

What is the minimum configuration to do some Python and iPhone development on Mac ?

• Platform wise: Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Mac Book, Mac Book Pro ?
• Memory requirement
• CPU speed

Thanks for your advice.

Laurent

Answer 1

Any of those platforms are going to be more than adequate for iPhone development, but since Apple is not allowing anything that requires a VM or an interpreted environment, there is no way to do iPhone development using Python at this time.

EDIT: Looks like I misread that as doing Python development on an iPhone, so just ignore the second part of my answer. Any of those platforms are going to be fine for either iPhone or Python development.

Answer 2

The minimum requirement is an intel mac. Any intel mac will work. iPhone development is unsupported on PPC.

Python can be done on any mac that runs os x.

The minimum requirement, and what's pleasant are different things. Everything you've listed will work pretty great. You might want to bump up the ram a little on what they ship with, but other than that you're good to go.

Answer 3

Rather ephemeral in our requirements, aren't we. 'Some' python/iPhone....

You will be well served by a mini, starting @ $600, they're a steal. Upgrade the processor (2.53ghz), add RAM to 4GB (after purchase, if you're comfortable) throw a generic keyboard, mouse and Monitor on it and you've got a heck of a machine.

Don't bother with a HD upgrade, just get an external USB disk and put all your VM's and extra necessities on it.

Answer 4

Any system that Apple sells is sufficient to do Python and iPhone development on the Mac. I generally consider 2 GB to be the minimum amount of RAM that I would want to use, and 4 GB if I'm going to be doing any significant amount of work in a VM (for instance, VMware Fusion or Parallels for running Windows within Mac OS X). But I think all configurations currently come with at least 2 GB of RAM, so you should be set there, too.

Of course faster machines are always better, so you should get a machine that's fast enough for you, but I have a couple year old Mac Book Pro and find that's fast enough for me.

The biggest help for development is multiple monitors. Having two monitors helps a lot (and three is good, too). I believe that all of Apple's current systems support two monitors.