What type of mac should I get for iphone development?

Question

I understand that I need to have a mac for developing iphone applications as indicated here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/297533/hosted-mac-os-x-iphone-development

And in other locations.

What I'm not sure of, however, is what kind of mac would be good for this type of development?

I've never done any kind of development on a mac and would like something that isn't terribly slow but I don't need the top of the line either.

What mac would you suggest for iphone application development (specifically some 2d games)?

G-Man

Answer 1

I think a Mac Mini with upgraded memory should be enough for that purpose.

Answer 2

I got myself a Mac Mini for precisely this purpose. If you want to dip your toe in iPhone development get one of these. XCode works just fine and they are pretty cheap!

Answer 3

Don't do a hackintosh with an old PC. You can do it, but the SDK is an evolving platform and Apple sometimes ties SDK updates to the OS update path, so you need to be able to easily keep pace with the changes. You can't do that on an hackintosh because the slightest system update will hork your system into unbootability.

I would go with the mini if you are just want to give it a try. Go for a low-end macbook if you want/need portability. Anything beyond that is overkill until you get serious about it, although I do love my Mac Pro's sub 1 second compile times.

Answer 4

The cheapest one possible.

I've seen a few people go apeS**t on mac hardware so they can be in on the app-store goldrush - and none of them have completed anything. It may turn out that iphone dev isn't your cup of tea.

at the moment the cheapest one is the Mac mini. Good luck.

Answer 5

I'd recommend getting a regular MacBook (the 2.0GHZ version for $1,299.00 will totally suffice). You remain mobile and it's almost as good as a MacBook Pro (and cheaper;-)

Answer 6

Consider the option of buying a refurbished model or picking up a used Intel mac on ebay. A lot of die-hard apple fans want the latest and greatest, so there's a fair amount of relatively recent hardware out there for a lot less than the new stuff.

Answer 7

A used one from craigslist.

Answer 8

I bought a used macbook pro on ebay for about $650 - got some dings/dents in the cover and some wear, but it does the trick quite nicely.

Answer 9

The more important criteria is which version of OS X you're using. You have to be using OS X 10.5 (Leopard) to do current iPhone SDK programming. This will obviously switch to v10.6 (Snow Leopard) in the not too distant future, so you probably want a machine that can handle the expected minimum suggested system for that OS.

I haven't seen any firm specs, but my quick perusal of the Apple 10.6 site give the impression that a) it must be an Intel-based Mac b) It should be at least 2GHz processor and c) at least 1GB RAM, probably 2GB.