What are the recommended system reqs for the iPhone SDK emulator?

Question

I know that the iPhone SDK requires Leopard, i.e. ~900mHz G4+ w/ 512MB RAM. And I've used XCode in the past, so I have a good idea of how that performs. But I've never used the iPhone emulator included with the SDK, and I'm wondering what kind of CPU/memory resources it needs to run smoothly.

I would just download it and see for myself, but my (ancient) iBook can't run Leopard. Before I go buy a new machine, I'd like to get an idea of the slowest system that can run the emulator at a speed close to that of the hardware.

Answer 1

From the release notes:

"iPhone SDK requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X Leopard version 10.5.4 or later."

I use it on a Core 2 Duo Mac mini (i.e. before the recent update) without any problems, so I don't think CPU speed is really something you need to worry about. I've 2GB of RAM in that system; I don't know if the tools will run well in less than that.

Answer 2

The iPhone SDK requires an Intel machine running Leopard, although I believe there is a way to get it working on PPC Macs (but you still need Leopard).

The SDK does not have an emulator, it's a simulator. The code it runs is native so there is no emulation overhead. You will find that even a low-end machine will run your code significantly faster than on an actual iPhone.

(This is why it's super important to test your application on an actual iPhone, particularly for anything graphic or processor intensive).

1GB of RAM and any Intel based Mac will be more than sufficient for both development and any docs/webpages you are likely to be referring to.

Answer 3

The simulator runs pretty well even on the slowest Mac in the lineup, the base-model MacBook Air with the hard drive (non-SSD). It runs applications far more smoothly than they run on the real iPhone.

The rest of the development process, though, benefits from a bit more horsepower. An SSD (optional in the laptops) or a 3.5" hard drive (iMac or Mac Pro) is a huge benefit, and you'll want a decent amount of CPU power for quick Xcode responsiveness with autocomplete, etc.

Most of all, you'll want as much screen space as your budget and portability needs will allow. It's pretty cramped on the 1280x800 screen found on the 13" MacBook and MacBook Air. Ideally, your minimum is a 15" MacBook Pro or a 20" iMac.

I recommend a CPU at or above 2.0 GHz and at least 2 GB of RAM. Ideally, it's at least 2.4 GHz and 4 GB of RAM.

Answer 4

RAM is probably the biggest constraint. That's not an iPhone SDK limitation as much as it is an Xcode limitation -- it likes at least 1.5GB to itself when debugging but it works okay at about 1GB as long as you stop the debugger when you're not using it.

I have run the SDK on an old iBook G4. So CPU speed requirements aren't extremely high -- although you may want to edit text in an external editor since Xcode's autocompletes and syntax highlighting are too slow below about 1.6Ghz.

Realistic recommendation: any Intel Mac with at least 2GB RAM.

Answer 5

simulator is not the problem, instrument is.

if you just want to run a iPhone emulator, then system requirement doesn't matter as long as you could run leopard.

if you want a production environment, it should at least c2d 2.0 2G ram and still wait a lot for debugging.