Lowest end mac for iPhone Development

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MotionBlur

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 27, 2001
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I am about to being development of an iPhone/iPad application, not a game and was wondering what the lowest end Mac I would need to do the development?
 
A Mac Mini would be fine, know of a couple people using them for iDevice development.
 
I haven't tried it with the latest SDK version (because of no Snow Leopard support :p), but earlier 3.x versions can work on a G4/G5 Mac. Emulation speed is OK for non-OGL on a 933MHz G4. The limitations are you can't easily debug on the iPhone/iPod Touch device or sign applications for submission.

From the current iPhone SDK readme: "Compatibility: Xcode 3.2 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.2 or later."

I use a Mac Mini 2.26GHz. The speed is far better than adaquate.
 
MotionBlur said:
I am about to being development of an iPhone/iPad application, not a game and was wondering what the lowest end Mac I would need to do the development?
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Just a heads up, you can build yourself a PC that will run OSX out of the box for next to nothing these days. Just need a few days worth of research for compatible parts and such.

alternativly, you can also run OSX in vmware, however I'm almost positive that you'd need an Intel CPU.
 
dr.stevil said:
alternativly, you can also run OSX in vmware, however I'm almost positive that you'd need an Intel CPU.
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OSX runs horribly in VMWare.

The cheapest hackintosh is probably a Dell Mini 10v. But that's not worth encouraging. ;)
 
pxc said:
OSX runs horribly in VMWare.
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OSX runs great in vmware since the unofficial release of vmware tools. Smooth as butter :)

The only downside is lack of QE (no GPU acceleration)

As for cost, depending on what kind of spare parts he already has laying around, he can build a hackentosh rig for next to nothing.
 
I have a Dell Mini 10 and Mac works great. Havent done any development on it, but i have edited some home videos and what not with it.
 
dr.stevil said:
The only downside is lack of QE (no GPU acceleration)
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That's actually a huge downside. Lots of software won't run without QE. Nice to hear it otherwise is working better now under VMware.
 
yeah, I believe people are using the vmware tools package from OSX server or something. There are some workarounds to get some programs that require QE working, but you're better off with a real mac or native installation.

check it out though, it does actually run really nice these days. the only things not working is GPU acceleration and folder sharing
 
Cool thanks for all of the input. There's no way for me to get my employer to go the Hackintosh route, heck I even brought in my Hackintosh I put together to demo it. Being an AMD only guy aside from my Intel Atom file server it's good to know I could tell my employer to get a Mac Mini.
 
I'd suggest you spend a little more now...

Consider it taking 15 seconds to build/run vs. 60+ seconds. If you build run 100's of times... you know where this is going.
 
BDV said:
I'd suggest you spend a little more now...

Consider it taking 15 seconds to build/run vs. 60+ seconds. If you build run 100's of times... you know where this is going.
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I'll definitely tell them to get the fastest CPU in their budget.
 
BDV said:
Consider it taking 15 seconds to build/run vs. 60+ seconds. If you build run 100's of times... you know where this is going.
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I think you're misunderstanding the size of typical iPhone apps. :p Even my G4 933MHz eMac can compile and launch apps in the emulator quicker than 60 seconds on subsequent builds. And that's with 1GB SDR memory and a pokey 160GB IDE hard drive.
 
pxc said:
I think you're misunderstanding the size of typical iPhone apps. :p Even my G4 933MHz eMac can compile and launch apps in the emulator quicker than 60 seconds on subsequent builds. And that's with 1GB SDR memory and a pokey 160GB IDE hard drive.
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I think you're misunderstanding the complexity of that iPhone apps can have :)

Not everyone develops trinkets, and I didn't see OP mention what type of programs he will be working on.
 
BDV said:
I think you're misunderstanding the complexity of that iPhone apps can have :)

Not everyone develops trinkets, and I didn't see OP mention what type of programs he will be working on.
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It's going to be a fully featured Auditing tool with a SQL Lite backend, basically porting the web/windows forms .Net version into an app.
 
BDV said:
Not everyone develops trinkets, and I didn't see OP mention what type of programs he will be working on.
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LOL, sounds like he's developing a typical, small application (although not useless), just like 99% of the ones available.

But what do I know? I tend to work instead of complain that I didn't get an 8 core system to do what everyone else does with a 2 core system. :p
 
Yeah, if this is for a paying client and they are footing the bill I'd buy a Mac Mini.

If it was for me, I'd seriously consider buying a Dell Mini 10v (1011) as they are awesome and run OSX spectacularly!
 
KevySaysBeNice said:
Yeah, if this is for a paying client and they are footing the bill I'd buy a Mac Mini.

If it was for me, I'd seriously consider buying a Dell Mini 10v (1011) as they are awesome and run OSX spectacularly!
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I completely agree, they get non-profit discount, but yeah it's still way more than building a hackintosh or Dell Mini.
 
pxc said:
LOL, sounds like he's developing a typical, small application (although not useless), just like 99% of the ones available.

But what do I know? I tend to work instead of complain that I didn't get an 8 core system to do what everyone else does with a 2 core system. :p
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lol I wish, but I do agree with your statement about having too much power when it isn't neccessary. I do SQL Server/ASP.NET/Windows Forms C# running my own local Sharepoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 instances, SQL Management Studio 2008 and 2 copies of Visual Studio 2010 all day on a Phenom II X3 and 16gb of ram. I have no complaints about it.
 
MotionBlur said:
lol I wish, but I do agree with your statement about having too much power when it isn't neccessary. I do SQL Server/ASP.NET/Windows Forms C# running my own local Sharepoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 instances, SQL Management Studio 2008 and 2 copies of Visual Studio 2010 all day on a Phenom II X3 and 16gb of ram. I have no complaints about it.
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16gb of ram FTW!
 
I would suggest getting an intel mac running snow leopard as xcode is only being released for the latest and greatest macs now.
(but they are expensive)

That said I bought an older cheaper powermac g5 for about $250 cause I wanted to do some mac development and was interested in a powerpc big endian machine. You can get the iphone sdk for leopard that will run on the g5 here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=898518 - Must be registered and logged in at http://developer.apple.com first though, which kills most download managers ability to be of any use.

You could probably get a g4 mac for less than $100 and use the older sdk, but at that point it really is waaay too old for my taste.
 
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