What is a good iPhone development machine?

Question

I'm going to work on some iPhone apps, so I was given a gold ticket to buy a Mac. However, a gold ticket is not worth it, and I think iMac. Now, Macs are beautiful, I love them and use them at home, but I know that the iMac is aimed more at the average consumer than at the professional. Is iMac powerful enough for iPhone development?

If this helps, the only thing I suppose to do on a Mac is to run Xcode and possibly a web browser.

Is there anyone who is developing the iPhone and doesn’t the necessary tools work on it? If so, what do you have?

Answer 1

Any modern Mac will be fine. I am working on a two-year-old MacBook (2 GHz) with 2 GB of memory and I am very good at it. The biggest limitation that I find is viewing real estate. I am much more productive on my 22-inch external screen. Come on, if you get an iMac or consider adding an external monitor to the base model.

Answer 2

iMac is a very fast machine and will be more suitable for iPhone development. In most cases, the Mac Mini with maximum output is pretty good.

Keep in mind that the Mac mini can only accommodate one monitor.

Answer 3

My main Mac is a MacBook, juicy with 4 GB of RAM, and I find it great for development (on Windows or OSX). I could get an iMac for a little more money, but I already had a 20-inch LCD monitor and I need portability.

MacBooks are just as powerful as iMacs (with the exception of a graphics card, which may or may not be important to you, this was not for me) and are great for development.

Answer 4

I would say that any of the current iMac models is more suitable for development with their dual-core 6MB cache, 1066 MHz FSB processor. You might consider using more than 1 GB of RAM, but compare after-sales service prices in places like NewEgg , which Apple wants (for example, I upgraded my MacBook Pro to 4 GB, hundreds less than Apple installed).

Which model would you choose more about the size of the HD and the LCD and how much you need to spend.

Answer 5

I am launching Xcode development for Mac on the current 20-inch iMac and works great with many other running processes. You can definitely use iMac for software development.

Answer 6

iMac is simple enough to use for development.

Answer 7

I run Xcode on the current generation MacBook with ONE RAM only, and it works fine while I limit the number of running applications.

Answer 8

You will have no problem running Xcode on your iMac. Any iMac. Any development project can be done on iMac. These are fast and modern cars. The cheapest iMac is equipped with a dual-core Duo 2 processor with 1 gigabyte of RAM. Increase RAM to 2 if you can (a cheaper option is cheaper if you buy third-party RAM). Makes a huge difference between OSX.

Answer 9

In terms of power, any current Mac is great for developing an iPhone. You might want to consider other factors that depend on how you want to work.

Do you sometimes like to grab a car and just visit another work environment (or show your stuff to people)? MacBooks are comparable in power, but give you that freedom.

Can you work with glossy screens or annoy you? In the latter case, the iMac or MacBook may be suboptimal, and you must make sure that you get a larger, non-glossy display as the main screen. The second display is usually very useful for development, so you can have one anyway.

And you really want to push RAM up to 2 GB (4 GB, of course, nice, but not necessary).

Answer 10

I would suggest going for the ultimate Mac Mini and the best monitor you can put on your budget.

Remember that the iMac and Mac Mini are essentially laptops (in terms of their internal components). Of course, the iMac has a large screen (like laptops) and the right hard drive.

Answer 11

I am running Xcode on a 17-inch iMac (2 years) with 2 GB of RAM and have not experienced any problems.

Answer 12

I am doing a great job with Mac mini. Currently, it has only 1 GB of RAM, so this is the current bottleneck.

Answer 13

Designing for the iPhone is not particularly intensive; the only way out of the iMac is the Mac Pro, which I suppose you cannot afford. The only reason to upgrade to Mac Pro is if you work with videos or images where you really need horsepower.

This month I saw a chart in MacFormat that suggested that the base iMac was faster than the base Mac Pro, although there was obviously more room for expansion in Pro.

Buy more RAM, but up to 4Gb you won’t regret it.

Answer 14

I bought a Macintosh for Mac in mid-2010, and it is a good iPhone development machine.

I did not want to spend a lot of money on buying a new computer. Therefore, I chose the minimum minimum for development for the iPhone.

The post below shows my impressions of this ...

Learning iPhone Design with Mac mini

Answer 15

I am also thinking of buying a Mac. I wanted to create a new question, but now I'm trying to ask with this “answer”. There are several possibilities:

• iMac: powerful hardware, large screen (27 ") → ideal for development.
• MacBook Pro: portable, but you need a larger screen than 13 "-> expensive
• Mac mini: small, noise-free, as powerful as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, cheap; you need an external display and RAM upgrade.

I worked for several months on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but you really need a second screen if you want to develop it (despite just scrolling the touchpad). The hardware (2.66 Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB) was strong enough to develop with Xcode.

But how often do you really need a portable solution? Most of the time I worked in the same place. And a 27-inch iMac would be good for this, but not as cheap as the Mac mini. You can buy a Mac Mini with three 23-inch IPS panels (1080p) for the same money (including Matrox DualHead2Go), but not as much as a 27-inch iMac with i5-680.

Questions:

• Is portability significant or enjoyable for you?
• What is better for Xcode? More GHz or more cores?
• What brings a faster experience? Faster processor (e.g. 400 MHz faster) or SSD instead?

The best solution would be iMac and MacBook, I think. But for starters, this is too much money.

PS: you also need one device. The cheapest device is an 8GB iPod Touch 4G.

Answer 16

Please get a Mac that has an SSD, or a MacBook Air, or built-in options.

Compiling large frameworks like Three20 will be at least 2 to 3 times faster. Xcode 4 should run faster with an SSD.

Answer 17

As with all developments, screen size is of utmost importance, so I would suggest a 24-inch iMac if your gold ticket extends so far or a Mac mini with a large (maybe not Apple) monitor, if that is not the case.

Answer 18

I often use PowerMac G5. Of course, you need to hack the developer tools to install on the PPC, and there are some problems with the device SDK, but it works.

Oh wait, you said good. Nevermind

Answer 19

The only comment I have is that sometimes I wish I had a laptop, so I could write on the train, plane, or sit in the park!

I bought an iMac, and I had no problems developing my “simple” application, except that sometimes the scrolling hung around me.