Looking for the cheapest (oldest) Mac running OSX 10.8+

[corko]

I need a Mac for building to iOS (using Unity3D) and I have one, but it's running 10.4 and apparently that isn't good enough, 10.8 is required. So I have two questions:

1. Is there any place where I can go with a timeline of Macs and can look up which can do what? Or, failing that, could someone tell me what the oldest model(s) are which could serve my purpose? I have a preference for a laptop, but I could deal with a desktop if the difference in price was large.

2. Where is the best place to buy one of these? There's always Ebay of course, but I was thinking of maybe something like the thinkpads.com forums, which have a great marketplace. Is there anything similar for Macs?

 

[Moonjumper]

Beware, that minimum of 10.8 is likely to rise in the near future. The upcoming 10.12 Sierra has a compatibility list that hasn't changed too much from 10.11 and has options where the price is not far off what you would pay for anything that runs 10.8.

The macOS Sierra page on Wikipedia lists Macs that run 10.12 (I don't appear to be able to paste the link on my iPad in this forum).

I also use Unity and would recommend those specs anyway for mobile development, higher for desktop dev.

 

[corko]

Those lists on the wikipedia pages are exactly what I was after. I'll keep an eye out for 10.12 too, thanks a lot.

 

[Digger148]

The Mactracker app from the Mac App store keeps a pretty good updated timeline (and specifications) of just about all Apple devices and computers.