iOS Recommendations for Inexpensive Development Machine

[jeffreyropp]

I've never owned an Mac nor Apple notebook, but would like to dabble in some iPad development. Can anyone recommend an inexpensive hardware option (possibly a used notebook or Mini) that would allow me to run the Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

 

[mulo]

a mac mini would suffice, but obviously you will need to buy screen keyboard and so forth separately. speculation is that they will get refreshed soon though.

 

[dejo]

Any Intel-based Mac should be sufficient.

 

[xStep]

To assure future OS upgrade capability to the next version of OS X, Lion, you'll want a Core 2 Duo based machine or newer. It looks like 32-bit (Core Duo) Intel based machines will not run Lion. I mention this in case you buy used or a refurb from Apple.

No one knows the exact spec requirements the released version of Lion will require. That won't likely be known until release later this Summer, or possible in early June at the developers conference.

As for the horse power required for development, any Intel based Mac will do for your stated purpose. Check craigslist and eBay for going prices.

 

[firewood]

It used to be that any Intel Mac that could get upgraded to Snow Leopard would work great.

I now recommend at least a Core 2 Duo Mac (thus ruling out some 2+ year old generations of old used Intel MacBooks and Minis) with at least 4 GB of RAM. This is to support running Xcode 4 bloatware on Lion, which could potentially be required to keep current with iOS development as soon as the end of this year.

 

[RodThePlod]

It used to be that any Intel Mac that could get upgraded to Snow Leopard would work great.

I now recommend at least a Core 2 Duo Mac

Agreed - I picked up a Core 2 Duo Mac mini from eBay. Cheap as chips and does a great job.

RTP.