Mac hunting for iphone development

[Diablohead]

I'm hunting down a Mac to buy and use for iPhone development but having troubles, not just finding a good priced Mac but also knowing it will work with iPhone dev work. I read that some Mac's will not work due to some missing drivers (?) like the Mac mini, but prices for new Mac books seem to be £719 and above.

Can anyone suggest a good place or which mac I should aim for without spending too much? I suppose eBay is an option as long as I know the machine I buy will cover everything I need to run Unity, the iphone SDK and such.

[Paulio]

A mac mini works with deving (I've only heard this, but)

I think the best buy for a Mac atm (for US anyway) is the $999 white entry level macbook, it has recently been updated to very similar specs as the more expensive uni-body macbook. Only problem is, when they released the new models and prices Australias dollar was extremely shit (Kevin Rudd..) so it costs AU$1649, had it been released a few months earlier it would have been closer to 1.1 - 1.2K which is pretty good.

Anyway, best place to buy is from an Apple store, be it online or an actual shop. Although, you could always get a second hand/refurbished one from online or through a seperate business?

[Diablohead]

I will look more into the mac mini, if it does work I will pick one of them up from the online store, otherwise i'll have to try 2nd hand for a macbook.

Anything I should know about mac mini's? (open question)

[Birdsoft]

I use a Mac Mini for all my development.. !!! So it does work just fine.. I got the cheap one even and use a KVM to use with my Vista boxes big screen and usb keyboard/mouse(it came with the VGA adaptor)... No problems here(I dont run Unity but xcode and the simulator both work well enough).

[Diablohead]

Thanks for replying, looks like I will grab a mini then and I hope this thread helps anyone else stuck on the same boat.

[Hippieman]

The Mac must have the following:

1. An Intel based processor
2. OS X 10.5

As long as you have that you are good to go.

A Mini is an excellent machine to work on. You might want to increase the RAM to minimum 1 gb.

[arn]

fwiw, everyone expects the mini to be upgraded soon. I think the low end MacBook is a much better bang for your buck at the moment.

The mini on the market now came out 535 days ago

arn

[Diablohead]

Originally Posted by arn

fwiw, everyone expects the mini to be upgraded soon. I think the low end MacBook is a much better bang for your buck at the moment.

The mini on the market now came out 535 days ago

arn

My plan is to buy the Mac mini in april when I can sit down and crack on with the code, so thanks for the head's up

[Tennisking1o1]

Originally Posted by arn

fwiw, everyone expects the mini to be upgraded soon. I think the low end MacBook is a much better bang for your buck at the moment.

The mini on the market now came out 535 days ago

arn

I was hoping a new one would come out at macworld

But oh well, I caved and got an aluminum macbook

[1337brian]

I had just borrowed my buddies Powermac G4 and to my surprise I needed a mac with a min of 833 mhz processor, my G4 only had duel 533, We have found some decent deals on craigs list for used macs, and I think this is the road I am headed, I really want a new MBP, but don't think finacially it would be wise...