Will a Mac Mini suffice for an iPhone Development machine?

Question

So the past two clients I've been at, all the talk has been about creating an iPhone app, and I won't lie, I want to make one. Or at least learn how to make them.

I've never owned a Mac, so I have no idea how their OS functions/works/performs, whatever. I'm a .NET Developer and build my own gaming rigs at home, but as far as Mac hardware goes I'm clueless.

I'm wondering if any iPhone devs out there can share their insight on their machines? I'm assuming it's comparable. I'm looking at a Mac Mini, 2.0ghz duo core Intel, 2gb RAM.

This seems fine for a dev machine (it beats my awful machine at work).

Let me know guys, and thanks again in advance.

Answer 1

I have found a late 2014 Mac Mini with 4 Gb Ram and a 1.4 Ghz Intel Core I5 chip to generally be insufficient at getting the job done, developing a iPhone/iPad app.

A Mac Mini does get the job done but when building and starting up a simulator for the first time or switching simulators (say going from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6) it takes minutes to build and run the new instance of a simulator. Once a simulator is up and running, making chances and testing is ok, its still not great though.

Also, the Assets.xcassets manager can almost crash at times and managing asset images is an important task when building your app.

I have also had Xcode just freeze on me for a minute or two but not too often.

General, web browsing in Safari is also a bit lagged when running your app simulation and looking online to fix bugs, again frustrating over time.

I will be moving on from Mac Mini soon and look forward to it, its just not fast enough for good development.

Changing, testing, rebuilding, running, rinse repeat is the failure point of development on a Mac Mini.

Again, its ok, it gets the job done, but it requires patience that I am not used to compared to using a more powerful development machine.

I would recommend making a larger initial financial investment in a Macbook, checkout Craigslist for good deals.

Answer 2

As long as it has an Intel processor its fine. Good Luck!

Also here is some stuff to get you started:

• CocoaDev Central
• Official Apple Tutorial (Also look at the prerequisites)
• iPhone Dev Center

Answer 3

Totally.

I've bought the mid 2010 Unibody Mac mini and it's a good machine to do iPhone development.

I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying a new computer. So I opted for the bare minimum necessary to develop for iPhone.

The post bellow shows my impressions about it...

Learning to develop for iPhone with a Mac mini

Answer 4

I would recommend a laptop. It sounds like you're a contractor, so the ability to use the simulator in a demo on site may be useful to you.

In the Bay Area, it's useful to take to the frequent meetups and what not.

A low end macbook is about 999 right now.

Answer 5

The fortunate thing about developing for the iPhone is that you generally don't need to be concerned about getting a top of the line development machine. You are developing for a device the runs on a much more constrained hardware set. I have a MacBook that I use to run Xcode as well as Windows XP and Visual Studio 2008 with no issues. A Mac Mini should be fine, as well as just fun.

Answer 6

Yes, the mini (intel version) would be perfect for iphone development. You will be able to do just as much as any other iphone developer can do. After all, you are developing apps for a device that is much slower than the mini.

Answer 7

The short answer is yes, a Mac Mini is an adequate iPhone development machine.

However, considering the hardware specs and inability to upgrade, the Mac Mini is an awfully bad deal. It sounds like you have a good amount of system building experience, so why not build a hackintosh? You can get performance rivaling a Mac Pro for not much more than the cost of a Mac Mini. Plus it can double as a Windows machine, since that sounds like your primary OS.

You should also consider the fact that you'll need to learn Objective-C and Apple's APIs before you'll be able to make anything useful. That's a discussion for another day though...

Answer 8

The spec you are looking for for a Mac-mini is more than sufficient for iPhone development. I have both an iMac with 2Gb RAM and a 2.6GHz processor and I've never had an issue. The XCode IDE is surprisingly efficient - and performant. Enjoy.