I'm going to buy a new mac to develop iPhone apps (previously been programming them at work on their iMac).
What do you think the minimum and recommended specs are?
Is 2 GB of RAM plenty for XCode, interface builder and the simulator to all run simultaneously? What if I'm also running a browser with 10 tabs and Photoshop with a few smallish images open?
The fact that I haven't found any recommendations elsewhere suggests that I have little to worry about, but as a student this is a large purchase for me. I need to be careful.
Thanks!
Tristan
Xcode will run on any Intel Mac with Snow Leopard, one of our iPhone devs works on a MacBook Air with 2GB of RAM just fine. Any new Mac available right now should have no problem with it.
The iOS Simulator starts up pretty slowly regardless of system specs, I've found.
All of that being said, if you're running Photoshop at the same time, you'll definitely want to bump up the RAM from 2GB, but RAM's cheap right now, so there's no reason not to! You'd want more than 2GB to do proper Photoshop work anyways.
That's a very typical state for my desktop. I'm able to do all that on a Macbook Pro 2009 with 2GB. Of course it would be faster if I had more RAM. You should consider buying an upgrade from OWC, it's cheap.
In my experience 2GB should be considered a minimum, especially if you are considering having Safari and Photoshop open at the same time. I do my development on a 4 year old Macbook which is just about fine with the memory upgrade to 2GB I gave it last year.
I'd say, don't worry about the other specs, but if you can stretch to 4GB Ram you will really notice the difference.
Have fun!
If you can afford it - go with 4GB RAM and SSD disk. There will be lot of XCode compilations, iPhone Simulator launches, test runs, with simultaneously browsing of StackOverflow and Dev forums in your daily routine and SSD drive will do all of this much faster - you will be much more productive and usually your time is the most expensive component in app development.
P.S. Unfortunately SSD still are not kinda reliable enough - see there. Have good fallback plan.
I'm doing a lot of development at home on an MacBook Pro 13" from 2010. For my purposes it feels a bit too slow at times. SSD could make a big difference, though I worry about the reliability.
Related
I want to develop C# and .NET based iPhone applications in MonoTouch. But my goal is to develop iPhone applications so things may end up with Objective-C -so Xcode- too.
Obviously, I have to buy a Mac. I've been lookin' for sales and found a couple of good machines but I still want to make sure that I can use these 2 programs in good performance.
So I want to know that if anyone uses these programs could advice me some system requirements? For example, does the CPU matters? Should I buy an iMac with Intel CPU our is G4-G5 better? And what about the VGA and RAM? Is 1GB or 2GB enough for ram and 256+ for VGA?
Of course better properties mean better performances but what's the minimum for this? We can talk on iMac.
Read this thread from the monotouch mailing-list. It's about laptop initially but it will give you the specs people are using and recommending.
(It's Mac not MAC).
It'll have to be an Intel one for any iOS development. I'm relatively happy still on a mid 2009 MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM. To develop with the iOS 5 SDK you'll need at least Snow Leopard - so any Mac capable of running that will be a minimum.
What is the minimum configuration to do some Python and iPhone development on Mac ?
Platform wise: Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Mac Book, Mac Book Pro ?
Memory requirement
CPU speed
Thanks for your advice.
Laurent
The minimum requirement is an intel mac. Any intel mac will work. iPhone development is unsupported on PPC.
Python can be done on any mac that runs os x.
The minimum requirement, and what's pleasant are different things. Everything you've listed will work pretty great. You might want to bump up the ram a little on what they ship with, but other than that you're good to go.
Any of those platforms are going to be more than adequate for iPhone development, but since Apple is not allowing anything that requires a VM or an interpreted environment, there is no way to do iPhone development using Python at this time.
EDIT: Looks like I misread that as doing Python development on an iPhone, so just ignore the second part of my answer. Any of those platforms are going to be fine for either iPhone or Python development.
Rather ephemeral in our requirements, aren't we. 'Some' python/iPhone....
You will be well served by a mini, starting # $600, they're a steal. Upgrade the processor (2.53ghz), add RAM to 4GB (after purchase, if you're comfortable) throw a generic keyboard, mouse and Monitor on it and you've got a heck of a machine.
Don't bother with a HD upgrade, just get an external USB disk and put all your VM's and extra necessities on it.
Any system that Apple sells is sufficient to do Python and iPhone development on the Mac. I generally consider 2 GB to be the minimum amount of RAM that I would want to use, and 4 GB if I'm going to be doing any significant amount of work in a VM (for instance, VMware Fusion or Parallels for running Windows within Mac OS X). But I think all configurations currently come with at least 2 GB of RAM, so you should be set there, too.
Of course faster machines are always better, so you should get a machine that's fast enough for you, but I have a couple year old Mac Book Pro and find that's fast enough for me.
The biggest help for development is multiple monitors. Having two monitors helps a lot (and three is good, too). I believe that all of Apple's current systems support two monitors.
I would like to try some iPhone development but am not a Mac user. I'm not keen to spend a load of cash on a new mac, so if I were to buy an old Mac on ebay, what system should I look at as a minimum for an acceptable iphone dev machine. Cheaper the better obviously.
Note: Not keen on running mac os on a pc so really looking for an apple hardware option. Is an old mac mini suitable?
Any Mac with an Intel processor will do fine.
You can spend your time searching eBay for an old Intel Mac but in my experience it a false economy (especially if it's more than 3 year old).
One tip for anyone looking for a
secondhand Mac, as I did in the late
90s during the last economic downturn,
buy computers from graphic design
agencies or software houses that have
gone bust.
Good
Mac Mini - It'll do every thing you need (albeit not very fast). You might consider extra memory and if you have a a spare keyboard and monitor (or KVM switch) your away.
Better
New MacBook - released yesterday (2009-06-08) the new MacBooks are reasonably priced and a great option especially if you want (or are replacing) a laptop. Again RAM is a consideration and if you plan on long coding sessions a decent keyboard and monitor are essential.
Best
Dive right in and get a iMac (20" or 24")! I suggest you only do this if you want to replace an older non-Apple box. The calculation you have to make is: How much would I spend on a new PC plus how much would I spend on my development Mac. If the total is even close the price of an iMac it's an option.
You'll have the option of virtualized Windows, (unlimited) Linux installs, Boot Camp if your a Gamer and Mac OS X for your iPhone/Cocoa development.
If money is no problem you can even go for a Mac Pro.
My system is a Mac Pro - I run Windows XP, Vista and 2 x Cent OS's (simultaneously). Also I have Windows 7 Beta and a few Ubuntu's for ad hoc work.
It works great - but wont be for everyone taste. I replaced my Uni set up of: 1 x Mac, 1 x PowerBook, 1 x Wintel box and only using Linux on campus with MacPro and iPhone (I still have the PowerBook, but it's hardly ever used).
Also, if wanting to buy a 'new' mac, you can buy refurbished macs from Applestore which are hundreds less than their newer equivalents. They have full warranty and are pretty much brand new anyway. (Returned for some issue that has since been fixed)
Of course, if you're happy to jailbreak your iphone, you can ssh into it and compile apps directly on the device (the jailbreak can install gcc and make and the rest). I've done this for a couple of experimental projects while trying to learn objective C and all that stuff. Worth trying out if you're not totally sure whether or not you want to go ahead with it.
I use a mac mini, works ok so far.
In addition you need a monitor with dvi, a usb mouse and usb keyboard.
The main drawback is, that i use a regular usb keyboard and the keyboard layout is terrible, e.g. POS1, END, PAGE_UP, PAGE_DOWN are not where they should be.
You can use PearPC, i used it for the same reason as you.
Check it here: PearPC Mac OS X on PC
But i just wanted to experiment something with the iphone SDK, if you want to develop seriously you should consider getting a MAC because a virtual machine is terribly slow.
If you really want a cheap option you could go for a Dell Mini 9. It runs OS X very well and if you upgrade to 2M ram you could probably make it work for you. I picked it up for a bit over $200, have been reasonably happy with it.
After trying and failing to get my hands on a temporary Mac to develop an iPhone app for a client, I've started to look into VMware Workstation to virtualize OS X. I was wondering if there are any gotchas that people have found, or if the whole thing is unworkable.
For the record, I have an old stripey-Apple logo I pried off my old Apple IIe and am affixing to the lid of my dev laptop so that I'm complying with the spirit of the OS X EULA.
Some of my coworkers have tried the VMWare approach with OSX and have, for the most part, failed. I know there are some VMWare images floating around on the internets, but I wouldn't recommend using any of those.
Also to Bruce's point, the OSX86 project has made some great progress lately. I was able to get OSX running on an old Dell I have laying around. The thing ran fine as a media server until I made the mistake of downloading a patch, and then the thing died.
As Bruce stated a Mac Mini would be a good investment at $500, or better yet, check out eBay. Pick up something on eBay and at the end of your job you can sell it back on eBay or keep it. If your really tight on your budget you can look for a G4 Mac and do development on that, sans support for the iPhone simulator. I picked up a 2 G4 Macs for $80 a piece and sold one for $120.
Bottom line is if your thinking of getting into iPhone development make a small investment on a Mini or a used Intel Mac on eBay. If your successful in you development efforts your investment will pay off.
Good luck.
Edit: Though development on a G4/PPC mac is not supported it is doable. Here is a link outlining how to get it working.
http://3by9.com/85/
Prepare for an onslaught of replies on the EULA.
Technically your best resource would be the OSx86 website which is here http://wiki.osx86project.org/.
And their page on virtualisation is here
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Virtualization
Importantly though, developing for the Mac and iPhone are very similar, and if you are serious about doing good developmenet for your clients you should probably invest in a mac mini at the least, which is less than $500US more than just buying the OS by itself.
That's the old rainbow logo from the IIe, right? Die-hards have the white Apple sticker that comes with every real Mac. Real die-hards have the white Apple sticker they surreptitiously peeled off their nephew's toy truck.
Cheapest option is probably to partition your hard-drive and install hackintosh:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/eight-months-with-a-hackintosh-netbook-conclusion-fantastic/
But if every time you build your app in XCode it takes long enough to catch a sitcom on TV, don't come crying here :-)
I have a friend who's successfully installed 10.5.7 on a his Dell laptop using a distro of OSx86. He's got the developer tools and the iPhone simulator working, and he can compile his app. He can't find a USB driver for his hardware, though - so he hasn't been able to install his app on a device.
Honestly though - I think he's spent about 20 hours getting things setup, finding drivers, etc... We all thought he was crazy until he actually got the dev tools installed. I'd really try hard to get my hands on a Mac Mini before going through all the hassle.
But the Apple logo transplant... pure genius.
Obvious legalities aside, in my experience OS X performs very poorly in a VM. Installing OS X natively on your PC is possible if you have patience, and happen to have compatible hardware. I can't honestly recommend this approach however, unless you're a glutton for punishment, or would like to hearken back to those golden days when installing Linux with support for all your hardware was actually a small triumph in itself.
As others have mentioned, if you are serious about iPhone development, you're going to save yourself a lot of hassle by getting yourself a secondhand or refurbished Mac mini.
I'm buying a mac in a month or so but could like to start working on an Iphone app before I actually get my mac. Is this possible on xp or ubuntu? I know that I won't be able to compile it or test it for the iPhone to I get my mac but maybe I can get alot of my upfront work out of the way.
If you're brave you can turn your PC into a hackintosh and dual-boot into Leopard. I did this for several months for iPhone development before getting a Mac.
Yes, you can use VMWare to run MacOS X. I'm not going to link to any sites but there are a number of downloads available for a hacked OSX image for VMWare.
You can do a Hackintosh but beware:
Apple can and does force iPhone devs to update to the latest OS to handle the latest iPhone SDK. Your hackintosh will lag official OS updates by several weeks or months, until Kalyway team (or whomever) gets it working and stable. So effectively you are locked into older firmware development when this happens.
Hackintoshes are notorious for suddenly not working, and not BOOTING at all because of some internal tweak you made when you installed something. Not yours of course, you are awesome and would of course keep a complete backup of your entire OS partition at all times to handle this. It's a PITA.
It takes some doing to install Mac OS X on commodity hardware. It's a pain in the ass and took me like 20 installs of the OS to get right. You of course are awesome and would do it much more quickly and with less headaches.
Hackintoshes (and PCs in general) are LOUD. Gamer-spec fans and so forth are loud, compared to my Mac Pro, which sits here silent as the grave. It's not that big a deal but it really got on my nerves how loud my machine was.
In short, you can do it, but it's hardly worth the effort. You do get a charge when you've got it booting into OS X the first time though, which is kind of neat. But for serious production use? Get a Mac Mini for 500 bucks and get to work. If you're like me your time is more valuable than the small amount you will pay for a real Mac.
Don't think so. Maybe you could build a hackintosh.
I've heard from someone at our cocoaheads that they managed to find a VMWare image for OS X