What kind of Mac should I get to make iPhone apps?

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Level 1

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What kind of Mac should I get to make iPhone apps?

I was thinking of buying a used Macbook Air from eBay to make iPhone apps with. Is this a good choice? I don't want to spend a lot of money. What specifications should it have in order to develop apps? How much RAM, screen size, ssd memory, processor, what model year, etc? Also, would this be a good time to buy a Macbook Air because isn't Apple going to release a new one in the summer? And how much do you think the price of the current (and other years models) will drop when the new one is released?

Posted on Mar 7, 2014 2:20 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 7, 2014 2:58 PM in response to Like Mee

We can't speculate here, but any relatively current MAc should be fine for iOS development. For everything else, screensize, RAM... Of course more is better, but any recent Mac will meet the minimums.

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Answer 2

etresoft

Level 8

46,146 points

Mar 7, 2014 6:14 PM in response to Like Mee

I strongly suggest looking at Apple's refurbished Macs. The biggest issue with app development is a bigger screen to see the simulator.

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Answer 3

hokanst

Level 2

301 points

Mar 7, 2014 9:32 PM in response to Like Mee

A number of things to consider:

Get a mac that supports the most recent OSX version - so that you can use the most recent Xcode version, this to avoid issues with not being able to submitting apps to the App Store. In the case of the MacBook Air, all models except for the original January 2008 version, are capable to run OSX 10.9.
Get a decently sized display. I run Xcode on dual 1680x1050 displays. While 1680x1050 works fine it can become slightly cramped when viewing two files side by side with extra side panels. My recommendation would be to buy an extrernal display. External displays are nowdays fairly cheap and usually have at least a 1920x1080 resolution.
I've mananged to use Xcode 3 & 4 on a machine with 4GB for developement of fairly small mac apps, but I would recommend at least 8GB of RAM so that you can run additional tools like Instruments or VMs without running out of RAM.
While higher CPU speed and SSDs will speed up compile times I wouldn't expect it to make all that much difference when using Xcode or running the iPhone emulator (as the iPhone CPU is unlikely to be faster than any of the MacBook Air CPUs).

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Answer 4

Mar 20, 2014 5:04 AM in response to Like Mee

I just recently purchased a Mac Mini for iPhone development. I bought it from the Apple refurbished store and it came with i7 1TB HDD and 4gb of ram for $679, which I thought was a great deal (upgrading ram to 16gm which I would definitely recommend), if portability is not a big issue for you and you have nice displays already this could be a great inexpensive choice and the refurbs also come with a one year warranty. This is my first Mac and I am finding it fine for development so far.

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