2nd-user Mac for iPhone development

I'm an Apple noob looking for a used Mac to do iPhone application development. I don't mind tower or integrated units but it needs to be as cheap as possible and still have enough poke to run OS/X for software development. I can do image processing &etc on my Windoze box. I have a KVM switch so I can share monitor/keyboard/mouse with the PC if necessary. I've been looking on Forevermac.Com and they seem to have some very reasonably priced low-end units. Any suggestions?

Edited by micksharpe (Thu 28-May-09 13:52:05)

Second-hand Mac prices seem to be pretty near first-hand prices, so it might be worth getting a new one instead - perhaps a Mac mini or something.

Cheapest Mac is a Mac mini, for £500 you get a little box with Mac in it. Though, minus the screen. Next step up is the basic white macbook, inc screen obviously and has a 2ghz processor + 2GB ram and 120GB HDD. See apple.com/uk/store for details.

Penty of used ones on eBay also.

I'm looking for something cheap. Forevermac.Com have G3 iMacs for around £100 and G3 tower units for £50. Will these run OS/X at anything more than a crawl?

Your going to need a Mac that can run 10.5.5 http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_to...

Looks like it needs to be an Intel-based Mac. Which models are Intel-based?

As a matter of interest, why do you need Intel based? I shouldn't think you will find any cheap Intel Macs.

A propos your earlier question re a G3 - my G4 Mac Mini struggles with OSX 10.5 (though that's probably a memory problem too - it's only got 500M) so I wouldn't think a G3 would cope.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7...

Edited by defcom (Thu 28-May-09 17:35:00)

I tried 10.5 on a G3 600MHz iMac with 512MB RAM, not surprisingly it didn't cope well enough to be functional but it did run with a lot of patience. I've tried a few early G4's as well but really I found the processor needs to be 1.2Ghz or higher before 10.5 starts to feel usable, 256MB RAM isn't enough, 512MB is bearable but ideally 1GB is required. I'd get an Intel if you can.

10.5 runs sufficiently well on my 1.42ghz/512mb Rev 1 Mac mini for it to serve as a media server, FWIW.