Which mac to get? Or any at all?!


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Right guys. I'm looking to getting into developing iPhone apps. And in order to do this I need osx. I have a studio xps 13 max specced which I want to keep on win7. A big desktop which I use for gaming and runs win xp. And a sanding nc10 ( which I have heard can run osx but not sure how legal / illegal this is?).

So I thought the easiest thing would be to get a mac. But I don't wanna fork out a grand for a new computer when I have perfectly good ones already. So I'm thinking about getting a mac mini. With educational discount it's only ?470. Which is pretty decent. Anybody have much experience with these? Are they worth the money or should I just get a MacBook?

Any advice / comments talking me in / out of getting one would be much apprecciated.

Thanks for your time.

Martin

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Probably any of your currently owned will run some version of hackintosh that's out in the wild. It depends how much you want to work on it. For the NC10, I know from experience, everything works except the wifi. You can replace this with a mac os compatible part off of eBay or something.

But honestly, I think that the Mac Mini is what you should get for what you want to use it for.

I would agree with Mark, and it is probably worth looking into. But when it comes to used Macs, I would rather be on the selling end than the buying end. Used Macs don't seem to come that much cheeper than new ones.

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Right guys. I'm looking to getting into developing iPhone apps. And in order to do this I need osx. I have a studio xps 13 max specced which I want to keep on win7. A big desktop which I use for gaming and runs win xp. And a sanding nc10 ( which I have heard can run osx but not sure how legal / illegal this is?).

Unless you live in a non-berne convention country (ie: you're posting from a refugee camp) it's not going to be legal. You can count the number of countries where Apple's EULA wouldn't be enforceable on your fingers: most don't have running water or consistent power.

So I thought the easiest thing would be to get a mac. But I don't wanna fork out a grand for a new computer when I have perfectly good ones already. So I'm thinking about getting a mac mini. With educational discount it's only £470. Which is pretty decent. Anybody have much experience with these? Are they worth the money or should I just get a MacBook?

They're close enough in specs that a mac mini is serviceable for development as a hobbiest/learning computer. It is not so suitable when you start looking at 15-20 minute compiles on very large applications. If you've never written Mac OS X software before then it'll probably be a few years before you run into build-time issues because your projects just won't be that big.

The macbook and mac mini are close enough in hardware that you can either base your purchase decisons on form factor (ie: do you want a laptop) or price (do you want to spend ~$500 or ~$1000).

If I were in your position: not an objective C programmer, and had a hard-on for learning to write iPhone applications, not particularly interested in participating in copyright infringement, and not particularly interested in owning a mac but seeing it as a "necessary evil":

  • buy a mac mini from the refurbished store for ~$500
  • use $100 of the ~$500 saved to buy my developer license.
  • spend $400 enrolling in an objective-c course at either at my university or online. Not so much for the content which is available in texts/online/etc, but for direct access to somebody knowledgeable and able to answer my questions as I learned.

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spend $400 enrolling in an objective-c course at either at my university or online. Not so much for the content which is available in texts/online/etc, but for direct access to somebody knowledgeable and able to answer my questions as I learned.

luckily im half way through a computer science degree and one of my lecturers develops a lot for the ipod / iphone market and im sure hell be willing to help me out. but good advice.

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if you have a apple sticker from a iPod slap it on your computer and walla, as it is now apple branded :rolleyes:

I would assume if you bought Snow Leopard and hacked it it would be OK - if Microsoft can't bundle Internet Explorer, Apple shouldn't be able to make OS X only run on Mac's.

That's debatable. Although the admins have already decided that on this forum the topic of hackintosh does not violate the rules (so really, the topic is moot).

There is a reason Apple sells Snow Leopard for $30 and not for hundreds of dollars. The reason is it is considered an upgrade to whatever version of Mac OS X you already have on your Mac. Microsoft's rules for "upgrades" apply (IMHO):

license.jpg

Now, I'm not talking about legality of hackintosh. I am not a lawyer. But I do think it was Apple's intention to sell Snow Leopard as an Upgrade not a Stand-alone product.

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That's debatable. Although the admins have already decided that on this forum the topic of hackintosh does not violate the rules (so really, the topic is moot).

The administration's position on copyright law doesn't nessecarily correspond to the laws of any particularly country (if any at all). It's a private forum: they could make the rules state that posting child pornography is required and they'd be within their rights to do so (not that you would, and not that doing so would be legal). That's the nice thing about owning a forum: you're free to make up all the rules.

Now, I'm not talking about legality of hackintosh. I am not a lawyer. But I do think it was Apple's intention to sell Snow Leopard as an Upgrade not a Stand-alone product.

A combination of rulings (Blizzard v Glider) and (Apple v Psystar) put to bed any notion that using Mac OS X on a non-mac might be legal.

Read the case history and rulings and realize what a frightening amount of control corporations have over software most people thing they own.

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A combination of rulings (Blizzard v Glider) and (Apple v Psystar) put to bed any notion that using Mac OS X on a non-mac might be legal.

Read the case history and rulings and realize what a frightening amount of control corporations have over software most people thing they own.

Weren't both of those rulings related to the re-selling of the OS on har

Nevermind. This is something that has already been over-discussed across the Internet and I really don't have anything new to contribute.

It really is frightening the amount of control corporations have over the software they produce. Like the Music and Movie industries, they have all come to the conclusion that it is a license to run said IP and it is possible to violate that license. It gets really hairy.

I guess the point I was trying to get to was: just because you go out and buy Mac OS X 10.6, does not make hacking and installing it on non-mac hardware any more legal than downloading it off the Internet. Just in one case you give some folks $30 and in the other case you don't.

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