Mac Mini Advice Needed!

Community Forums/General Help/Mac Mini Advice Needed!

Amon(Posted 2009) [#1]
I'm intending on purchasing a secon hand Mac Mini tomorrow from ebay. I have £400 spending limit.

I'm interested in finding out whether the Core 2 Duo's are worth it and also if the cheaper G4 or G5's would do the trick?

The Mac mini will be used for 3D Dev using Unity Pro and of course BlitzMax + MiniB3D. I'm also going to be purchasing iphone dev kit for Unity.

Any info would be appreciated. Also if anyone is interested in looking at ebay.co.uk for a Mac Mini that would be suitable then can you post the link here?

Ta!


GaryV(Posted 2009) [#2]
No on the G4/G5. Does Apple even support the PPC anymore?

*edit* Nope, double checked. Apple no longer supports the PPC. OS X v10.6 is Intel only.


markcw(Posted 2009) [#3]
Yes, Apple still supports PPC. If you've ever used Software Update you would know this.

G4 is ok but not as powerful. The G5 and intel are similar in spec. The intel is better for BMax if you don't have a Mac because of Brucey's new bmk universal builds, apart from that I don't think there's a difference.


GaryV(Posted 2009) [#4]
Yes, Apple still supports PPC.
Perhaps you should inform Apple. Their official word is OS X v10.6 will be Intel only. Every tech site seems to support Apple.


Amon(Posted 2009) [#5]
Thanks for the info. The G5's seem pretty good for the price. A new one will cost around £500 so it's a £100 out of my budget.

I've found some Curo Duo's on ebay, not Core 2 Duo's, around £250-£300 which seem good. Trying to make sure which one to purchase, but yeah I've read the same as GaryV and that is Intel only for MacOs in the very near future so it's best to go for an intel machine.

I could do that or just buy MacOs leopard and use some hackintosh iatkos version for my laptop. Will save the money but will the hackintosh version work?

Thanks anyway for the replies.


GaryV(Posted 2009) [#6]
Hackintosh versions are very picky about hardware and are extremely hard to update.

There are differences between the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo, but speed and power saving aside, I don't know if OSX was really capable of taking advantage of the architectual changes from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo at the time the Core 2 was introduced (different story now).

A tip, but if you were to buy from the Apple site, they do not really do any checking for the student discount if you were to select it when ordering (at least here in the USA).

I would always get the best system I could within my budget. But if I had to, I would not think twice about buying a Core Duo system. The requirements for 10.6 are:

Apple states the following basic Snow Leopard system requirements, although, for some specific applications such as QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration support and OpenCL, a supported GPU processor is required (Nvidia 8600M GT or greater):[2]
Mac computer with an Intel processor (IA32 processors such as "Core Solo" and "Core Duo" will be limited to 32-bit; later x86-64 architecture processors will be able to operate in 64-bit mode)
1GB of RAM memory
5GB of free disk space
DVD drive for installation


Just keep those specs in mind if you want to future-proof your purchase for as long as you can.


jkrankie(Posted 2009) [#7]
Don't buy a PPC one (i.e G4 or G5) it's not worth it any more, and get the fastest intel processor you can afford.

Cheers
Charlie


Brucey(Posted 2009) [#8]
What Charlie says.

I've got a 1st gen Core 2 Duo Mac Mini, and it works great.
The second gen Core 2's (the latest ones) have better on-board graphics - one that supports that GPU stuff in Snow Leopard.

The G5 and intel are similar in spec.

The Core 2's are an order of magnitude faster than the G5's. Better hardware, faster RAM, etc...


JaviCervera(Posted 2009) [#9]
Also, I don't know if there's a workaround for this, but the official iPhone SDK does not work on PowerPC.


markcw(Posted 2009) [#10]
The Core 2's are an order of magnitude faster than the G5's.

Oh... yes sorry.

As far as I see it there were no Mac Mini G5's and they use the Intel Core.

If your price range is £400 I don't think you can get something to run Unity Pro at that price, you'd have to get what Brucey has.


Beaker(Posted 2009) [#11]
You do not need to pay (initially) for the iPhone SDK.


Robert Cummings(Posted 2009) [#12]
You pay for a year's worth of distribution $99 when you are ready to sell. You also need to go through philadelphia and be a sole trader etc... Selling on app store is a lot of paperwork.

You can go the ad sponsor route and "sell" for free however.


Pete Carter(Posted 2009) [#13]
The main difference for me between buying second hand and new is the graphics chipset, The new mini and mac books have a nvidia chipset which is really good for a lower model were as if you buy second hand you will get a intel chipset (gma 950?) Aonyway if you want to do any open GL stuff you will need a new mini to have a good framerate. but most people who own macs will have the old intel chips so i guess the market now will be at that level. There no way id by a G5 based system there quite a bit slower.