Is this Mac Mini good enough for mobile development

Just about to invest in a mac mini, nothing too fancy for the moment until I can afford something better. Just wondering if the following will cut it.

Tech Specs:

2.5GHz Dual Core Intel® Core™ i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz)
4GB RAM
500GB (5400-rpm) hard drive
Intel HD Graphics 4000
Wifi
Bluetooth 4.0
Thunderbolt port (up to 10 Gbps)
FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
Four USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)
HDMI port
SDXC card slot
Gigabit Ethernet port
Audio in/out
OS X Mountain Lion: MD387B/A

All help is appreciated

wel it would prob work… but its not somthing i would want to use lol…

Better off building a proper windows PC for development and save yourself money at the same time… and have a better PC at the end of it…

Its perfekt for Mobile develoment …

Im using the same.

Best regards

Thomas

Sorry forgot to say it will be for IOS, I already have a windows pc but need an Apple computer to build, correct? I was just curious as I would also use it to actually develop small games if it was capable.

Thanks, thats exactly what I was looking for.

I think lots of IOS developers use those kind of machines, I think it would be fine.

If you’re aiming for iOS, yeah you gotta use a Mac. So in that case, it’s better to buy a Mac since you can deploy to iOS and Android from there, whereas (as far as mobile is concerned) a PC can deploy to Android only.

Of course, there’s going to be Windows Phone 8 add-on for Unity, and it’s probably safe to say you’ll need a Windows OS to deploy for it.

iOS, of course, is the bigger market here so I wouldn’t worry about it, at least not yet. Even then, you can just buy a Windows OS and install it in your Mac (so-called dual-boot), if you’re in a tight budget.

EDIT: Regarding those specs, I’d say they are ok. You might want to bump up the memory to 8 GB if you’re the kind of person who likes to have Unity, Photoshop, Xcode, and a bunch of other apps open side-by-side.

You’ll find that compiling the Unity project to Xcode and then compiling it again in Xcode, is the most demanding thing for your machine, so it’s going to be very slow every time you want to recompile. A fast CPU helps, among other things, and I think what you have there is good enough.

I’m using Mac Mini with HD3000 (old generation). It’s very well enough for mobile development… But you really need 8GB RAM for Lion and above.

I just got my mac mini last week. I’ve selected a refurbished 2011 model with 2.5 GHz i5 and Radeon 6630M which was actually 10,- EUR more expensive than the 2012 i5 2.5GHz with the HD4000 graphics. I’ve exchanged the slow internal drive with a SSD and upgraded it to 16GB RAM (just 100,- EUR) - it works absolutely perfect with Unity!

And overall it really feels much faster than my Q6600 Hackintosh with a 8800GTS (and same SSD) and my late 2007 24" Mac Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz with ATi HD2600 Pro. While the Hackintosh is still much faster when playing games due to the 8800GTS the mini gets much better fps in games than the iMac (tested with some of my own Unity-Projects for Mac)

The main reason for the mac mini was its excellent low power consumption - I pay 27.5 cent per kw/h and the mini usually needs 30-40 watts while working with it (I’ve measured it) and just 16 watts when idle - the Hackintosh needs 230 watts and 190 while idle (the PC alone! - I’ve just checked current power consumption of my whole setup while writing this - the mac mini, an old (dimmed) 20" cinema display and 4 external drives: just 55 watts!) At my usual usage of 16 hours a day the mac mini will completely have paid itself off in february 2015 just because it needs MUCH less power. A great side effect is that it does not heat the room in summer anymore and it is really silent.

A High-End PC with high-end graphics won’t help you for mobile-development at all. Just give the mac mini enough RAM and a SSD and it will be extremely fast for all Tasks that really count.

On the long run you don’t save any money if your PC needs more power. - I just had an extra power bill of 300,- again, just because I only thought about CPU and GPU power when I’ve made my old Hackintosh PC.

Try this instead:

MacMini Server,
2.6 GHz Intel Core i7,
8GB RAM
250GB SSD
500GB HD1
OSX Mountain Lion Server.

You will get a very nice fast Unity box and small compact server to test your server-side code.

What you have there is a nice device, it will work fine, it will handle what you need. I would recommend just splurging out and upgrading everything, I mean, the more the merrier?

My macbook air runs unity perfectly for goodness sake ^_^. 4gb ram, i5, not sure on the graphics cant remember what it has. But hell, go for that mac mini if thats what you want, it will work fine.

I would (I did last week) try to get the last one with dedicated HD6630 graphics chip (unless you urgently need USB3, which you could also get with a thunderbolt docking station later) - it’s still available refurbished at the Apple online store Gebraucht & Refurbished Laptop Angebote - Mac - Apple (DE).

Official Performance Analysis
With even a cursory review of the differences between the “Late 2012” Aluminum Mac mini models and the “Mid-2011” models replaced – the Mac mini “Core i5” 2.3 (Mid-2011), “Core i5” 2.5 (Mid-2011), “Core i7” 2.7 (Mid-2011) and “Core i7” 2.0 Server (Mid-2011) – it should be clear from the above that Apple is cheekily comparing one of the more expensive “Quad Core” Core i7 “Late 2012” Mac mini models to the slowest and cheapest “Dual Core” Core i5 “Mid-2011” discontinued model.
In fine print, Apple specifies that testing used “preproduction [Late 2012] 2.3 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based Mac mini units and [then] shipping [Mid-2011] 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-based Mac mini units, all configured with 4 GB RAM.” In other words, in a selection of tests, the high-end stock “Late 2012” model that costs US$799 is much faster than the previous year’s entry-level model that sold for US$599.
The company also is comparing the slow and integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 in all of the “Late 2012” Mac mini models to the also slow and integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 in the entry-level “Mid-2011” model. Had the company compared the dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics in the “Mid-2011” high-end models – the Mac mini “Core i5” 2.5 (Mid-2011) and “Core i7” 2.7 (Mid-2011) – to the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 in the “Late 2012” high-end models, no doubt the test results would not be something any company would want to use in advertising.
In fine print, Apple clarifies that graphics testing used “preproduction [Late 2012] 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-based Mac mini units with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and 512 MB graphics memory, and [then] shipping [Mid-2011] 2.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-based Mac mini units with Intel HD Graphics 3000 and 384 MB graphics memory, all configured with 4 GB RAM.”
Although these officially provided results technically are accurate, they don’t really reflect an “apples to apples” comparison, so to speak. For a more objective comparison separate from a company’s marketing department, independent benchmarks and tests are required.