Hi all , I do most of my dev on a lowend Dell I3 laptop with about 4 gb of ram , but I was thinking of buying a OLD macbook to get into IOS development .
Don’t go too old (say over 2-3 years), because Apple has a habit of making XCode require the latest OS, and they tend to drop some older hardware from being able to run that. If it can’t run 10.8 (and I’m pretty sure the one you listed can’t), then don’t get it.
If it supports 10.8 now, it always will. They never drop any hardware that can run a particular version of the OS from being able to run any updates of that OS. So a Macbook that can run 10.8.0 will be able to run all 10.8.x updates.
OMG, just a few months ago i bought basically the exact same one as him Is there usually ways to install the newer OS onto the old hardware? even if it isn’t supported by apple?
I hope i didn’t just wast like $450, when i got it i had no idea that the new OS wouldn’t support it, then when i found out i was like… “darn but oh well ill make do” but without Xcode it is a worthless piece of plastic
The problem is Xcode, the latest version that works with ios 5+ can only be installed on the latest OS which will only work on machines with a minimum spec.
It’s a pity as it’s only software locking really, there should be no reason why your older machine can’t build for the iOS platform even if it is slower!
I did bump into one work around but that would only let you build and test the apps on your ios devices but it would not allow you to sell the app via the app store.
Its not just software locking. The problem is that the very old cpus were 32bit only and later on there was a generation with limited 64bit support.
OSX 10.7+ are pure 64bit with no 32bit support anymore and without PPC emulation either (the new versions even cut X11 from the equation), all focused on getting a better performance and experience and solving the 15 year old apple problem of ‘claiming to be better than windows when the freaking OS eats 2-4 times as much RAM’
that being said, all Core i cpus will work with 10.8 and pretty surely also with 10.9 as Core i are ‘new’, the are the current generation instruction wise
At the time even Core 2 Duo are supported and that cpu architecture is 4 years older
OK I hear waht your saying for Mac but if your building for the iOS platform an ARM 32 bit architecture, it’s a support/locking issue as the 64bit feature is Mac specific, and previous versions of Xcode did not have this problem!
To clarify I think on older Intel chipsets the memory becomes an issue, personally I had a mac mini 1.83 and it would not upgrade to the new OS as it did not have enough memory.
But further digging and you will find a list of unsupported macs that don’t make the minimum requirements for the new OS.
Actually there is nothing which evolved this fast like memory has. A C64 had almost 64KB, a typical early Amiga had 1MB and now you need 4GB for running a system in a comfortable way, or better 8GB is you’re running VMs. If CPU performance would have evolved the same way…
:O) In about 30 years the memory from 64KB to 16GB got 262144 times bigger. It’s harder to say how much faster they exactly got as these things, beside of certain benchmarks, depend on the architecture, the whole computer system and so on. Nevertheless that’s quite impressive. I couldn’t say that games got 2^18 times better though.
You are mixing a few things here.
To what it builds is totally 0 important.
Whats relevant is the toolchain that gets you there and part of that is Apple LLVM 4.0 compiler which does not support anything but the new architectures.
Has nothing to do with lock but the simple fact that you don’t waste dev resources on platforms that are outdated and not future safe.
Simple as that.
Anyone who got locked out (with a few exceptions) actually decided to go the cheap way right from the start, so they knew that it was not ‘eternity future safe’, yet they still got out like 4 years from them. Those who buy used hardware didn’t want to invest anything right from the start, so its up to them to life with the consequences.
My MBP 2008 for example does not have the slightest problem with 10.8 nor do I suspect it to be dropped in 10.9
The only ones dropped were those who got devices with SM3 only hardware (intel onboard pre SM4), that are and never were a developers machines (unity did not support building occlusion culling on these trash boxes either), nobody else so far was cut. As such its the hardware buyers that are to blame for doing uneducated ‘blind sales invemestments’ instead of considering their requirements and targets.
So all that are now in trouble did bad investments, yet at least small ones that by now are written off anyway.
People can hate apple for how they handle this but in the end, Microsoft and Windows have shown that if you don’t enforce the current OS, developers will not adopt the new features either (look out for the childish so-called professionals outcry over Win8, the first progression in the Windows environment for over a damn decade) and thats a core thing in apples strategy, enhancement of experience. Apple does not focus on hardware and they don’t mind cutting support. They never did and never will and you better cope with that when entering this world, you are not gonna get along fine with it otherwise.
Lets keep this simple you can’t get the latest XCode (which you need to develop and release apps for iOS 5+ devices), if your machine is not capable of running the latest OS.
Fact: If previous versions of XCode could build to an iOS platform, a platform and architecture different from the development/build machine, then the only thing stopping newer version of XCode working are the changes that Apple introduce.
So in this case Apple have stopped supporting older machines as iOS development platforms.
Fair dues to them they get you to buy a new dev machine!
There are sometimes hacks which people use to install the new OS even if not supported, yes. No idea if it can be done with that particular model. Unity itself will run on hardware that’s plenty old, it’s only XCode that’s the issue.
Depends on the subject, in times where consoles are supposed to last ten years or when looking at how fast companies replace their systems, i wouldn’t say this is some fundamental truth.
Might be but we do 3D development, not business development.
Otherwise we would work with ANSI C99 and create interfaces that look like DOS batch menus as they are still in use in business.
We decided to go this way cause we wanted to create visual experiences and that just has its price.
but I don’t think there is a point in this discussion: Core i processors are safe and will remain so for quite a while too.
Core Duo and Core 2 Duo with the old intel IGPs are out.
Those where cheap boxes or the gen 1 macbook air, office boxes right from the start no dev machines.
People that used them got a lot of value out of them but now its time to try to get back to reality with hardware as the ipad3 is already approaching them in power if not exceeding so should you really still use them for development, a machine that sux worse than your target hardware? (Intel GMA500 is 3GS gpu for example)
Is there usually ways to install the newer OS onto the old hardware? even if it isn’t supported by apple?
