If developing for iphone, which mac computer is needed?

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Emil

As the title says, I'm getting some funding for development of my puzzle game http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=8379.0 and, I'm looking for a mac computer to develop on.

I like the price tag and size of the mac mini. But is it good enough for game development?

Btw, I'm still developing the game but updates are few between now since me and my family have a  new member now :)
I'm hoping to write some updates soon!

Ian Price

I used a Mac Mini (2010 edition) to develop my iOS puzzler B'lox! without hardware problems.

The Mac Mini is the cheapest brand new option to get into iOS development right now, so it's a very good choice. It's also a very nice machine.

Having used my Mac for only a couple of hours total since getting it, I would highly recommend getting a used one off of eBay/GumTree/Craig'sList or where-ever if all you need it for is compiling of GLB code.
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mentalthink

Hi Emil, Welcome!!!, yes a Mac Mini it´s really enough, you only take carefull, whit the processor, have to be intel and NOT PowerPC... whit a MacMini you can do anything for iPhone and iPad.

spacefractal

also make sure its a 64bit Intel2duo as minimum, not a Intel Core Duo or Intel Core Solo, which is minimum required to use the newest OSX (Lion and soon Mountian Lion). Those cpu is also quite old today.

Yes a MacMini is a excellent little machine that works well as dev machine.
Genius.Greedy Mouse - Karma Miwa - Spot Race - CatchOut - PowerUp Elevation - The beagle Jam - Cave Heroes 2023 - https://spacefractal.itch.io/

Kitty Hello

I have the mac mini in my living room. The TeamViewer starts at powerup and I can connect through the LAN to it. So, I can develop all on my Windows PC.
The Mac also runs RowMote, an iOS app helper, that allows me to use my iPhone as an remote control for the DVD player.

Crivens

I have the same setup (Mini in Lounge on 46" TV or 104" projector). Only downside is that it's not so easy to do app stuff now (used to be next to my main development PC with SCP to transfer stuff quickly between the machines) that my wife uses it a lot for TV (Big Sat dish doesn't get so much as it used to thanks to satellite changes).

So what's this TeamViewer then? Is it just an easier to use VPN type setup? More importantly while I expect I can use it to compile stuff on the Mac from the PC (ie. exactly like the VPNs I use everyday for work), is there an easy way to have the iDevice plugged into the PC, but basically get the Mac to think it's plugged into it so that the app is transferred to the iDevice exactly like it would if it was actually plugged into the Mac? That would totally float my boat :)

RowMote? I have something similar for Windows. On the Mac though I use Remote Buddy. Is awesome for using with the standard little Mac remote control in apps like XBMC etc. Apparently the full version (which I have but I am just lazy setting stuff up) can work with other remotes such as the official Sony PS3 BT remote control. Nice.

Only downside? While my eyesight is fine, my wife's isn't. So even a 46" screen, at 1080p, is tiny from the distance we watch it from. Even I struggle at times. As a lifelong programmer where screen real estate is gold I seriously hate zooming stuff in, or horror of horrors lower the resolution (the projector is only 720p goddamn it).

Cheers
Current fave quote: Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.

AmazingJas

I have a macbook pro with windows 7 installed on it. Pretty painless process these days. Just need to reboot back into MAC mode when I want to send to iphone/ipad for testing. One downside though is the keyboard is a bit different (eg, DEL is FN+DEL and BACKSPACE is DEL) and lack of number keypad.

bigsofty

Cheers,

Ian.

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC.  As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
(E. W. Dijkstra)

mentalthink

Yes a good point it´s use VMware preintalled image, in youtube have a mount of videos running perfectly... I have a mac mini, but  think it´s more easy transfer to a VM than a real MAC, more quickly.

Thanks to Crivens for the SCP, this it´s the first Time I ear this Protocol, it´s nice in windows can send whit the Right Click, very Usefull thanks...

Another thing it´s make whit GLBasic a simple utility scanning the new files in a folder and sending autmatically thru the local Net.

PS: Be carefully I think you know have to pay 80$ for year for develop whit Mac , if you have to make probes search about JailBr... sometimes the projects can be more longers than a year and pay 80$(a steal) for don´t upLoad nothing to AppStore... hmm I did this make 1 year ago, and I launched 80E to the trash...

Crivens

QuoteYou can always chance your luck with some dodgy VMWare shenanigans
I did. Wasn't very good. So I bought a netbook (wanted one anyway) that was like 99% compatible. Installed OSX and it was pretty much perfect. But then I needed to upgrade something to get something else working. Did that, and took ages to get OSX working again (Hackintoshes are a bit tempramental when upgraded). Got it working. Had several steps like that before XCode even loaded. Then it told me to update OSX. I eventually did and then took even more time to get OSX working again. Etc etc every few weeks. Sod that. Bought a Mac Mini. Aaaaahhhh...

QuoteThanks to Crivens for the SCP, this it´s the first Time I ear this Protocol
Yeah, we use it all the time at work with Unix systems esp these days after credit card security massively ramped up and FTP and Telnet (SSH is equivelent) was seen as completely unsafe. I link a script upto a GLB macro and it's easy enough. I actually have 3 scripts for complete project transfer, just media, and one that only sends the updates to code (so if no media changed can just quickly send this and should be there on an XCode compile).

QuoteAnother thing it´s make whit GLBasic a simple utility scanning the new files in a folder and sending autmatically thru the local Net.
That's a good idea. Could just remember the last amended dates of each file in the project and then only SCP those that have changed (maybe also with filesize and possibly a checksum incase of files being overrwritten into the project from elsewhere). Get your scripting hat on and might be possible just in a script rather than a GLB program (at work we have done similar stuff in Unix for example).

So does anyone know if there is a way of remote controlling a Mac (ie. VPN) from a Windows PC and have the USB connections behave as if they are on the Mac? So then you could totally just use the PC and plug the iDevice into it and when XCode compiles on the Mac, through the VPN, then the compiled app would be transferred to your Windows PC and then through USB to the iDevice. Put simply, when you plug your iDevice (or any USB device) into your Windows PC it will show up on Mac which is running on a VPN rather than the actual Windows PC (or as well as, whatever). This would be quite useful even without thinking of GLB.

Also didn't Gernot, quite a while back, have a solution for GLB that would allow iDevice compilation from a Windows PC? If I remember rightly he couldn't get it working for actually fully publishing to the App store, but it did work for just getting it on your iDevice. Really should get that out the door as it's still a *very* useful tool that as far as I know no other SDK supports.

Cheers
Current fave quote: Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.

FutureCow

Quote from: Crivens on 2012-Aug-21
Also didn't Gernot, quite a while back, have a solution for GLB that would allow iDevice compilation from a Windows PC? If I remember rightly he couldn't get it working for actually fully publishing to the App store, but it did work for just getting it on your iDevice. Really should get that out the door as it's still a *very* useful tool that as far as I know no other SDK supports.
I've been looking for that post for the last hour and can't find it (that's how I found this thread).

Can someone definitively confirm whether I can compile directly to an iphone without a mac at this point? I've just had a requirement to write an iphone app, don't have a mac, and remembered that Gernot said something about a way to do it. For the life of me I can't find the thread, and all posts saying I definately need a mac seem to be about 3 years old from when the licensing restrictions didn't allow the libraries etc to be used on a pc.

Ian Price

No, you STILL can't compile to an iPhone without a Mac. That was indeed proposed and Trucidare (IIRC) had a working example, but it was never implemented AFAIR. Maybe in the next update?
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