I have a 4yo desktop with one of the original Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs, which is getting a little elderly. I primarily work in Windows but have a 2007 MacBook; I recently started supporting iOS so I need a Mac but this too is getting rather sluggish.

I'm not bothered by super high-spec PCs so would probably look to spend £500 on a new desktop (or $500 in the US, it's roughly comparable), and the cheapest Mac Mini since the cost of iMac is hard to justify for part-time use.

But I wonder, would getting a more powerful Mac and using it for both (using bootcamp, not virtualization) actually make more sense? A top-spec Mac Mini is a big price-jump from the lower end ones - £400 more - but still cheaper than two machines since you don't get much of a desktop for £400. The only missing bit is the discrete graphics but modern integrated GPUs are so much better than they once were.

Anyone care to throw in any opinions or personal experiences that are relevant?

You don't seem to be planning to stop iOS development. Dunno how complex your work is, but my old MBP actually flat out ran out of memory running a build one day. And a build that is swapping to disk is one of the least pleasant things on earth. Even with everything else closed I wasn't able to develop smoothly, due to XCode running clang in the background to drive its auto complete features. At that point there was simply no choice; I had to upgrade the Mac.

As far as the GPU quality, well it is what it is. If you're dual booting to Windows you'll have a mostly workable machine for mid range games but nothing special. It's acceptable for development if you're not planning on doing anything sophisticated. Note that by "sophisticated" I do not necessarily mean high end, merely cutting edge.

Another possible option is a Windows PC capable of running OSX virtually. I do this myself, and it runs fine, but I spent $4,000 just on parts for my PC, so I'm not sure what the performance would be like if you were to only spend about $500.

I boot OSX86 for my Mac dev. Works ok for me, I don't need anything else but to recompile my Linux/Windows stuff. Have a look here:

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/657645-another-building-a-pc-thread/page-2

You don't seem to be planning to stop iOS development.

To clarify, you're right. And I want/need the option to develop for OSX too since my codebase is cross-platform.

As far as the GPU quality, well it is what it is. If you're dual booting to Windows you'll have a mostly workable machine for mid range games but nothing special. It's acceptable for development if you're not planning on doing anything sophisticated. Note that by "sophisticated" I do not necessarily mean high end, merely cutting edge.

I agree. The latest onboard graphics chipsets really are nothing like what we are used to think of as "onboard graphics" like the old GMA - although even that range could do SM3 which shows how far we've come! I'm not a game player but the HD - and now Iris - chipsets are essentially proper GPUs on the CPU these days, right? They're still going to outpace a dedicated low/mid-end GPU froma few years ago?

I boot OSX86 for my Mac dev. Works ok for me, I don't need anything else but to recompile my Linux/Windows stuff. Have a look here:
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/657645-another-building-a-pc-thread/page-2

I've always bee nervous about running OSX on a non-Mac machine since iOS dev requires all kinds of certificates... what if one day it jut stops working becaue they close a loophole? Is it allowable by the license?

When buying a Mac don't get the top spec. It is much cheaper (several hundred pounds cheaper) to upgrade the ram and hard drive yourself. Get either a base model iMac or a non retina macbook pro (cheapest one). You can then buy all the Ram you need from Crucial. I even managed to upgrade my RAM and sell the RAM that I took out of my MBP for a proffit. So I ended up earning £10 by installing my own RAM instead of the £330 that it would have cost me to configure it from Apple.

what if one day it jut stops working becaue they close a loophole? Is it allowable by the license?

As far as I know the OSX EULA might not be valid in Germany but sorry not idea about ios. I've managed to download x-code but forgot how I did that without being a registered dev. So

I could dev for IOS but have no interest in such. I think for uploading stuff to the store you need even to pay Apple...

what if one day it jut stops working becaue they close a loophole? Is it allowable by the license?

As far as I know the OSX EULA might not be valid in Germany but sorry not idea about ios. I've managed to download x-code but forgot how I did that without being a registered dev. So

I could dev for IOS but have no interest in such. I think for uploading stuff to the store you need even to pay Apple...

Well I'm a paid up member of the developer program - only $100 a year and I have no problem with that. But I don't know if connecting to iTunes somehow used special security info baked into Mac hardware... or if a Mac is 100% just a regular PC of very specific spec and Apple can't even tell I'm running a Hackintosh.

All in all it's probably not worth the hassle of turning my main dev PC into a Hackintosh though, when I rely on it?

You need Application Loader to upload to iTunes which as far as I know is Mac only still. Given the requirements that Apple randomly changes I wouldn't chance a hackintosh as machine for real iOS development.

Parallels has come a long way. My work Macbook has Win7 running through Bootcamp on Parallels so I can use Visual Studio 2013 for Unity dev. I really don't notice much of any performance drop in Windows from it being virtualized. The only time it sucks is when Windows seems to be running a update in the background. It will drag the entire system down to a halt. Being able to use TortoiseSVN instead of the horrible, horrible Mac options is a bonus too.

At home, I just have a Mac mini and a Windows desktop. Since I always use version control and KVM switch I just swap back as needed.

Well I'm a paid up member of the developer program - only $100 a year and I have no problem with that. But I don't know if connecting to iTunes somehow used special security info baked into Mac hardware... or if a Mac is 100% just a regular PC of very specific spec and Apple can't even tell I'm running a Hackintosh.



All in all it's probably not worth the hassle of turning my main dev PC into a Hackintosh though, when I rely on it?

There is no special hardware security. It is just a regular PC. However I have used several hackintosh machines and whilst they are ok for just playing around they are pretty useless if you actually want to do any real development. New update to OSX which may be needed to upgrade xcode and they stop working.