Thinking of developing Apple iPhone apps on a MINI Mac?

Here are some things to consider:

1. XCODE will run fine on the Mini, that in and of itself isn't a problem.
2. The Mini is expected to be upgraded, possibly late this month. Some see it as long in the tooth, which in some ways might be true, but for iPhone programming it is good enough if purchased new.
3. Someone has already pointed out that new Minis are Intel based but that some of the older models are PPC based. You do not want to get into programming iPhone on a used PPC machine. It is not supported at all.
4. The harddrive on some older Mini Models may be a problem in that they don't have enough space. I installed XCODE on a new MBP with a 200GB disk drive along with NeoOffice and some other programming tools and used up about half my disk space. This can become a critical issue if you use the machine for things other than programming. Don't underestimate the need for disk space.
5. By the way that disk space would be even nicer if it was fast to get to. On the current Mini that means an upgrade to the internal drive or a FireWire drive. Frankly FireWire isn't all that fast, compiling can be very disk intensive at times. However iPhone programms are generally smaller so maybe this isn't something that will kill you.
6. The current Mini may not be a very good long term investment for a programmer. The problem is old hardware that won't support some of Apples new software technologies coming in Snow Leopard. If you want to develop companion programs for the Mac to use with the iPhone this might be a problem. Here I'm talking about OpenCL mostly which might make it to the iPhone also.
7. Realize that no matter what machine you get XCode and the iPhone SDK are buggy. I hate to say it but the iPhone SDK is far from Apples norm for released software quality. So don't blame your hardware.
8. Frankly if you are not in a rush I'd consider waiting on new Apple hardware or look for a bargain on Apples Store. It is just that I would feel bad about somebody investing list price right now in the current Mini. Yes it will do the job, it is just that it does have a few weak points.
9. Max out RAM on the machine. This makes Mac OS/X the snappy and generally helps with XCode.

Hopefully some of the above will be important to you. If you are real successful with your app you should be able to by whatever you want for a new platform, so a Mini could be seen as a low exposure way to iPhone programming.

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