[fpc-pascal] OT: Buy a Mac to develop for MacOS? Which one?

[Jonas Maebe]

(please follow up to fpc-other, that is the list specifically intended  
for everything that's off-topic for the other lists)


On 11 Oct 2008, at 17:09, Lukas Gradl wrote:

> So perhaps some of the Mac-users here can help me out a bit:
> I still want to use my current machines as them main ones, I just  
> need a platform to compile and test my application on.
>
> 1.) Do I really need to buy a Mac?

That's best, yes.

> Or is there a good solution to emulate one on an x86 Linux box?

Probably, you can illegally run hacked versions of Mac OS X on VMWare  
if you really want to. Testing subsystems like printing like that may  
not give you the same view as an end user on a regular Mac though.

> 2.) If 1=yes, which one would you recommend? Which hardware  
> platform? Intel? PowerPC?

Intel, since PowerPC has been phased out by Apple. Which Intel Mac is  
up to you to decide budgetwise, as there are no particularly bad ones  
in the Intel family that I know of. I'd recommend getting a Core2 Duo- 
based one.

> It has to be OSX, do I have to care which version I get or is just  
> any OSX ok for testing?


Just like with any other OS, bugs get fixed with every new release  
(and sometimes things get broken) and something that works fine on  
your release may not work 100% on an older/newer version (although in  
general, it does).

The developer tools contain SDKs to allowing you to target back to Mac  
OS X 10.2.8 when developing on Mac OS X 10.5.x. In practice, you can  
probably get away with supporting 10.4.x and up. When buying a new  
Mac, you'll always get the latest Mac OS X version bundled. When  
getting a second hand one, it will usually also have some version  
bundled. In general, as long as you get 10.4.x or 10.5.x, you should  
be ok.

Note that hardware released after a particular version of Mac OS X has  
been released will only work with that version or higher. If you want  
to run older OS releases, this is useful to keep in mind.


Jonas