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

[Brad Campbell]

Lukas Gradl wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Having a customer request to port an app to MacOS I have to think about 
> some test platform.
> As I was never interested in MacOS this is virgin territory to me.
> 
> 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? Or is there a good solution to 
> emulate one on an x86 Linux box? Just crosscompiling without the 
> possibility to do serious tests in house is not an option, as my app has 
> to integrate in some hardware-subsystems (printing, networking).
> 
> 2.) If 1=yes, which one would you recommend? Which hardware platform? 
> Intel? PowerPC? It has to be OSX, do I have to care which version I get 
> or is just any OSX ok for testing?

I had the same thing come up. I already had a nice monitor so I bought a Mac Mini. I fell in love 
with it and ended up installing Ubuntu on it. It's now my main desktop machine and with bootcamp, 
dual booting to get into OSX is a breeze.

I also have an old 400Mhz G4 tower that I test PPC stuff on, but honestly my testing results have 
always matched the Intel box.

I have Vine server on the PPC box and don't even connect a head to it, just power and network. 
Everything is tested via ssh and vnc. You could easily do the same with a Mini for testing (but for 
UI testing it's better to have a Mac keyboard physically connected).

Keep an eye out on fleabay, there are always older macs up for grabs for cheap.

My G4 has about 320MB of ram and is slow as a wet week in may, but it's ideal for optimising code to 
run faster (much easier to see the results!)

Brad
-- 
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