Anyone have an old mac mini or macbook with intel chip they want to give me?

[mouser]

gasp.. i know it's heresy but I was thinking of tinkering with some mac programming, just for the fun of it.  a friend gave me an old mac laptop with broken keyboard but it turns out that you can't use recent mac development tools on mac's built using powerpc chips.  hence the request for mac's with INTEL chips.

i already have keyboard, mouse, monitor.. so an old mac mini  would be ideal.

if anyone has one just sitting in the closet (with an intel chip! -- usually core 2 duo), i would be very grateful for it.

[Renegade]

If you can deal with being forced to use MVC and Objective-C and using Xcode, you'll like it.

Good luck with the adventure~!

(I threw out an iMac a while back, but I think that was a PowerPC chip... Still, shipping would have cost more than it was worth.)

[Eóin]

I've had the same thoughts recently as I'm writing a mobile app and want to support Android and iPhones. Eventually I settled on Marmalade (then known as Airplay SDK) with which I can develop on Windows.

Before that though, and more relevant to what your talking anout, I did setup a Hackintosh in VirtualBox just to see what the Mac is like. It's something I would recommend before spending cash. Obviously the legality is dubious, but then it's not something you would ever use, it really is just to test the waters.

[argv]

Would a virtual machine (vmware) with Mac OSX 10.6.2 installed do the job?

[mouser]

thanks for the offer argv, but i can probably install a vmware/virtualbox osx guest myself if i decide to go that way.. perhaps i should.. maybe spending $200 on a faster cpu to run a virtual machine is a smarter expenditure than $200 on a mac mini.  are the virtual machine osx installs fast enough to be useable? i remember trying this a couple of years ago and concluding that the osx install on vmware was not fast enough to be really useable.

[Eóin]

The one I tried lacked 3d card support so it really wasn't usable. Maybe there is a way to enable it with VirtualBox, or perhaps VMWare but I would consider it a necessiaty for any real use.

Dual booting a hackintosh however seems to be quite workable from what I'd read, though I never tried it first hand.

[jgpaiva]

Mouser: My experience with VMs is that since the introduction of processor virtualization, things have improved greatly. I frequently use Windows XP as a VM in my mac (which is not a powerful machine, as macs tend not to be), and it runs well. It does however take a considerable amount of RAM, which may be a problem.

PS: I just remembered that a friend of mine used to have an XP machine always downloading stuff through uTorrent in the background while he used the mac, and he was able to do pretty much everything he wanted with it.

[mouser]

Windows runs fast enough in a windows host vmware.. my experience was with trying to run mac osx inside a windows host vmware install -- and that was too slow.  but maybe things have improved.

[jgpaiva]

Sorry, what I meant is that FWIW, it works the other way around pretty decently (XP guest in mac host).

[daddydave]

gasp.. i know it's heresy but I was thinking of tinkering with some mac programming, just for the fun of it. 

Hmmmm....can an advanced alternative to Spotlight for iOS be "FARR" away?

[steeladept]

I never have had access to an OS copy to work with, however, with the advent of the VT-technologies things have gotten a lot better for VM's in general.  I have heard of many useable implimentations of OSX on VMware ESXi, and Citrix has even claimed to have a valid working copy running on their XenDesktop desktop hypervisor which runs on XenServer.  I have not heard of any good useable copies running on a type 2 hypervisor, however (or type 1, whichever it is that runs on the OS instead of AS the OS).  I would think your best bet if you have a copy of OSX to install would be to download a test copy of VMware Workstation and load it on there.  Because of their broader corporate support over VirtualBox, you are likely going to have better chances of it working well in VMware.  Another piece to consider is Parallels Virtuosso.  Parallels came to Windows from the Mac world, so they may be better poised to help with getting it properly installed and running in a virtual machine.  Please note, however, since licensing issues exist that are suspect, they may not be WILLING to help you get it running.

[Eóin]

Update - A Windows 7 dual boot with an original Snow Leopard disc (which can be ordered online) seems like a very viable solution. See this guide. Try and verify that your hardware will be compatible first of course.

[mouser]

Ok so no one has an unused mac mini sitting on the shelf.. so if i go the virtual-macosx route, i'm going to need more ram..

Does anyone have 4-8gb of ddr2 desktop ram (in 2gb or 4gb sticks), sitting unused in a box somewhere that they might be willing to send along?

[steeladept]

Does anyone have 4-8gb of ddr2 desktop ram (in 2gb or 4gb sticks), sitting unused in a box somewhere that they might be willing to send along?

Maybe.  What kind of ddr2 ram?  I think I have some PC2-5300 sticks, but I will have to check when I get home.  Will that work, or do you need other speeds?

[mouser]

I don't know too much about memory, however.. i have 2 sticks in the pc already and i'm guessing that new memory should be similar.

The memory i have now is two sticks of:
OCZ2T800C42G
2gb each stick, PC2-6500U DDR2-400

So i'm thinking i should have 6400 not 5300.. though i really don't know about these things.

[Eóin]

I'd really recommend going the hackintosh route, you can buy leopard/lion legally so you're not pirating, sure you are breaking EULA but then running it in a VM also breaks the EULA. Just check out http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/ and the connected forums, if you have the compatible hardware them dual booting really is the best option. I've gone that route and it was fairly painless.

[steeladept]

Looks like you are right.  I don't think I have any of that speed, but I will look.  I might be mistaken...been a while since I looked at it myself.

[mahesh2k]

Another better option- get old mac mini ofcourse intel based (i do see deals at cost 200$).Not sure how much shipping and other stuff will go in united states. Why ? here.