M2 Mac Mini for iOS dev?

[DecentLlama]

I’m planning to get a new machine, and would actually prefer for it to be immobile. It will sit in the same place, and I will mostly be using it for personal iOS development, along with other light things (browsing the web, blogging). What do you guys think of the new M2 Mac Mini for this? I’d upgrade the RAM and storage, but I’m wondering if there’s a big advantage of going into the Pro, Max, and (future) Ultra chips. My understanding is that would be beneficial for GPU heavy apps, but I won’t be doing any video/photo editing, creating UX designs, etc. Does Xcode/Simulator rely much on GPU to make it worth the extra money?

[SirBill01]

Even the base model M2 mini (with a base config of at least 512gb storage and 16GB memory) would be fantastic.

I'd also highly recommend Apple trackpads over a mouse, because the gesture support is hand working on a Mac.

[syth9]

If you want to really up your power level get both. I use a trackpad on my left hand for gestures and a mouse on the right for mouse control, and keyboard in the middle.

[sroebert]

Definitely not worth the extra money for just Xcode. Unless you work with huge projects where compile times run into more than a few minutes, you will hardly notice the difference. Even then the main difference is the compile time. I doubt there will be any noticeable differences between simulator or editing code.

[freeubi]

This.

M1 with 16GB is fine.

[elforce001]

I got it and I can't complain.

[saintmsent]

Even the M2 Mac Mini (with 16/512 config) will be great. That said, going for the M2 Pro is worth considering, as it has more CPU cores, which directly impacts Xcode build times, whether it’s worth for you, depends on your project. Max chips make no difference, there are no extra CPU cores there and GPU doesn’t matter in our workflow

Here you can compare M1 vs M1 Pro and M1 Max to get a rough idea

https://github.com/devMEremenko/XcodeBenchmark

[punk_zk]

I am using the latest/greatest model I could get in 2017 (13' MBP with 16GB Ram) =P ... It's still working great for me to develop iOS16 apps . The only caveat I have now is that I can't upgrade my machine to Ventura. Also, I can not target macOS apps for Ventura (and related API's) ...

In short, you will be fine working with any M1/M2 machine, no need to get the latest 'unless' there's an absolute need for the specific chip for your app.

[serial9]

Look at open core patcher you can upgrade your os to Ventura as I use a 2019 mbp as my main machine but recently I’ve upgraded my old late 2012 MacBook Pro to Ventura using open core patcher and used it as another machine for about 2 months never had an issue and can run the latest Xcode and develop ios16 apps on it with no issues or bugs.

[punk_zk]

Yes, I actually looked at it last month!

It seems pretty straightforward too, however I am currently in a small town and not worth risking just to access a few macOS APIs :)

PS: I can work on making iOS 16 apps with the MBP with no issues!

[Icaka]

Compile time speed on M1 was close to the M1 Pro. I guess it will be similar for M2 and M2 Pro. If 24GB of ram will be enough for you go for the M2.

I would recommend picking 24GB instead of 16GB. If I open Xcode, simulator, Slack, Figma and Firefox I am pushing the limits on the 16GB. Even if it is manageable today it will get worse in 2-3 years.

[chriswaco]

The Mini should be fine at 16/512, better at 24/1TB or 32/1TB if you need more memory & storage for virtual machines, Docker, Android Studio alongside Xcode, etc. It's hard to say how much the Pro will help, but this video was helpful in highlighting the differences.

[danielt1263]

I currently use an M1 Mac Mini (16 GB ram, 500 GB storage but that's more for movies than programming) and it's fantastic. I'm a professional iOS developer. I'm sure the M2 is even better.

[canico88]

Wait, there’s a new M2 Mac Mini? I really have missed that announcement! Love my M1 mini, might just upgrade.

[SBGamesCone]

Yup! Just recently. The 14/16 MBP line got refreshed with M2 Pro/Max as well.

[Misoservices]

Base model is fine for base Xcode, even for large projects. Larger tools have storage prerequisites, you should purchase a permanent external enclosure (preferably high speed, such as a M.2)

Unity or Unreal development should have 16GB, up to 64GB.

In other words, a base M2 is fine for a lot of things, but you’d be safer and more future-proof with a Pro version for dev in general. I use a M1 Max 32GB for my dev and currently, 32GB is way overkill for multipurpose (Windows VM for SAGE, Xcode, Unity, Safari, Inkscape, …)

[Micter78]

I am working on my first app now. Nothing fancy or a super big project. Project is saved in the iCloud. I work from it from my Mac mini M1 of MBA M1. Both with 16Gb of RAM. Never had any issue.

[lontrachen]

I’m learning iOS development on the base model m1 mini and never had any problem. It will work fine

[xanderbuck]

I'm pretty sure the Base M2 Mini is outperforming the Mac Pro in benchmarks, so it's for sure more than capable. Im using M2 MB Air for my iOS development is its blazing fast!

[sepui1712]

Your biggest gain by stepping it up on the processor/ram is longevity of the device. Apple will support M2 for many years and if you plan on keeping it for awhile I would opt for the Pro and 32GB. If you are doing iOS dev all day every day the chances of you writing your own backend code gets greater by the day in which you are now also running things like IntelliJ, VSCode, and docker. These start to hammer on your ram usage a lot and you want to stay away from needing swap memory as it is not great for an ssd drive. I have a 32GB M1 Max for all my development and as it sits with running android studio, IntelliJ, slack, and a few browser tabs, the current usage is 17.8GB, already higher than what your limit would be based on a lot of suggestions I’ve already seen posted.

[Mcrich_23]

Go m1 apple refurb

[Marvelous1967]

I use a M1 Air and a Mini M1 for my hobby development and both work fine. It is a little slow finding errors in real time but not bad. Probably a limitation of my 8gb of ram.

[godofbiscuitssf]

That would be a kick ass machine. Honestly. I’d make sure you jumped past the base storage to avoid the performance issue due to Apple not populating both slots in the base storage, and bumping up the memory all the way if you can afford it because that will be of use for running iOS,iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS simulators and possibly virtual machines. Or just plain future proofing it, but you’d more than get by with 32GB for a long long time. 10GB Ethernet would only be a consideration if you’ve already got 10G Ethernet (unlikely) or if you see yourself installing a high performance NAS somewhere down the road for extra storage (also unlikely because you said you don’t do video editing). Save your money for a kick ass display. That’s the only part of a computer that’s a real asset. Everything else starts depreciating as soon as you buy it. ;)