Hardcore Mac development

As it's a Mac you're pretty much limited to 1 option, the Mac Pro. There's also the iMac and Mac Mini that can be used as desktops but if you're looking for a high end spec it's the way to go. Check it out at the apple store here.

I don't own a Mac of any description and never have done, but everyone I know who's owned one says the Mac Mini isn't cost effective and not worth it. It's apparently underpowered and it's no cheaper than a proper iMac (or the cost difference is negligible) when you factor in the cost of all the extra peripherals. Even if you have the extra peripherals lying around as spares, that doesn't get round the problem of it being underpowered.

I would go for some kind of iMac, apparently the line is about to be updated or so the rumour mills are saying. Or, as Monder said, you're looking at a Mac Pro for the absolute cutting edge of everything but those can get insanely expensive if you spec them up; my friend and I put on all the options to see how much it would be... £14k with an educational discount. To put that into perspective, my mother paid slightly less than that for her car.

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Original post by ApochPiQ There was a time in my life where I would have sworn that these words would never pass my lips, but... I'm in the market for a good Mac desktop to do some heavy-duty development on. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the Mac market is like, what's a good machine for hacking, and so on - my total experience with modern Macs is screwing around with Xcode on a Mini. I'm looking for something that can handle modern, AAA-scale game development. Multicore is pretty much mandatory - at least dual core, quad is better. I don't know anything about video card hardware in the Mac world. RAID-1 would be nice. Gigabit ethernet is also mandatory. 4GB memory is a given. Where's a good place to shop for this kind of machine? What models should I be on the lookout for? What kind of price range can I expect?

Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here.
However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today. This is rather insane. If I had extra money, I'd donate to red cross, not to apple's ad campaigns!

I do develop for mac. My development platform is Linux based (quadcore, 4gb ram, etc etc), and I did set up cross-compilers for windows and mac. I can build any of or all 4 targets (windows, linux 32 bit, linux 64 bit, intel mac) from one IDE with press of single button, and make re-distributable packages with press of another. Productivity-wise it seems to be the best option. You do have to waste 1 or 2 days setting up cross-development tools, but it pays off IMO in the long run - i only wish i did that earlier, as i spent more time getting used to os x and xcode than i spent setting up crosscompiler . I have cutting edge toolchain with gcc 4.3.3, while what you get from apple is AFAIK still stuck with gcc 4.0.1

Hopping between two or three IDEs has very big negative impact on productivity. Especially, hopping between different operating systems. Same for using outdated compiler for one target but up to date for another.

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Original post by Dmytry Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here. However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today.

This is a completely false statement due to people not understanding hardware specifications. I priced the Mac Pro vs. Dell and HP of the same specifications and the Mac Pro was the cheapest option BY FAR. Now that is comparing exact specs, if you want to tell yourself a cheap Q6600 is the exact same as a Xeon processor, or that buffered/unbuffered DIMMs have no difference, be my guest, by you are NOT comparing the same thing. You could also try to build the system instead of looking at HP and Dell, but it was even MORE expensive buying your own dual processor board with two Xeon processors. On top of all that the Mac Pro is dead silent, compared to the PC alternatives which are insanely loud.

Although as previously said in the post you'll want to purchase the system from Apple, but don't upgrade the RAM, etc from them as you would be paying way too much. I bought 32GB of DIMMs from OWC for our Macs and it was incredibly cheaper.

EDIT: also if you are a student (even part-time) you can join the Student ADC for $99 and you get an amazing one-time deal on hardware, as you get 25% of the system off which is quite a good.

Well there's a giant gap left between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, which you might be able to fill with a proper hackintosh, if you've got good google skills it's an option you should look into, although on the downside the legality of it is questionable and being tested in the courts right now(with psystar)

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Original post by Saruman Quote: Original post by Dmytry Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here. However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today. This is a completely false statement due to people not understanding hardware specifications. I priced the Mac Pro vs. Dell and HP of the same specifications and the Mac Pro was the cheapest option BY FAR. Now that is comparing exact specs, if you want to tell yourself a cheap Q6600 is the exact same as a Xeon processor, or that buffered/unbuffered DIMMs have no difference, be my guest, by you are NOT comparing the same thing. You could also try to build the system instead of looking at HP and Dell, but it was even MORE expensive buying your own dual processor board with two Xeon processors. On top of all that the Mac Pro is dead silent, compared to the PC alternatives which are insanely loud. Although as previously said in the post you'll want to purchase the system from Apple, but don't upgrade the RAM, etc from them as you would be paying way too much. I bought 32GB of DIMMs from OWC for our Macs and it was incredibly cheaper. EDIT: also if you are a student (even part-time) you can join the Student ADC for $99 and you get an amazing one-time deal on hardware, as you get 25% of the system off which is quite a good.

do you mac fans get paid for spreading advertisment fud or what?

And no, I'm not buying from Dell or HP.

The cost of apple system of very closely similar specs to my pc:
3,099.00 USD
(conservatively choosing next worse option whenever equivalent is unavailable, as so that this mac is unlikely to outperform my pc in a benchmark).
the price of my pc: 845 USD
the price of my pc specs draft was about 1000 USD (before performance/cost considerations), and it is out-speccing this mac.

The only thing that you can claim for mac pro is silence, which I sort of doubt is really that great for a system of such thermal dissipation.

And yes i agree if you choose really bad performance/cost components for a PC system (ones with a "stupidity tax"), then you can make a PC system that costs this much and has comparable performance. But if I needed speed, I would rather make a second and third quadcore pcs and use those over network as buildslaves (speeding up builds proportionally, unlike multicore on 1 bus)

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Original post by Dmytry Quote: Original post by Saruman Quote: Original post by Dmytry Apple hardware is made by apple. You can go to apple.com, look in their online store at prices for mac pro. I myself were looking at prices here. However, beware: macs are 2 to 4 times more expensive than PCs of same specifications. In particular, mac pro of same specs as my desktop costs 3 times more *now* than my pc did cost months ago, and like 3.5 times than how much my pc would cost today. This is a completely false statement due to people not understanding hardware specifications. I priced the Mac Pro vs. Dell and HP of the same specifications and the Mac Pro was the cheapest option BY FAR. Now that is comparing exact specs, if you want to tell yourself a cheap Q6600 is the exact same as a Xeon processor, or that buffered/unbuffered DIMMs have no difference, be my guest, by you are NOT comparing the same thing. You could also try to build the system instead of looking at HP and Dell, but it was even MORE expensive buying your own dual processor board with two Xeon processors. On top of all that the Mac Pro is dead silent, compared to the PC alternatives which are insanely loud. Although as previously said in the post you'll want to purchase the system from Apple, but don't upgrade the RAM, etc from them as you would be paying way too much. I bought 32GB of DIMMs from OWC for our Macs and it was incredibly cheaper. EDIT: also if you are a student (even part-time) you can join the Student ADC for $99 and you get an amazing one-time deal on hardware, as you get 25% of the system off which is quite a good. do you mac fans get paid for spreading advertisment fud or what? And no, I'm not buying from Dell or HP.

Really, do anti-mac fanatics get paid to call 'mac fans' idiots or something?

Go to apple and configure a mid range MacPro, then go to Dell and try to get close to a similar configuration. The Dell system came out over a grand more expensive for me, and I've used both work stations. The Mac Pro is far nicer case than the Dell system, and as long as you don't buy mac displays, then you are doing fine.


Don't like Dell? Ok then, price me out a system that is equal to a mid range Mac Pro. One that if something dies the system will be back, up and running in a day or two at no extra cost to you, and no time or real effort on your part.

"One that if something dies the system will be back, up and running in a day or two at no extra cost to you, and no time or real effort on your part."
I'm not in US. Most definitely, if something dies in a mac, it wont be up and running in day of two here, unless i fix it myself.

edit: And no I'm not configuring anything to match apple's irrational choices (default: 8 cores, only 2 gb ram, shitty graphics card, what the hell is that made for? I'm confident my system outperforms this in any real world test. edit: to elaborate. Games and 3D modelling, my system is certainly faster because of graphics card. Photo-realistic software rendering, 2gb ram is simply too little and it'll swap, especially with 8 threads. Software development, 2gb ram is certainly far too little for 8-threaded builds with gcc, you want large disk cache. Cracking passwords or computing pi to nth digit: this mac would outperform my pc, but probably less than 2x)
As for "anti mac"... I did quite a lot of real supporting to apple so far. For example, yesterday, I helped an open source project to set up building of working application bundles for OS X.
I'm simply a person whom does not see apple (or pc for that matter) ads on tv and in media.

[Edited by - Dmytry on February 28, 2009 4:39:40 PM]

Are you planning on making the Mac your primary development platform or will it be additional to your existing system?

If you're planning on buying a new desktop, the Mac Mini is the cheapest. But it's only got an Intel graphics card, you'll need to supply or buy the peripherals including the monitor and it's a bit pricey for what it is. It is small however, which is a boon if you don't have much space.

The iMac is the consumer grade option, and it's what I develop on. You'll have a Radeon 2400 XT, 2600 PRO or a GeForce 8800 GS in the deluxe model. However, the iMac is all built into the display. Good for space, but it's strange if you're used to having your own box.

The Mac Pro is the premium hardcore model with the price tag to match. They are, however, the only Macs expandable in the same way your usual PC box is. They're a bit out of my price range, but they're pretty beefy. And they're very impressive looking while still being "Mac pretty".

Other options: you can buy second-hand. I think Macs tend to retain their prices more than PCs do though, so this won't be as cheap as you might think. Or you could get a laptop, which is a good alternative if this is going to be in tandem with your main machine. These days I'd get a MacBook if you wanted a Mac to travel, or a MacBook Pro if you really needed a poweful laptop.

Note that the quiet nature is very nice. My iMac gently hums, compared to my old PC which sounds like a lawnmower. And the extra space of the lack of a big box with the iMac is a nice bonus too.

Also note: don't buy your RAM from Apple. In Australia at least the prices are insane. Buy your extra RAM from a good quality third party store and install it yourself.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Also note: don't buy your RAM from Apple. In Australia at least the prices are insane. Buy your extra RAM from a good quality third party store and install it yourself.

Why?
Apple's ram is very good. Absolute top of the line, maybe 5% faster than regular stuff (but 5x more expensive). Same as other apple's components like motherboard.
If you find apple RAM prices insane, well, for absolutely same reasons I find apple computer prices insane - I can get components that are slightly slower but very significantly cheaper.

BTW. As for reliability. I can have it up and running in 2 minutes if something breaks. By simply having second PC and using all drives in one pc in raid 1, so that if first pc dies i move drives to second, and if one of drives dies i'm unaffected. (I'm not doing that, but I totally could, and still keep it cheaper)

[Edited by - Dmytry on February 28, 2009 5:18:42 PM]

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Original post by Dmytry I'm simply a person whom does not see apple (or pc for that matter) ads on tv and in media.

If you don't watch them, then I'm curious what makes you think they would have such an effect on people as to compel them to make the pro-Apple arguments that have been made in this thread.

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Original post by nilkn Quote: Original post by Dmytry I'm simply a person whom does not see apple (or pc for that matter) ads on tv and in media. If you don't watch them, then I'm curious what makes you think they would have such an affect on people as to compel them to make the pro-Apple arguments that have been made in this thread.

I never met anyone locally who would make the pro-apple arguments that has been made in this thread. In fact I never met anyone online from a country with no apple ads who would make such pro apple arguments. That includes mac users.
edit: also, I of course seen one or two ads on youtube. I'm not a psychologist and i cannot infer anything about effects of repeated exposure to those ads from ads themselves. All I can do is unscientifically notice difference between people who had repeated exposure to apple ads and those whom hadn't.
edit:
From history I know that continuous exposure to some sort of campaign can have rather profound effects on behaviour, of far bigger magnitude than pro-Apple arguments seen in this thread. In light of this, I do not consider it a slightest bit far fetched to consider hypothesis that there is a link. In fact, I would rather consider far fetched a hypothesis that Apple is spending so much money on ads for nothing.

edit:
See, there is still some rationality in this thread: "don't buy apple RAM" advice. But strangely enough it does not expand to all other top of the line components (mac itself), even though with all other components, just like with ram, you can buy several cheaper components for cost of top of the line component, and use render or build slaves, have exponentially higher reliability through redundancy, etc. In other words, get significantly better deal for same money by not using the most expensive top of the line components on market, but going for 5% to 10% slower components (that are several times less expensive.)

edit: hmm, maybe from now on i should infact endorse spending on top of the line components, because it serves as sort of tax that funds R&D and makes computers be cheaper for me. Though, I dunno what is the impact from this tax. Relatively few people buy top of the line components and upgrade regularly.

[Edited by - Dmytry on February 28, 2009 4:25:42 PM]

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Original post by Dmytry Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid Also note: don't buy your RAM from Apple. In Australia at least the prices are insane. Buy your extra RAM from a good quality third party store and install it yourself. Why? Apple's ram is very good. Absolute top of the line, maybe 5% faster than regular stuff (but 5x more expensive). Same as other apple's components like motherboard. If you find apple RAM prices insane, well, for absolutely same reasons I find apple computer prices insane - there is components that are slightly slower but very significantly cheaper.

I double checked the Apple store, and it actually isn't so bad these days. Back when I got my iMac, I remember the RAM pricing being something ridiculous; in the order of A$600+ for 4 GB of RAM. That might be because 2 GB of RAM is now standard and I had to buy two new sticks back then (I only had 1 GB). Now it's just A$230 to upgrade to 4 GB. It'd still be cheaper to buy it elsewhere.

As for the whole "Macs are overpriced" thing, honestly I don't care. I won't argue that the equivalent PC I would have bought would have been cheaper. Maybe not massively cheaper, but it would have cost less. It mightn't have had the same components and probably would have been missing a few features, but it would have been suitable for my usual tasks.

Except of course, that it wouldn't have been an Apple and it wouldn't have run Mac OS X, which is the whole reason why I bought an Apple in the first place. I'm prepared to pay a bit extra for a computer that does what I want it to as well as avoids all the pesky little annoyances kicking at your shins that I have had with all flavours of Windows and Linux running on generic PC boxes.

Not that I can claim Apple is perfect. If they were, I'd have a working MacBook Pro, rather than the defective lump that's been unusable for the majority of time I've owned it (gonna try a different repair shop this time). But I find their operating system to best for me for what I do. The slinkiness of their hardware design is a bonus.

And you can't really develop for the Mac without one of your own. No, a hackintosh isn't going to cut it.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Quote: Original post by Dmytry Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid Also note: don't buy your RAM from Apple. In Australia at least the prices are insane. Buy your extra RAM from a good quality third party store and install it yourself. Why? Apple's ram is very good. Absolute top of the line, maybe 5% faster than regular stuff (but 5x more expensive). Same as other apple's components like motherboard. If you find apple RAM prices insane, well, for absolutely same reasons I find apple computer prices insane - there is components that are slightly slower but very significantly cheaper. I double checked the Apple store, and it actually isn't so bad these days. Back when I got my iMac, I remember the RAM pricing being something ridiculous; in the order of A$600+ for 4 GB of RAM. That might be because 2 GB of RAM is now standard and I had to buy two new sticks back then (I only had 1 GB). Now it's just A$230 to upgrade to 4 GB. It'd still be cheaper to buy it else where.

from apple website (choosing specs for mac pro):
selected: # 2GB (2x1GB)
# 4GB (4x1GB) [Add $500.00]

$500 for 2 GB ram? Which comes in 1gb sticks so you cant put a lot of it in?
This is insane. I didn't even know there is quality ram in 1gb sticks these days. (edit: my point is though, if you dont like insane ram choice, why you'd like all other no less insane choices (motherboard, cpu, whole '8 cores on a single bus' thing which scales poorly for common parallel tasks and costs more than 2 separate motherboards with 2x ram.))

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As for the whole "Macs are overpriced" thing, honestly I don't care. I won't argue that the equivalent PC I would have bought would have been cheaper. It mightn't have had the same components and probably would have been missing a few features, but it would have been suitable for my usual tasks. Except of course, that it wouldn't have been an Apple and it wouldn't have run Mac OS X, which is the whole reason why I bought an Apple in the first place. I'm prepared to pay a bit extra for a computer that does what I want it to as well as avoids all the pesky little annoyances kicking at your shins that I have had with all flavours of Windows and Linux running on generic PC boxes.

Interestingly, I find a lot of pesky little annoyances on OS X and Windows (more in OS X), while I'm generally very happy with Linux.

Everyone got his favourite OS of course.
I have very little tolerance to the kind of annoyances which would be immediately fixed in open source OS. (such as hardcoded mouse acceleration curve, or having to buy microsoft mouse to get different hardcoded curve, same as windows default (but still with no way of configuring it) )

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Not that I can claim Apple is perfect. If they were, I'd have a working MacBook Pro, rather than the defective lump that's been unusable for the majority of time I've owned it (gonna try a different repair shop this time). But I find their operating system to best for me for what I do. The slinkiness of their hardware design is a bonus. And you can't really develop for the Mac without one of your own.

I agree, you need mac for testing and debugging. Not for building though (I cross-build from Linux now. Mostly for sake of streamlined development. I used to build on mac and fix mac issues right on mac itself, but had lower productivity)

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No, a hackintosh isn't going to cut it.

I have real mac mini (got from prev job) which I use to check that builds do not fail to load (I plan to un-install all the development tools from it except debugger related for purity of test), plus I got two testers now.
The remaining issues are OpenGL driver related for me, and I would need half a dosen macs to check for those :( I don't have coverage for those issues even on PC platform.

[Edited by - Dmytry on February 28, 2009 5:16:37 PM]

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Original post by Dmytry from apple website (choosing specs for mac pro): selected: # 2GB (2x1GB) # 4GB (4x1GB) [Add $500.00]

Prebuilt manufacturers always scalp you on upgrades from the baseline spec. If you build the computer yourself, you can get 8GB for $200 or less.

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Original post by Dmytry Interestingly, I find a lot of pesky little annoyances on OS X and Windows (more in OS X), while I'm generally very happy with Linux.

My showstopper problem with Linux was that I couldn't get the blasted thing installed on my PC. Every distro I tried would hang during bootup. Eventually I gave up and reclaimed the partition for Windows.

On older PCs, when I could get a distro running, I never could get the 3D drivers running. This was back when I didn't have an internet connection to the PC too. Installing anything on Linux without an internet connection is a lesson in pain.

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Everyone got his favourite OS of course. I have very little tolerance to the kind of annoyances which would be immediately fixed in open source OS. (such as hardcoded mouse acceleration curve, or having to buy microsoft mouse to get different hardcoded curve, same as windows default (but still with no way of configuring it) )

The biggest drawcard for Mac OS X, and why I've made it my prime development platform, is the mix of creative and under-the-hood technical elements.

Mac OS has always been popular with creative artists, so all the great tools have a Mac version. If you can't afford the expensive commercial tools like Adobe or Corel, then there's a vibrant shareware scene. There's some good inexpensive creative writing tools for the Mac out there too.

For the techie side of me, there's the Unix underpinnings of the whole OS. I love having the ability to open an Terminal window and hacking around with Unix commands. It's the combination of having that ability with the well designed Apple GUI and commercially supported software that sold Macs to me.

Plus I'll have Mac support for all the software I create out of the box. Have you seen what the typical market share the Mac has for cross-platform indie game sales? In terms of the pie chart, we're not talking "significant", we're talking "dominant". You'd be mad not to target the Mac!

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Quote: Original post by Dmytry Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid Also note: don't buy your RAM from Apple. In Australia at least the prices are insane. Buy your extra RAM from a good quality third party store and install it yourself. Why? Apple's ram is very good. Absolute top of the line, maybe 5% faster than regular stuff (but 5x more expensive). Same as other apple's components like motherboard. If you find apple RAM prices insane, well, for absolutely same reasons I find apple computer prices insane - there is components that are slightly slower but very significantly cheaper. I double checked the Apple store, and it actually isn't so bad these days. Back when I got my iMac, I remember the RAM pricing being something ridiculous; in the order of A$600+ for 4 GB of RAM. That might be because 2 GB of RAM is now standard and I had to buy two new sticks back then (I only had 1 GB). Now it's just A$230 to upgrade to 4 GB. It'd still be cheaper to buy it elsewhere. As for the whole "Macs are overpriced" thing, honestly I don't care. I won't argue that the equivalent PC I would have bought would have been cheaper. Maybe not massively cheaper, but it would have cost less. It mightn't have had the same components and probably would have been missing a few features, but it would have been suitable for my usual tasks. Except of course, that it wouldn't have been an Apple and it wouldn't have run Mac OS X, which is the whole reason why I bought an Apple in the first place. I'm prepared to pay a bit extra for a computer that does what I want it to as well as avoids all the pesky little annoyances kicking at your shins that I have had with all flavours of Windows and Linux running on generic PC boxes. Not that I can claim Apple is perfect. If they were, I'd have a working MacBook Pro, rather than the defective lump that's been unusable for the majority of time I've owned it (gonna try a different repair shop this time). But I find their operating system to best for me for what I do. The slinkiness of their hardware design is a bonus. And you can't really develop for the Mac without one of your own. No, a hackintosh isn't going to cut it.

Yeah they let you customize it alot more these days that's for sure. Years ago if you bought a Mac you could almost be guaranteed to have SCSI drives in it hence one of the reasons for the increased price. Nowadays if you go to the apple store the default is SATA drives although you can get the way more expensive SAS drives if you so desire!

Well, of course RAM is overpriced from Apple, but it is overpriced from everywhere and Apple just gets to overprice it even more because they're apple. And yet the odd thing is, that even while it is horribly over priced, the price is still a good deal.


Why is it still a good deal? Because if it wasn't, then people wouldn't pay for it. And lets face it, the market segment that systems like the mac pro are aimed at isn't you and me, it is large companies that usually don't want to be bothered with the extra expense of opening up a system, and all the risks that goes with it. Simply being able to pull 20, 50, or 1000 computers out of their boxes, pop them on desks, plug everything in and boot up for work is worth the hefty markup on internal extras.