What type of MAC should I get?

[GemuhDesayinah]

I am going to port my PC game (Made in macromedia Director) to the Mac. Ergo, I would most likely need a Mac to (1) Install Macromedia Director on, (2) Burn Mac compatible CD's for my future MAC customers, and (3) test my game.

I don't really need a Mac for anything else (I already have a Win Compatible PC), thus don't want to spend too much money.

What type of Mac should I get? THe cheapest I could find is at www.apple.com - their Mac Mini sells for about $600 US. Are there any OS (or other) issues I'm missing?

[Cartman]

I think the Mac Mini is the best route for you. It's a great price, small footprint, and you can put it on a KVM switch to make life easier on you. That's what I did, and I've been very happy.

[Captain Nemo]

A few weeks ago I bought a Mac mini for exactly the same purposes. It's a great little machine. It has everything you need; the OS is included; you just have to download the Developer Tools from Apple's site, and you can start developing. It works nicely in a network with Windows.

[PoV]

One issue of note is Intel Mac's versus Power PC Mac's. Apple stores today would carry Intel Mac's, but you should be able to find a Power PC MacMini. I don't know if Director makes universal or Intel binaries. If it does universals, you can cheap out and make a friend to test it on their PowerPC Mac, while you test it on your shiny new Intel Mac Mini. If it does just PowerPC, then Intel Mac's will run in emulation, which means if it runs, you have a good chance it'll run on the PowerPC (but you should at least test it).

Confused? I might be after reading that.

[Sillysoft]

Yeah, I would go with the mac mini as others have said. Probably best to get the intel one, since that's the way all macs are going to be in the future. Although, you might be able to score an older PPC one off craigslist for real cheap.

[GemuhDesayinah]

Thanks for the opinions.

I just became aware of another option: would it make sense if I got a PowerMac G3 500MHz (with OS9) instead? I could then upgrade it to OSX "Tiger", and have both OS9 and OSX to test on.

I don't know whether my not having an Intel-Mac to test on would be a bad thing, but I've been offered a 500MHz Powermac for about $200! (US) That's a lot less than the $600 Mac Mini (Intel).

Also, I hear that the Mac Mini (Intel) doesn't support OS9 emulation anymore.

[Lerc]

If you're getting a mac you have to think like a mac user.

With that in mind, I highly recommend a yellow one.

[Musenik]

There's not much reason to support OS-9, unless you're connected to some very niche websites. However, if that Mac has a firewire port, you can use an external drive that boots to OS-X. By simply plugging or unplugging the drive, you can choose your boot OS.

That's the set-up I have with my 500MHz G3, iMac. It's my minimum recommended platform.

[Matthew]

If you're getting a mac you have to think like a mac user.

With that in mind, I highly recommend a yellow one.

Funniest comment I've seen on a forum in weeks!

Right now I'm using my girlfriend's MacBook on my desk to test some Mac apps. If you end up with a laptop, Synergy is the perfect solution to share your desktop's keyboard/mouse (just move the mouse off the side of your monitor and it slides over to controlling the adjacent laptop). I'll probably stick with this solution if we buy our own hardware; it's working really well.

[tone]

I got a Mac Mini just 2 weeks ago and installed XP on it with the Boot Camp beta. It has been a great help for me. The only issue I have seen with Boot Camp + a KVM switch (I have a Belkin Flip) is that if the Mac Mini goes into a screen saver mode while running XP, it does not wake up when the KVM switch is thrown over to it. I worked around this by making it not go to sleep.

Amazingly, it runs my app really quickly, and I have the bottom-of-the-line Mac Mini.

tone