I want to buy the cheapest Mac that will comfortably run the iPhone SDK. Is the iMac G4 the answer?
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iOS iPhone SDK on iMac G4
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The iPhone SDK is only supported on Intel Hardware as Apple make very clear on their site. So no G4 Mac is supported (along with all other PPC Macs including G5 and G3 machines).
I am currently running the iPhone SDK on my PowerBook without any problems. All of the development tools are actually universal binaries, it's basically just the installer (and a few easy to modify files) which prevent it from running on PPC. Here's how:
http://www.tbradford.org/2008/03/iphone-sdk-beta-2-possible-ppc-fix.html
http://www.tbradford.org/2008/03/iphone-sdk-beta-2-possible-ppc-fix.html
Don't get a PPC Mac for iPhone development. Although it seems to work currently Apple doesn't support it and future versions of the SDK may simply not work on a PPC Mac.
Pretty much any Intel Mac with 2G or more of RAM will be fine as an iPhone development machine. A bigger HD will be better but even an 80Gig HD should be OK. You can add a big external HD for $100 later if you need it.
Cheapest will probably be a used or refurbished Mac Mini. Also look at any Intel iMac or Intel MacBook. Something like a used or refurbished 17" iMac will be a reasonable development machine.
Pretty much any Intel Mac with 2G or more of RAM will be fine as an iPhone development machine. A bigger HD will be better but even an 80Gig HD should be OK. You can add a big external HD for $100 later if you need it.
Cheapest will probably be a used or refurbished Mac Mini. Also look at any Intel iMac or Intel MacBook. Something like a used or refurbished 17" iMac will be a reasonable development machine.