Is Mac Mini 2010 still good with upgrade for developing?

[WaelT]

I have Mac mini 2010 with standard config, and it has been a while since I worked on it. I want to use it for developing, and unfortunately I can't afford buying a new one or a replacement, so I was thinking if I upgraded the RAM to 8 GB and the replaced the HDD with SSD would that be helpful?
Thank you

 

[Dark Void]

It depends entirely on what specific applications you will be using - but I would say yes generally, unless any sort of minimum system requirement of any particular software is not met by your CPU.

 

[WaelT]

It depends entirely on what specific applications you will be using - but I would say yes generally, unless any sort of minimum system requirement of any particular software is not met by your CPU.

I would mainly use it for developing iOS apps and games. Would that be good enough ?

 

[SpacemanSpiffed]

I would mainly use it for developing iOS apps and games. Would that be good enough ?

WaelT, Once upgraded, I think it should be fairly decent for iOS development.

The SSD makes a really big impact for any development machine (lots of small file access, etc), and more RAM for XCode and OSX. In your case, I'd see if I could Squeeze enough out of the budget for 16GB RAM, so there's plenty of room for OSX 10.11, Xcode 6 and anything else tht may be open. As for SSDs, I'm seeing some great July 4th sales already (256GB Samsung SSDs for ~$110)

 

[Celerondon]

I would mainly use it for developing iOS apps and games. Would that be good enough ?

Yes, that configuration should be fine.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/best-mac-app-development-3449754/

 

[WaelT]

Thank you guys ...

 

[Partron22]

Don't skimp on your SSD. 256 is enough, but 128gB would be pushing things once you've got Xcode and all your docs, manuals, books, technotes, example code etc. loaded up.

Stop buying Firewire drives for backup purposes for certain. USB 2 speeds are livable as long as you're not moving 150+ gB a day. No point connecting SSD thru USB 2, so for backup, go with USB 3 devices. They're USB 2 compatible, and when you finally do update to a USB3/Thunderbolt machine, you wont be left with a pile of slow storage.
Incidentally all my Firewire drives turned out to be SATA, so I could pull the HD out, and stick it in a USB 3 caddy for a massive speed improvement.