iOS Mac book for iPhone programming

[Spontaneous323]

Hi, I hope this is in the correct place.

I'm interested in using Swift (or maybe objective c) for iPhone app development. I have previous programming knowledge, and have a degree in software engineering. I don't own a mac or any os x operating system other than an iPhone.

I'm looking at buying a used mac. When getting a mac, do I need the most current os x on it? Also, does it need to be a mac book pro? The developer site at apple says that it needs to be 10.9.4. Will I always need to be on an up to date OS?


Thank you

 

[Boris-VTR]

Mac os x is not windows....where you can do alright with 7 years old software. In Apple "world" you need current (and usually one OS before that) if you want to develop for iOS latest versions. For instance, 10.8 can only do iOS 7 (and previous versions). And that is only 2.5 years old OS from 2012!!!

But on more positive side, you can put Yosemite (or Mavericks if you choose so) on a lot of older (2009 or around that year) MacBooks.

It definitely doesn't have to be Macbook "pro". Because a lot of older pro's have regular HHD and Air having SSD, the later would be faster in quite a few tasks. But still, i would recommend pro version, because you can add RAM and SSD and have quite good machine for iOS development.

 

[Spontaneous323]

Mac os x is not windows....where you can do alright with 7 years old software. In Apple "world" you need current (and usually one OS before that) if you want to develop for iOS latest versions. For instance, 10.8 can only do iOS 7 (and previous versions). And that is only 2.5 years old OS from 2012!!!

But on more positive side, you can put Yosemite (or Mavericks if you choose so) on a lot of older (2009 or around that year) MacBooks.

It definitely doesn't have to be Macbook "pro". Because a lot of older pro's have regular HHD and Air having SSD, the later would be faster in quite a few tasks. But still, i would recommend pro version, because you can add RAM and SSD and have quite good machine for iOS development.

Thanks for the reply! That definitely helps.

So if I get yosemite, I'll be able to write for the latest versions for the iPhone? But if I want to continue to write for the latest iOS versions, I'll have to constantly update?

 

[firewood]

But if I want to continue to write for the latest iOS versions, I'll have to constantly update?

You don't have to constantly update. But you will need to update the OS at least somewhere a bit more often than once every year or two to meet Apple's currently changing requirements for app submission (was iOS 7 last year, now iOS 8 with arm64 today Feb 1st, perhaps iOS 9 sometime next year...), as the Mac OS can only be around a year behind to run the latest Xcode, which is needed for the latest SDK, which needed for the latest iOS devices.

But a 5 year old MacBook meets current Yosemite OS requirements, but can't compile apps as fast as a newer one. So YMMV.

 

[Boris-VTR]

Thanks for the reply! That definitely helps.

So if I get yosemite, I'll be able to write for the latest versions for the iPhone? But if I want to continue to write for the latest iOS versions, I'll have to constantly update?

The problem is really Xcode. You would want to have latest Xcode because it has latest iOS SDK to build latest iOS version.
Good rule of thumb is that last two MAC OS X will support latest Xcode.
But OS update is nothing big. You click update, wait for couple hours (download and install) and that's it.