macOS New Test Mac? - would love some advice

[macsplusmacs]

I currently develop AppKit apps in swift on my MacBook Pro Max 14” hooked up to an LG 27”The types of apps are Internal apps for companies. Will be doing way more iOS versions of them soon.

I have a need, especially with ios16 and Ventura coming out at the end of summer to start to test and use that. I do not want to install it on my main Mac for obvious reasons.

I am thinking of getting an iMac M1 24” 16 gig ram with 1TB drive

Then partition the drive into four partitions.


Partition 1: MacOS Ventura Betas (always betas) 13.1, 13.2, etc + Xcode

Partition 2 MacOS Monterey Master keep till we stop supporting Monterey - used for customer testing if they are running Monterey

Partition 3: Will always host MacOS Ventura’s latest final version + VMs of other older Ventura versions) - keep till we stop supporting Ventura - used for customer testing - no Xcode or dev tools just testing the apps.


Partition 4: Basic Ventura with Xcode used to learn iOS 16 stuff test the new Xcode 14, clean install overall, not a lot of apps - also used for screen recordings to show how to use the app- largest partition - Final Cut - any long-term files moved to MacBook Pro. - use cleaning scripts to keep the desktop free and remove cache, and new files.


Partition 4 will be the largest, 400 gigs? Since it will be used for video/screen recording. The other partitions just need to hold macOS, and Xcode and to test my apps.

The other three partitions will be 200gigs each. For a total of 600 gigs to bring me up to the 1 TB total

Reasons why I do not want to use my MacBook:

I do not want to split my Disk Drive into partitions on my main machine.

I do not want to reboot and use a dual partition on the main Mac.

I do want to run Ventura yet but want to plan and support it on day 1.

I want the isolation of test files and beta software from my main MacBook Pro.

I do not care about an M2 iMac coming out since M1 will become the “average” machine over time. Good for testing as an "average" person. I already have an intel iMac for intel version.


I will also use Universal Control to control the iMac some of the time.

I think a 512gig would be too small long term.

I think 8 gigs for Xcode is too little. Going for 16 gigs.



Thoughts?





Did I miss anything?





Thank you.

 

[casperes1996]

If you have a display already a Mac mini may be more economical. If not, good choice.
I'd probably cut at least one of those partitions and just run it in a VM setup for ease and having to do less reboots but that's just a personal preference thing, otherwise I think it sounds like a solid enough plan. Was personally thinking of getting a Mini test system because my local reseller has a deal on right now where they have a higher than usual trade in value and I have a 2014 laptop I need to get rid off anyway

 

[macsplusmacs]

If you have a display already a Mac mini may be more economical. If not, good choice.
I'd probably cut at least one of those partitions and just run it in a VM setup for ease and having to do less reboots but that's just a personal preference thing, otherwise I think it sounds like a solid enough plan. Was personally thinking of getting a Mini test system because my local reseller has a deal on right now where they have a higher than usual trade in value and I have a 2014 laptop I need to get rid off anyway

I priced out the Mac mini and first and looked at the LG 24" 4K.

I really value a good sharp screen. Very happy with the 5K on my iMac intel and the current LG 27" I am using.

Since, for a couple hundred more, I could get a 4.5K screen on the iMac I decided to go that route.


>I'd probably cut at least one of those partitions and just run it in a VM setup for ease and having to do less reboots but that's just a personal preference thing

Very interesting. Going to think on that.

I think 200 gig per for the "smaller" partitions seem to be ok? I think if apple sold a 750 gig drive I would by that. I do not want to go the external drive route. Love the speed of the apple internal drives.

 

[macsplusmacs]

This looks interesting BTW.

GitHub - cirruslabs/tart: macOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon to use in CI and other automations

macOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon to use in CI and other automations - cirruslabs/tart

github.com

 

[casperes1996]

I think 200 gig per for the "smaller" partitions seem to be ok? I think if apple sold a 750 gig drive I would by that. I do not want to go the external drive route. Love the speed of the apple internal drives.

A lot of the Macs they sell start with 256GB total so that should be plenty for a subset of the system's use cases.
While I understand the partitioning is also coming from a place of wanting to separate things you can also reach across partitions while booted into one of the systems and re-use applications etc. across partitions if you really need, but the space should be perfectly fine for the outlined use-cases I would think. Unless the apps you're writing to test have an enormous storage footprint I guess

This looks interesting BTW.

GitHub - cirruslabs/tart: macOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon to use in CI and other automations

macOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon to use in CI and other automations - cirruslabs/tart

github.com

Yeah - In Ventura Apple's own Virtualisation framework got updated with a lot of extra features for Mac virtualisation on Apple Silicon too, and when you host a Linux VM you can now also use Rosetta 2 through the VM to run 32-bit ELF binaries in Linux using Rosetta

 

[macsplusmacs]

So I ordered it. 3 weeks. looking forward to partitioning and setting everything up.

it's been a while since I partitioned a hard drive. NOW we can resize each part in real time (about) correct? we don't have to erase and resize?

 

[casperes1996]

So I ordered it. 3 weeks. looking forward to partitioning and setting everything up.

it's been a while since I partitioned a hard drive. NOW we can resize each part in real time (about) correct? we don't have to erase and resize?

For APFS volumes you can pretty easily add and remove volumes, space sharing or not. For full on partitions you still have the limitations you've always had. You can add new partitions easily without erasing but if you want to remove one you have to remove "top down" and can't just easily remove one in the middle of your partition scheme

 

[macsplusmacs]

This will prob. take me a couple of weeks to get "just right". which I am fine with, its going to sit next to my main MacBook and I can still get all my work done while waiting for stuff to download, erase, install etc on the new Test iMac.