Can I use an Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server as a development machine for multiple people?

Question

We are a Microsoft shop with C++ experience looking to get into some iPhone/iPad development.

Before we make a large investment in individual development machines, we would like to test our abilities with a modest investment.

Can we use one Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server as a development machine for 2-3 concurrent users? We would want them to remote from their PCs into the Mac Mini server and develop remotely.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

It sounds like you're about to break Joel's "Don't torture your developers" rule.

Skimping on hardware is a good way to waste expensive developer time, which will lead to unhappy developers and failed projects.

Since a Mac with a Windows license can be turned into a Windows development machine, you could buy Macs instead of generic Windows PCs as your existing development hardware hits its replacement dates, and have the flexibility to do either Windows or Mac development.

I think it's worth re-evaluating this initiative as to whether there's enough commitment behind it to make it succeed.

Answer 2

Not out of the box. Mac OS X server is not designed for multiple concurrent desktop access users like a Windows Terminal Server. Edit Here is a product that will do that. http://www.aquaconnect.net/

The Mac Mini is not any major power house either. Emulating the iPhone would not be feasible either since (at last I knew) all Mac Mini's were dual core.