Does xcode work on a mac mini

Question

I am new in coding and would like to start working with xcode and swift. Unfortunately I just have an iPad and no mac computer. So I have to buy one. I found the mac mini on ebay. Is the mac mini good enough to code on it? How many GB of rams do I need? 4 is probably not enough, what is about 8? Should I buy the late 2014 mac mini with 8 GB? But i couldnt increase it to 16 GB of ram.. Or does the late 2012 mac min work totally fine with xcode?

Would love to hear about your experiences.

thank you very much. At the moment I am looking for the mac mini (2012 late), 2,5 GHz Dual-Core i5 with 8 GB Ram(2x4) (1067 MHz DDR3) with a 500 GB HHD and Intel HD Graphics 4000. HIGH SIERRA is already on the machine. Do you guess xcode will work fine with that? This is just the two core model I guess, but I still could increase it to 12 or 16 GB RAM couldn’t I?

Answer 1

A Mac mini is fine for Xcode. I'd max out the RAM in any case, 4 GB isn't enough. 8 GB is survivable, but 16 GB+ is better. There's also an argument to be made that the 2012 Mac mini is better than the 2014 Mac mini, if you get the right version of the 2012 one. There was a 4 core Mac mini in 2012, but the 2014 models were limited to 2 cores.

I personally have a Late 2012 Mac mini that I use as an Xcode build server. It's got the 2.3 GHz 4 core i7 chip, and 16 GB Ram. It's still running great. I also use this machine as a file server for my home network, and I have Parallels running a Linux VM on it full time. Fantastic little machine.

Note, you need to install High Sierra on the machine now in order to run the current Xcode (9.3).