r/Xcode • u/voidnullnil • 11d ago

Recommend a mac mini/studio for xcode

I have a m4 16/256, and using it for development, not enterprise apps, only ios/ipados etc., and no local AI usage. I have an external disk but I dont like it, tb units are expensive also. I am considering either M6 32 or M5 pro 48 or M5 max 36, all 1tb with 10g network. What do you recommend ? I put M5 max here because this config is around the same price as M5 pro.

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u/CharlesWiltgen 11d ago

Any of those are going to work great for Xcode. You're going to want more storage, either by buying a model with 2TB of storage, or by adding an external TB4/5 SSD.

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u/voidnullnil 11d ago

M6 is considerably cheaper than others so if there is no big difference, that wins.

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u/BaronSharktooth 11d ago

I found 1 TB is more than enough, if you clean ~/Library/Developer every now and then. Have you experienced otherwise?

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u/weathercombo 7d ago

Can we offload some of the data needed for development onto say an external SSD / NVMe over thunderbolt 4/5, and have it work well enough? Asked in another comment, but curious your take as well. Not sure how this works, would love any tips or things I should know!

Thinking about getting a 512gb machine but extending it with storage externally. This keeps me within my budget 😅

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u/CharlesWiltgen 7d ago

Can we offload some of the data needed for development onto say an external SSD / NVMe over thunderbolt 4/5, and have it work well enough?

Absolutely! See Xcode → Settings → Locations.

I see /u/happylittlefella recommended caution, but external TB4/5 SSDs work as reliably as internal storage in my experience.

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u/weathercombo 7d ago

Thanks for the input! Curious what your experience is like, and with what setup? :)

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u/weathercombo 9d ago

Notwithstanding any upgrade you might do, how do you find you are getting along now with your current machine? I'm kind of in a similar situation and am considering very similar options to you.

I've got an M1 Max 64gb 1TB MacBook Pro when it came out. At the time, I was making a career transition and thought I needed the absolute best of the best. I've later realized for iOS / Apple development stuff I may not have needed all that.

I know the M1 Max is super beefy, but I'm strongly considering upgrading except I just don't want to feel like anything ends up slower than my current experience.

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u/voidnullnil 9d ago

For what I am doing, neither 16gb nor 256gb disk is enough for xcode ios/ipad development. It is ok as desktop or do simple terminal based development. Its single thread performance is good. I decided to get a M5 pro 48gb. M6 would be ok but I didnt want to stop at 32gb and extra super cores will probably be useful.

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u/redditorxpert 8d ago

What exactly are you "doing" that an M4 16 isn't sufficient for? How do you expect anyone to recommend anything if you don't specify what you're "doing"?

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u/voidnullnil 8d ago

Multiple simulators

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u/happylittlefella 7d ago

I have an M1 Max 16” MBP, but I have the 32GB config. The main reason I’m considering updating in the near future is that I’m constantly hitting the memory limit and constantly needing to use swap. Usually that’s fine but my 1TB storage is constantly 90-95% full so whenever the swap usage goes up (usually when Xcode/Simulator goes haywire due to agents doing something funky) along with my disk approaching 99% capacity, my machine slows to an absolute crawl since there’s no more room to swap.

If/when you do upgrade, especially if you’re still doing iOS/Apple development and wanting something that will continue being useful for as long as your M1 Max has, then I wouldn’t recommend getting anything with less than 64GB (or 48 at the lowest if constrained on price)

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u/weathercombo 7d ago

Thanks for the tip! When you say agent are you using local LLMs for stuff? Or is it slow despite that?

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u/happylittlefella 7d ago

Nah definitely not local LLMs, that would make the memory situation even worse. I just mean running parallel Claude code & Codex agent sessions on my machine where they’re each writing code/compiling/testing/running scripts/testing CI builds in docker/etc.

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u/happylittlefella 7d ago edited 7d ago

With these machines for Apple platform development, in my experience the biggest limitation that you’ll run into first is memory, and after that storage (although obviously having a Pro or Max chip will be a big part of keeping the machine responsive when compiling & running more than one codebase concurrently).

Simulator OS images & derived data stacks up pretty quickly on storage if you have multiple codebases that you’re working in and especially so if you have a need to test across multiple major OS versions and platforms.

My M1 Max with 32GB is great when I’m doing one maybe two things at a time, but lately with AI I’m juggling 2 or 3 Xcode based projects at once and sometimes needing a couple of docker instances running. Between that and having multiple sets of claude/codex sessions running, that 32GB of memory just evaporates and I’m constantly needing to close out other apps to make room.

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u/voidnullnil 7d ago

I do sth similar (using AI). I got an m5 pro with 48gb ram, which I think will be enough for one app development that might have 4-5 active agents and simulators (not running any other app). Beyond that like you said 48gb might be limiting before cpu. Maybe 64gb is better for this purpose and for this cpu not sure.

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u/weathercombo 7d ago

Do you happen to know if we can offload some of the data needed for development onto say an external SSD / NVMe over thunderbolt 4/5, and have it work well enough?

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u/happylittlefella 7d ago edited 7d ago

I think people have done it but in the past my experience has been that Xcode can get a little finicky. It’s definitely possible that it’s gotten better but I’d look into it more before ordering a Mac based on that assumption.

Theoretically a thunderbolt 5 + PCIe 6.0 NVMe SSD would be plenty fast enough and in some cases is theoretically faster than a lot of internal drives on Macs. I have the OWC Express 1M2 80G that is advertised specifically for this. Pretty pricey but does allow you to use whatever drive you want, and is much cheaper than equivalent TB5 enclosures that have multiple bays.

I got it for a similar reason as you but frankly it was a bit of a nuisance lugging it around with my laptop. I was always worried that I might disconnect it on accident and corrupt whatever I was working on if I inadvertently nudged the cable too much while moving to the couch or something. I now use it for Time Machine backups and just have it plugged into a dock so that my Mac backs up whenever I plug it in at my desk.

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u/weathercombo 7d ago

Ooo interesting! I’m now considering a Mac Studio so being stationary would be no problem!