I've been biting the bullet for a while now, thinking about buying a Mac for iOS development. I am not a Mac person, in fact I come from a Windows background. But I am a developer and want to get on the iPad bandwagon.

I've been looking at the Mac Mini, even looking at Craigslist. I'd like to do this on a shoestring budget, but still be able to run the latest OSX, and not be limited with expansion memory. Somewhere in this forum, I read 6 GB RAM is a good minimum. I suppose that means the machine should be able to go up to 8 GB RAM.

Also I wonder what the best way of doing Remote Desktop to a Mac Mini would be. I've run the Jump Desktop app from my iPad to a Windows box running RDP. But that app is limited to VNC on a Mac. I wonder how the unpaid version of LogMeIn works on a Mac?

XCode itself is not all that big a CPU hog. It should run fine on a Mac Mini.

However, the development environment is much nicer on a big screen where you can spread out and view things side by side. So consider a big screen if not a bigger Mac. Also, consider any resources your app may need. If the creation of those resources require some horse power, you'll regret getting the cheapest mac.

I haven't used LogMeIn, but Splashtop works well from iPad to Mac.

As someone who has only tinkered with XCode that's about the limit of my observations. Hold in mind I use a 27" iMac, so I might be a bit biased when it comes to screen size.