Hey guys, My son is turning 10 and am looking to get him a Mac Mini. Reason being, he can start to learn some coding in Apple / Web platforms. However, price wise, I can get a cheaper Windows desktop gaming computer, instead of a Mac Mini. Any advice?
Thanks.
Perhaps the son is learning Unreal and OpenCL?
Yeah, he was interested in doing some blender. Hence considered gaming desktop with graphics card.
You don't need real-time animated rendering for Blender. Any modern PC is fine.
You'll need a Mac if you want to do IOS app development, but that is unlikely for a 10yo, isn't it?
@bargaino: Depending on what you wanna do, I've been doing pretty much all of the modelling and texturing on a USFF, only transfering over to the main PC for the rendering. Blender has come a long way with efficency over the years.
Honestly you can code on a Raspberry Pi if you really wanted to.
But of the 2, i'd go with the Mac Mini especially if its one with an Apple silicon chip.
I bought a Mac Mini M2 base model recently. It’s so cheap and so good. Using 10% or 15% off apple gift cards + cash backs + Apples $160 gift card offer + Apple Education Store pricing, it ends up costing like $500 something (nearly half the retail price). Amazing device for the price.
If I understand correctly, the gift card offer is only for university students? And is the discounted apple gift cards still available?
No checks for edu store
Currwntly no 10-15% apple gc promo running
Bonus back to school gc ends on 16th
Education store is K-12 and higher ed. Just order off the edu store.
Agree with the M2 chip. Excellent machine. Can always get parallels on edu pricing as well and windows 11 installed.
However, price wise, I can get a cheaper Windows desktop gaming computer, instead of a Mac Mini.
This is why I always go Windows over Mac. Cannot justify the cost when I spec out a hell of a lot better Windows Machine compared to a Mac.
Maybe get a Intel Mac mini, at least you can dual boot this
Use Flutter to learn how to develop, it can develop iOS apps (along with any other platform). It's not quite the same as using xcode but he's 10, the goal is to learn the basics. - https://flutter.dev/
Otherwise run xcode through virtualbox.
Xcode does not run through Virtualbox as VB is for OS's not apps.
Before buying either ask your self what development environment will be more applicable:
- XCode - Mac
- Visual Studio 2022 community Edition - Windows
- Visual Studio Code - Windows & Mac
- etc etc
Then what language are you going to use:
- Java
- Python
- Javascript/Typescript
- etc etc
Then what web app framework:
- None - HTML 5
- React
- Angular
- Vue
- Bootstrap
- etc etc
After answering these then you will have a way better chance of picking the right hardware.
Be aware:
a) on Windows you can use WSL2 to run Linux if the PC runs Windows 11.
b) On intel CPU's you can use Vitualbox to run other OS's depending on the other OS and the license of the OS.
I’m in a similar situation and plan to start simple. Just JavaScript on my laptop. No need to install anything locally. Once he gets the hang of things, move on to python and go.
More than a Mac mini, an older intel laptop would be ideal. Portable and more than sufficient for initial learning.
Windows and dual boot with Linux.
had multiple mac minis for various uses and always found they slow down over time quite terribly. Won't be buying any more.
Were they Intel or Apple Silicon models? When I upgraded my 2014 Mac mini 5400 rpm HDD to SSD the performance became tolerable.
Intel. I also added SSDs and performance was still sub par, I couldn't really pin down what the bottleneck was either, CPU usage wasn't maxed, nor disk usage, but it was still a very laggy user experience.
Never experienced that on any of my Macs. I’m surprised a tyour comment.
Unless you really need iOS dev, I'd go with a PC desktop/laptop and dual boot Windows + Linux.
Macbook Air was a performance powerhouse for the price when the M1 was released years ago, the price has remained exactly the same, but now you pay much more for a current model, and the M2/M3 don't compare well at all on price:performance with Windows notebooks.
I would suggest Asus or Lenovo, at a similar pricepoint will give you much more for your money today, in a more reliable, durable case.
Windows is much more compatible with games than Apple OSX, even if you buy a subscription to Parallels it won't perform as well as the identically priced Windows PC.
The same is true for Mac Mini — spend less on an Asus, HP or Lenovo micro PC and it will give you better peformance and expansion options going forward and better software compatibility..
I much prefer Mac for coding Python, but for your 10 year old son I’d build a PC with him. Great experience and he’ll learn heaps. Run Windows 10 LTSC or one of those de-bloated builds. Or use a debloat script
https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater?tab=readme-ov-f…
I can’t stand all that windows advertising crap and forced updates. Moved to Mac for that reason. Also running Python on a Mac is much easier.
If you want to also use for school work, some schools will require windows…so keep that in mind
Why does it need to be a gaming computer if he's not doing any gaming? Won't be needing a GPU, RGB lighting, etc.
One of those $100-$300 refurbed Windows ex-corp desktop PCs should do the job fine, especially if he's only just getting started.