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Completely OT: Looking for an Apple Mac Mini

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Initially Posted - 03/16/2012 : 10:59:36

I'm trying to locate a good, used Mac Mini to do iPhone development on. It needs to be fairly recent so that it can run OS X Mountain Lion, and it needs to have an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (can't use Power PC for iPhone development for some reason).

As far as I can tell, about the lowest specs that'll work are:
1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB RAM (this isn't a big concern, more RAM can be added)
120 GB hard drive
Functional ports.

That means a "Mid 2007" or later Mac Mini from my research on Wikipedia.

I have a budget of about $400, but cheaper is better since I'm not working right now.

A Mac laptop would also work, but the Mini is more versatile for me.

David
C-250 Mainsheet Editor

Sirius Lepak
1997 C-250 WK TR #271 --Seattle area Port Captain --

Edited by - on

Prospector
Master Marine Consultant

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Canada
3159 Posts

Response Posted - 03/16/2012 : 13:07:40

http://toronto.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-computers-Mac-mini-with-2-internal-HDD-W0QQAdIdZ363382845

Is this what you want? If it works I'll make him an offer nad ship it to you. Unfortunately I know nothing about computers so i can't be of much more help than this.

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/16/2012 : 16:01:32

Chris,
That one sounds like it would work, the specs look right to me. However, it also sounds like it's been modded (not sure, but I've never heard of the boot drive he's talking about, but for all I know it could be a factory option, I'm hardly Mac learned), and I know the warranty is voided if you remove the case which he'd have to have done to install the separate drive(s). I don't want to buy someone else's project (at least not in this instance). It's a bit out of the price range I've set for myself as well.

I've emailed two people locally who have similar machines for sale on CL, and I've got about 4-5 that I'm watching on Ebay that are (currently) in my price range.

If those fall through, maybe the guy in your area will make a deal?

Thanks for looking for me, I appreciate it.

Edited by - on

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3758 Posts

Response Posted - 03/16/2012 : 18:10:11

That has been modded. The Mini server comes with dual HD but no optical drive and I think the server came later. It probably started with the 80 drive and he just keeps the OS and programs on it and replace the optical drive with a second hard drive. RAM and HDD are easy upgrades (get the tool kit and parts at Other World Computing). You are better off leaving the internal drive intact and adding a 7200rpm firewire external, Macs can boot from a firewire drive and it will be much faster than the internal drive. Powermaxx is a reliable source for used Macs, but everything they had had a gig of RAM and was priced between $400-500. The Apple Store Refurbished Mini's were all newer models. A private sale would be cheaper.

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2012 : 14:40:11

Dave,
Thanks for the advice regarding the modifications to the Toronto Mac. Neither of the CL folks locally have responded to my queries, so they've probably sold them already and left the ads up.

Another guy had a killer deal, but turned out to almost certainly be a sting operation by Microsoft. They post incredible deals locally for consumer electronics hoping to catch employees using their company store benefits to trade for stuff. He was the only one who responded and when I offered him his cash price ($210, too good to be true), he balked and said he was really only interested in trading for software. I see this all the time in the Seattle CL, people offering brand new sealed iPads, iPhones, Kindles, what have you for killer deals, but it's almost always for MS software, sometimes Adobe, but much rarer.

This guy in particular can no longer keep his ad up for more than a few minutes before it's flagged back down.

I'll keep looking, I'm not at the point where I absolutely need one yet (that's six chapters away), and if I were, one of my partners has one that we could do the work on. Eventually I'll find one.

I've gotten through today's goal, which was enabling my phone to see websites hosted on my laptop. I expected that would take a short time, but I've been working on it for about four hours and just now figured it out. Perseverance is key, I try not to let the frustration get to me. Now that I've gotten that done, I can start to work through the examples in the book I've got (which just sort of assumes you know all this or it's already set up, which is just annoying).

If it's bothering anyone that I'm sort of blogging about this on here, let me know and I'll stop.

Edited by - delliottg on 03/17/2012 14:41:17

Prospector
Master Marine Consultant

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Canada
3159 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2012 : 15:22:01

Well I'll reply with an ontopic-ish sort of rant.

I replied last night to a local CL ad with boat stuff I NEED (ok, maybe not). Anyway CL dum-dum replies that he'll take my offer and I should come by to pick up the stuff this afternoon. But no address or phone #. He's emailed twice with further details but still no address or phone number. Makes no sense at all.

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2012 : 15:55:55

Hah, well, I'm not sure this beats that, but I got a guy who emailed me about the gas tank I'm trying to sell. He gave me his number so I called him, here's how it went:

Him: Will you take $5 less than what you're asking?
Me: Sure, I want to get it out of my shop.
Him: Can you meet me in Renton/Kent area? (about 20 miles away)
Me: Um...maybe if I'm going that way anyway...
Him: Can you give me some gas money because my truck only gets 11 MPG?
Me: Huh? Um...sure, I'll get right on that. <click>

Edited by - on

Voyager
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
5376 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2012 : 17:07:24

Not for nothin' You could probably get around all the horse-s#^+ if you go to www.gainsaver.com. I bought an incredible Mac laptop for about $650. I've seen a bunch of Mac Minis up there as well. They also have an excellent return policy if needed.

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Prospector
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Canada
3159 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2012 : 18:02:00

You got that app done yet? We have a kid on antibiotics for an ear infection and need an alarm ever 8 hours to get him dosed.

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2012 : 20:08:05

Hah, you're a funny guy, I'm only on chapter three of the book that supposed to teach me how. At least I'm making progress...

Bruce,
I thought that site looked familiar. They lure you in with what seem like pretty good prices, until you realize that it's a bare bones system, no memory, no hard drive, no optical drive, etc. They're charging $90 for about $50 worth of memory, no idea what their markup on other hardware is, but I have to assume it's the same 50%+ or more.

I think maybe they're some sort of chain because while I remember the configuration page, the landing page wasn't something I remember from before. Anyway, I appreciate the help, I'll keep looking for something reasonable.

Edited by - delliottg on 03/17/2012 20:14:13

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2012 : 23:54:35

I found a Mac Mini today, the guy had only had it on CL for about 2 hours before I called him. I thought it was a pretty good deal, a 2GHz 2.5 GB RAM, 120 GB hard drive Mac Mini with a 750 GB Iomega firewire drive (same footprint as a mini), DVI to VGA connector, and remote for $300. I'm pretty happy with the purchase, just need to pick up some better peripherals (using a wonky old keyboard & mouse that were lying in my junk bins upstairs right now), plus a bigger monitor. The one on eBay I was getting ready to bid on ended up going for $310 + $20 shipping and it wasn't as good of specs as this one. I dodged that bullet by about an hour to spare.

Edited by - on

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3758 Posts

Response Posted - 03/19/2012 : 08:51:14

That's a deal!

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/27/2012 : 14:51:02

Any Mac networking folks out there? I'm trying to share a website on my local network (192.168.x.x) so it can be seen wirelessly by another device (iPhone, Android, etc.). This took about 45 minutes to figure out on Win XP, but I'm on my second day with OS X and it's driving me crazy. I'm running OS X 10.6.8, Web Sharing is turned on, firewall is on, port 80 is wide open (no restrictions), and navigating to the site on my phone just fails with "Cannot open page. Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding". I've installed NoobProof (which is how I got port 80 opened, no idea how to do it in the OS). Navigating to the page locally on the Mac displays the web site as you'd expect. I've read about two dozen pages that tell you how to do all kinds of cool things like reverse tethering, etc., but none of them detail how to do this. Certainly I'm not the first person to think of this, plus it works seamlessly in WinXP. The obvious if clunky workaround is to copy the site from the Mac to the WinXP laptop, but that just seems stupid.

Edited by - on

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3758 Posts

Response Posted - 03/27/2012 : 16:13:31

Did you try Apple forums? https://discussions.apple.com/community/developer_forums I'm on the road this week and cannot check with my friend who's company does full IT services. He hasn't had any problems since buying a Mac and starting to work in IOS

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/28/2012 : 14:03:40

Dave,
Thanks for the pointer to the forums. The answer to this problem was incredibly simple. I attribute it to being Apple & Mac stupid, in order to turn on the web server, you have to go to Apple Icon > System Preferences > Sharing. Once there, to do anything, you have to unlock the page by clicking on the little lock icon in the bottom left corner of the page. Make any changes such as enable Web Sharing, and then, before you leave the page, you have to re-lock it by clicking on the icon again. I didn't know that made any difference. I was purposely leaving it open to save myself a step each time (many-many-many iterations). None of the sites I went to mentioned you had to re-lock the page to put the changes into effect. Perhaps this is just assumed knowledge for the Mac OS, dunno. However, once I locked the page, voila, everything started working. If the changes are going to be left in limbo if you don't lock the page, it would seem to make sense to me to pop a warning message to the hapless user. However, I'm also a big fan of "don't bug me, I know that" when it comes to software, so I can see both sides. AutoCAD has a user-settable "expert" mode, where you can have anything from complete nanny-state to virtually nil prompts. I usually worked with the setting a bit right of center toward fewer prompts. I've always thought that would be useful in an OS.

I guess the good thing is, I probably won't do that again. Same with trying to enable the root user, I went round and round with instructions that didn't make sense in the last two steps until I realized they were talking about the menu items in the top left of the monitor, not menus or icons in the application I was working in. That one I figured out from a forum post because someone like me had had that revelation and mentioned it in the post. Again, probably assumed lore if you're an Apple user, but for us poor Windows creatures, not so much. Even Linux doesn't do that and Mac OS X is built off of a forked version of Unix.

So, finally I can start working on the last couple of chapters of this book. Offline app & database storage is next. Getting closer to doing something useful...I think.

Edited by - delliottg on 03/28/2012 14:06:56

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/28/2012 : 15:18:21

Or not...it worked for about an hour, now it doesn't. So frustrating!

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/28/2012 : 18:15:28

Falling back on Windows lore, I rebooted the machine, now it works perfectly again. Go figure.

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Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3758 Posts

Response Posted - 03/30/2012 : 20:27:46

The hardest thing about learning Mac is forgetting convoluted Windows processes. My friend with the software/IT company bought my first Mac for his daughter. It didn't have an Airport card since I didn't have wireless at the time, so installing one was his first adventure in the Mac world. He spent two hours trying to configure it before he realized that it configured itself when he turned it on and it was just waiting for his network password. I would never say that Macs are perfect, but I would never go back. I have had 3 actual hard crashes in a decade.

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 03/30/2012 : 21:05:11

From looking at the Apache2 logs, there seems to be something wrong with DNS, or at least from the research I've done on the messages in the logs. The messages talk about SSL encryption, but they're apparently misleading, and the real problem is with DNS. I've got a couple of things to look at, but I'm pretty Apache stupid as well. Unfortunately I have very few Apple resources to draw on, all my techie friends are either Windows or Linux.

What's irritating is how simple it was to configure in WinXP and how difficult it is in OS X.

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