Mac mini and VNC remote performance

Question

I'm looking to get a Mac for iOS development, and with about $700 to work with, a Mac mini with upgraded RAM seems like the way to go. My problem is I never work strictly in one place (i.e. the office). I'm always at different locations, be it at home, with clients, or simply sitting outside at a coffee house. I always bring my laptop along and have looked into using VNC to access the mini remotely. However, I've read snippets of other users experiencing less-than-stellar speeds/performance when using VNC.

iOS programming (i.e. Xcode) is the only tool I'd be using during remote connections - no surfing, downloading, game-playing, nothing graphics-intensive. The image of me typing a line of code and having Xcode lag two to three characters behind doesn't sit well as I really despise any type of lag. (I know. I'm picky.)

So, I'm wondering:

Would VNC allow me to feel as though I'm interacting with the mini itself and offer (at least almost) instantaneous feedback? Is there a better option out there with my budget?

Any help is greatly appreciated, and apologies for the length; just wanted to be thorough.

P.S. - If there's a way to simply plug the mini into my laptop and use its monitor, that would be better, though I haven't found that that's possible.

Answer 1

I've spent a lot of time looking at solutions to this, buying a MacBook Pro etc.

If you're planning on using VNC from a Windows machine to a Mac running Lion, forget it. The VNC support is worse now than with Snow Leopard. I tend to use LogMeIn, which is a bit slow at times, but the internet connection where I have my Mac mini isn't great.

My problem is that I prefer to have dual screen setup, which I have with my Mac mini.

When I'm on the same LAN, I use splashtop streamer and splashtop remote, which is by far the best. However it only caters for one of my screens. I tend to try and put everything on that screen when I'm working in this way. I use an XP laptop with an external monitor for this.

If you got for the two-Mac approach, then there's problems with sharing source code with two machines, you can use dropbox and git. Unless you par for a github account etc.

Answer 2

Our development team all use Macs. I have personally tried to use VNC both with Apples built in and premium Apple Remote Desktop ($79.99), as well as Jolly's Fast VNC. I had a Mac Pro tower at work and really needed the remote capability, and was able to work reasonably well with Apple Remote Desktop, but when my tower came off lease I went with a Laptop, because the lag and poor display quality were just too annoying. I found that I needed to degrade the display quality in order to keep the performance reasonable, which meant a blurry display. Overall I found it frustrating and avoid remote access, but it does work, although I would strongly recommend buying Apple Remote Desktop to get the full screen capability. Jolly's was fast but at the time had some bugs that resulted in a corrupt screen sometimes. That was over a year ago, the new version may be better.

There are other developers I work with who think that the VNC solution works just fine for them, so I think it depends a lot on how fussy you are about responsiveness (I am fussy).

If your previous experience with remote access involves Microsoft's Remote Display Protocol (RDP) then you will be very disappointed with VNC. The RDP technology is superior in both display quality and performance. One of the few things I really miss from the Microsoft world.

In short, I'd recommend moving to an Apple laptop and then running your Windows virtually. I started with a mini originally, and just ended up moving to a laptop eventually.

Answer 3

You might also want to consider TeamViewer which seems to have slightly better responsiveness and stability over the various VNC clients for Windows - it's the default remote control solution for my company. Cross-platform, highly configurable, even iOS apps available.

(I still think Timbuktu was the fastest I've ever used, though... sigh)

Answer 4

One word of warning, when I use VNC it doesn't seem to pickup the fact that I'm holding down Control when trying to connect things in XCode Storyboard mode.

I'd consider that a pretty important part of something you'd need to be able to do to use XCode.

I'd stretch the budget to a MacBook if you can. Don't forget you can sell your Windows laptop and install Windows on the MacBook very easily if that will help with funding.

Answer 5

VNC performance depends a lot on characteristics of the network that you use (channel between your MacMini and notebook) like latency and ping but, if your mac mini will be near you all the time (and there also will be an AC power socket somewhere:) then VNC performance would be ideal. You can connect your computers with crossover cable, or wifi.

If you want to use it as notebook then why wouldn't you just buy that refurbished MacBook? What would you do if you will need to work somewhere there is no power socket (like a park)?