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I'm on my way to buy my new mac mini for my IOS development and I'm a bit unfamiliar with Apple products so I just want an advice from experts about that.

my budget is not that high so I have 2 options and need to know which the best i can buy for IOS development :

1) used Mac mini 2.3 quad core 16 GB of RAM with HDD 5400 1 TB (But it almost used for a year) 2) New Mac mini 2.8 dual core 8 GB of RAM with 1TB fusion drive.

Both are the same price and I'm a bit lost to decide. Any help would be much appreciated !!

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I got the same Mac proposed to you (2.3 ghz, upgraded to 16gb RAM, but I added an SSD as primary HD). With traditional HDD was very very slow so you've to mount an SSD to use it normally so are at least 100$ more (SSD and kit to mount it if you want to keep both). The old Mac Mini is a little bit more powerful but has a badder GPU (but is powerful enough for normal use, I've got PlayStation to play!).

For your budget the newest one is better just for the Fusion Drive (I don't know his performance, but I think would very similar to an SSD).

If you've got money to add an SSD buy the oldest, for developing is better (quad core is better for xCode) and an SSD aftermarket should be faster than Fusion Drive.

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  • Thank you for your suggestion, I do really appreciate it. I'm not a bit interested in graphics design so it's not a big deal for me. Thanks again mate,
    – Mohamed Hemdan
    Apr 21, 2015 at 9:56
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Go with the older model.

The quad core i7 can run circles around the dual core i5 in multithreaded applications, which Xcode is (especially for code compilation tasks). You've seen that on the Geekbench scores.

The hard drive's speed is not really going to make much of an impact on your intended use.

The graphics chip is completely irrelevant.

The additional RAM will be a big boost especially running Yosemite.

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  • Thanks tubedogg for your suggestion!! yesterday I had a comment from one user that recommends the new model but today It's gone after your answer :)
    – Mohamed Hemdan
    Apr 21, 2015 at 8:36
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I advise the old one, in addition to tubedogg point. 16 GB RAM is necessary to to live uninterrupted programming experience.

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You can check the models and see the score on Geekbench.

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  • I saw that old one is better in some areas and likewise the new mac mini 2.8 has its strength too so i just wanted to ask experts about the Xcode programming and which may be better for that, Thanks!
    – Mohamed Hemdan
    Apr 21, 2015 at 1:14

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