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.
Best Answer
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.