Which Mac for plugin development?
Now that Maxon have made it possible to build plugins for Cinema 4D R2025 without a nasty hack (see my blog article here about this) I thought I should look again at building my various plugins for the latest C4D on macOS. However, for me that caused a problem. To run Xcode 16, the version required for plugin development for C4D R2025.2, in turn requires macOS 14.5 (Sonoma) or 15 (Sequoia). My little MacBook, which I've used to build plugins for almost 10 years, won't run those versions of macOS.
That meant I had to think about a new Mac. The question was - which one? There are a lot of different models and it wasn't clear which would be the best choice. How to choose?
The first and most important question was the obvious one - what would I want to do with a Mac? I use a PC almost exclusively and have done for (literally) decades, so anything I want to do I can do on the PC - apart from Mac plugin development. So I didn't need to do any kind of high-end video editing, or 3D rendering of large projects, or anything like that on a Mac - I'd use my PC for that, if I ever needed to do it. Which, very fortunately given the price, ruled out the top of the range models such as Mac Studio or Mac Pro. Either would have been a waste of money for this purpose.
I asked myself whether a laptop or desktop would be better. I've used a MacBook for a long time, so I'm familiar with them - and very good machines they are too. One constraint I've always come up against though is screen size. The screens are not that large and I find it very constricting to work on them for this reason. On the other hand, they are convenient to use and can be put away when not in use, so don't take up valuable (and limited) desk space.
In the end, I decided that the minimum screen size would have to be 15-inch, ruling out the cheaper 13-inch MacBook Air. That left the 15-inch MacBook Air or the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The price difference between the two machines with the amount of RAM and storage I wanted was £900! Yes, the Pro is a significantly more powerful machine, but I don't need that much power. So the 15-inch MacBook Air made the shortlist.
Next I looked at the iMac. They are beautiful machines and have a wonderful display with 4.5K resolution. That answers the screen size issue. Plus, it's an all-in-one machine and comes with everything needed to get up and running - mouse, keyboard and so on. It had all the power I'd want for the intended purpose, so another one for the shortlist.
Finally, I considered the Mac Mini. I'd never really thought much about these - they just don't look as though they can do very much. And there's the fact that all you get is the bare box, so all the necessary add-ons would have to be bought separately. But I did some research (in other words, watched a lot of YouTube videos about the Mini and how it compared to other Macs) and it seemed that they would have more than enough power for what I wanted. The downside was the need for extra peripherals, especially a display. One thing I could rule out was the Mac Mini using the M4 Pro chip, which just wasn't necessary for this purpose. The ordinary M4 with some extra RAM and storage would be fine.
Price-wise, the iMac was the most expensive option but not so much that it was a deal breaker. In the end I decided against the MacBook because of the small screen size - I really wanted something bigger. Initially I settled on the iMac due to that big, lovely display - but that was also its main drawback. It would simply occupy too much space. I've got limited desk space anyway, and putting an iMac on it would leave no spare space at all.
With regard to the Mac Mini, it was the cheapest option despite having to buy extra peripherals. The main stumbling block was the display. If I added an Apple Retina display, it would become the most expensive option by some distance. However, the monitor for my PC has three input ports - two HDMI and one DisplayPort. Two are in use - I have an older PC used exclusively for gaming (my main PC won't run some older games I still like, thanks to Windows 11) - but one HDMI port is free. If I linked the Mac Mini to that, I could switch between the PC and Mac whenever I needed. I'd still need the keyboard etc., but I've always liked Apple's Magic Keyboard and loathed the Magic Mouse. I could, of course, have tried a KVM switch approach, but already having that kind of setup for two PCs meant that adding a Mac into the mix was maybe a machine too far.
So, in the end I chose a Mac Mini plus separate Apple keyboard and Logitech mouse. I liked the small area of desk real estate it occupies, it's more than powerful enough for what I want, and using the existing Asus 4K display I have, although not as 'good' as the Apple display, saves a lot of money and is perfectly adequate for the intended purpose. I can put the keyboard elsewhere until I need it, so it really economises on space.
Now I should be back to being able to build plugins for C4D R2025 on Macs. That is, for R2025.2 - the version using the new build system (see this article for more details). Those of you who have read this far may have spotted a remaining issue. The new Mini will let me build plugins for R2025.2 and up, but not for 2024. All my existing plugins run on R2024 on a Mac, but what do I do about any new plugin I might develop? I've got three options (again!). I could simply not develop for R2024 at all, especially once C4D R2026 is released, presumably in September this year. My usual policy is for new plugins is to support the current and most recent previous version of C4D, so not building for R2024 after R2026 is out would be in keeping with that. Or, I could simply use the old MacBook to produce R2024 builds, but that means maintaining two Macs for plugin builds. The third option, which I have done before faced with a similar problem, is to be able to dual-boot the Mini into macOS Sequoia and Monterey so I can run different versions of Xcode. It's perfectly doable but a bit of a PITA.
I haven't resolved this one yet. First thing to do is to get some plugins built on the Mini and see what happens. After that, I'll have to make a decision next time I do a new plugin. For the moment, I'm just glad to be able to build Mac plugins again.
Page last updated May 3rd 2025