You can get a Mac Mini that more than suffices for around $600-$800. But honestly, if paying $2000 was the only way to get a set of Android SDKs and development tools of the same caliber as Apple's developer offerings, I would immediately do so. I like the idea of the platform and I believe in anything that makes it easier for developers to build better applications.
Excellent. Now I've bought my mac mini, I can plug it in and listen to it consume power. I wonder how I can see what it's doing?
Hrm... well, it can come with a monitor... for an extra thousand. Okay, scratch that, I'll get a cheap DisplayPort monitor... add a couple of hundred (or if I feel like splurging, get two). Oh, and a keyboard, another $50 (apple-branded, of course, because normal keyboards don't have apple keys). Mouse? Apple mouse at $50+? Maybe I'll go with a cheap logitech or something... 4GB memory standard? for a dev machine? OSX has trouble with that little memory. Up to 8GB for another hundred (or 16GB for three hundred). Spinning rust will do, but if you did want an SSD, throw on a couple hundred more.
The idea that mac minis are 'cheap development boxes' is nonsense. It's cheaper than a decent macbook pro, but it's not a cheap workstation.
You can buy the Apple-branded stuff. Or you can buy a KVM switch, a SSD, and two sticks of RAM off Newegg yourself. Monoprice has HDMI to DVI converters for less than $3. Upgrading the internals is about as challenging as upgrading the internals of a non-Apple laptop. It's honestly not that hard.
On the off chance you don't have a mouse, a keyboard, or a display, you can get a decent mouse for around $5, a decent non-mechanical keyboard for $30, and a high-quality display for $150. All three of these will improve your productivity on your laptop if you're not traveling. If you don't have a laptop or a desktop...how are you developing for Android to begin with?
Well, this requirement wasn't in the original brief. And in any case, you're trading your own labour and domain knowledge to shave a few dollars off. The scrounging you've mentioned is only a little cheaper than what I've mentioned - my point is that it costs more to set up a mac mini for a developer (rather than a headless server) than the throwaway line presented. Even with your cheaper, more-effort-given-to-scrounging pricing, the monitor + HIDs alone add 1/3 to 1/4 the price, never mind the ram or ssd.
Fine. Let's say that if you don't have HIDs or a monitor and you want a primary dev box, then it's not worth it. If you have the HIDs and monitor, are willing to do a little bit of third-party work, and want a machine that can competently serve beside whatever non-Apple machine you're currently using, then you can get started for far less than $2000. (I don't think this is a terribly uncommon use case, especially for people already developing for other platforms.) Would you say that is a fair assertion?
I would say that that is a fair assertion, but I would also say that it doesn't really detract from the OP's point: to get started with google, open a browser and start downloading; to get started with apple, first find a non-trivial lump of cash.
