I'm not very familiar with how PhoneGap works, and how much it depends on you, but from the docs it seems you still need the classical toolchain.
But anyway, if you want to save yourself some hassle, find something that can run Lion. XCode 4 doesn't run on older OS (or at least not easily), and most current docs are aimed at it (I'm not even sure older XCode versions cover the current iOS versions).
So, you need at least something with a Core2Duo. Older Core Duo might work, I'm not sure. I have some old white Macbook (13" from 2009), who mostly does the job. Not blazing fast, but since I only use it for iOS development, it's enough.
Comments
I'm not very familiar with how PhoneGap works, and how much it depends on you, but from the docs it seems you still need the classical toolchain.
But anyway, if you want to save yourself some hassle, find something that can run Lion. XCode 4 doesn't run on older OS (or at least not easily), and most current docs are aimed at it (I'm not even sure older XCode versions cover the current iOS versions).
So, you need at least something with a Core2Duo. Older Core Duo might work, I'm not sure. I have some old white Macbook (13" from 2009), who mostly does the job. Not blazing fast, but since I only use it for iOS development, it's enough.