I’m looking to get into Ios App development and in search of a Mac laptop is there any suggestions on which one I should get? I really can’t afford a Macbook Pro at the moment. And about how much memory would I need?
Hi @DarkCoder2020 Welcome to the community!
Any Mac will work as long as it will run one of the latest version of the Mac OS.
The new Air will work, it will be just slower than a Pro. If you have a screen and Keyboard, a MacMini is great development machine. The more cores the better. All six cores light up on my Mac Pro when building, same for the four cores on the MacBook pro.
8 Gigs or ram will be fine from my experience.
Good luck.
Blessings,
—Mark
How slow though if I get a MacBook air? My friend has one for me I just don’t know if it’s suitable for what I will need it to do.
Well, slow is a relative term. While coding, you will not notice any difference. It is building and running that the slower machines show up. I dont think Apple stores have Xcode loaded on machines, but you can always call and ask when the Stay in Place orders lift. You might also borrow your friends computer and see what it is like.
If you have thousand a lines of code and multiple frameworks to load, it will be slower than some of the beginning projects found here on CWC, it will be quite fast enough. Like I said, is it subjective. Experiment around and see what it is like.
Blessings,
—Mark
Thanks Man for your help!
Hello, Any Mac would work as far as it is 2012 or later. I would recommend to get any from 2014 and I would also recommend getting one with high storage as app development can take space
Hello DarkCoder,
I picked up one from Walmart Online about a week ago. Walmart is just the middle man, you are buying from a 3rd party with the advantage that you can return to the local store within 30 days (check return policy, not all 3rd party vendors allows it).
I got a 2015 MacBook Pro 15.4 Grade A (looks like new) with a 2.5 I7, 16gb of ram and 512 SSD for $899.00 plus taxes and added an accidental damage protection for 2 years (cost around $50.00). My wife owns a 2019 MacBook Pro with the 1.4 i5 and 8gb of ram, we did a Cinebench test and we are both around 1500. Also, in a writing and reading hard drive speed test, this MacBook is faster than my wife’s laptop.
My recommendations is get something used that allows you a 30 days returns just in case that you don’t like the conditions when it arrives. As some members has mentioned, get something in the 2014-2015 years to make sure that you will be able to upgrade to the next macOS release. Apple computers will outlast any other computer brand and only apple will decide when it is not worth anymore by not supporting the next operating system version (usually between 8-10 years after computer release date).
Good Luck!
My wife surprised me with a the 2022 MacBook Air m2 so I hope this go good for me…
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