5 ms·

How's the MacBook air for dev? Was debating if it was powerful enough or if I should get a pro.

by mkhalil 14y ago

rm999 14y ago
I do almost everything remote via ssh, so I'm not positive. The macbook air has an i7 upgrade which should help, but my guess is it's still significantly slower than the pros.
- mkhalil 14y ago
  Thank you all for your replies. Really helpful!
evilduck 14y ago
"Powerful enough" is subjective to what type of programming you do. I largely do web development and the base model dual core 1.8Ghz i5 is totally sufficient. If you're compiling stuff all day every day, the quad core 2.6Ghz i7 Pro will obviously be quite a bit faster.
taligent 14y ago
This is the performance difference. And Core i7 makes negligible difference over the i5. http://www.barefeats.com/mba12a.html http://www.barefeats.com/mba12a.html But I have both a 13inch MBA and 17inch MBP and the Air is unusable for any serious development work. Screen is simply too small.
Tagbert 14y ago
Depends on how you work. Its very portable. While that means the screen is small, you typically have it plugged into an external monitor when you are at a desk. The processing speed is quite good. Any disk intensive operations, like compiling, are fast because of the SSD speed. The raw cpu may not be as fast as the Pro, but in practice the Airs seem faster than the specs would suggest.
rbanffy 14y ago
It depends on what you run on it. I develop for Django comfortably on an old Atom-based netbook. When I'm not on the road, I hook it to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Runs Emacs very well. When I need to do stuff with Plone, the Atom is just too slow (Plone takes half a minute to start and buildouts take forever). For those jobs I have a Core i3 (which runs Django just fine too) that's far less portable, but much faster than the Atom (and fast enough for buildout). A MacBook Air should be good enough for most uses, with its i5 and SSD. If it's not, you should rethink your choice of technologies rather than get a beefier computer.
ollysb 14y ago
I've just brought my 8 core 27inch imac out of storage having used only my macbook air for the last 6 months. I can tell you, I am struggling! Going back to a hard drive is absolute torture. At this point I think I'm going to just buy a cable to plug my macbook air into my imac screen. My macbook air is quite simply the best machine I could hope for. With a larger screen it really would be perfect.

How's the MacBook air for dev? Was debating if it was powerful enough or if I should get a pro.

by mkhalil 14y ago

How's the MacBook air for dev? Was debating if it was powerful enough or if I should get a pro.

rm999 14y ago

I do almost everything remote via ssh, so I'm not positive. The macbook air has an i7 upgrade which should help, but my guess is it's still significantly slower than the pros.

mkhalil 14y ago
Thank you all for your replies. Really helpful!

evilduck 14y ago

"Powerful enough" is subjective to what type of programming you do. I largely do web development and the base model dual core 1.8Ghz i5 is totally sufficient. If you're compiling stuff all day every day, the quad core 2.6Ghz i7 Pro will obviously be quite a bit faster.

taligent 14y ago

This is the performance difference. And Core i7 makes negligible difference over the i5. http://www.barefeats.com/mba12a.html http://www.barefeats.com/mba12a.html But I have both a 13inch MBA and 17inch MBP and the Air is unusable for any serious development work. Screen is simply too small.

Tagbert 14y ago

Depends on how you work. Its very portable. While that means the screen is small, you typically have it plugged into an external monitor when you are at a desk. The processing speed is quite good. Any disk intensive operations, like compiling, are fast because of the SSD speed. The raw cpu may not be as fast as the Pro, but in practice the Airs seem faster than the specs would suggest.

rbanffy 14y ago

It depends on what you run on it. I develop for Django comfortably on an old Atom-based netbook. When I'm not on the road, I hook it to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Runs Emacs very well. When I need to do stuff with Plone, the Atom is just too slow (Plone takes half a minute to start and buildouts take forever). For those jobs I have a Core i3 (which runs Django just fine too) that's far less portable, but much faster than the Atom (and fast enough for buildout). A MacBook Air should be good enough for most uses, with its i5 and SSD. If it's not, you should rethink your choice of technologies rather than get a beefier computer.

ollysb 14y ago

I've just brought my 8 core 27inch imac out of storage having used only my macbook air for the last 6 months. I can tell you, I am struggling! Going back to a hard drive is absolute torture. At this point I think I'm going to just buy a cable to plug my macbook air into my imac screen. My macbook air is quite simply the best machine I could hope for. With a larger screen it really would be perfect.