
Is anyone using the non Pro/Air Macbook for iOS app development? - blunte
The current non Pro&#x2F;Air Macbook appears to have the performance of a 2015 MBP in many respects, so in theory it should be a viable laptop to develop iOS apps on.  It can be built with i5 or i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, and adequate storage that has better performance than was possible just a few years ago...<p>The HN crowd is vast and active, so there must be a number of people with direct current experience developing iOS apps with the standard Macbook.<p>What are your thoughts?
======
bazizbaziz
I use an 2016 Macbook i7/8GB as my daily development system. I love it. It's
light and portable, which is important for me.

The main thing to understand about these machines is that the i7 CPUs are
about as good as any other CPU on the market (aside from less cores), but
they're fanless which means they rely on the case to dissipate heat, and so
will thermally throttle during long-running high CPU jobs. They're perfect for
short lived jobs, even multi-minute compilations, but will have a hard time
getting through repeated long jobs that require long durations of high CPU.In
short, great for bursty computations with longer idle times where the laptop
has a chance to cool off.

For instance, I build brew packages, full llvm builds, even small ML models,
etc, without problems, because the machine starts cold and there is enough
time after the job is done for the machine to cool off again. My machine
suffers on tasks like Docker+Kubernetes/minikube that run a constantly polling
VM in the background that takes 25-100% CPU when running idle.

For instance, someone in this thread mentioned the iOS emulator might be
difficult to run. This may not be true, so long as the emulator does not
constantly use lots of CPU - if it just uses high CPU in response to input
events, it will likely be fine.

------
mchannon
After my MacBook Air 11 met an untimely end at the hands of a United flight
attendant (they paid for its replacement), I moved up to a had-to-have-it-now
8GB MacBook.

Even though it's not an Xcode complaint per se, the single USB-C port has been
a real sticking point. Took about 3 months and 5 purchases to find an adapter
that would let me run dual external displays, keyboard/mouse, •and• charge at
the same time. Magsafe 2 had its drawbacks but I really miss it.

It's slower than I'd like, so I do my daily driving on a desktop, leaving it
for on-the-road sorts of work, which it's capable of doing, though the screen
makes dragging from storyboard to code a challenge on occasion.

~~~
companyhen
What happened with the flight attendant? I'm flying United soon first time,
kind of nervous lol (won't be using my laptop on the plane but will be in my
bag)

~~~
mchannon
It was on a 3-hour "United Express" flight and about 20 minutes in, she poured
an entire cup of water on the open laptop. It wasn't bumpy, and she was very
apologetic, but I needed that laptop working to make a deadline, and instead
spent the next 3 hours with a wet lap (the one lav was very popular) and
nothing to do but stare forward once my phone died.

Luckily I located the original purchase receipt for the MBA11 (they required
that) and it wasn't as bad a process to get made whole as I thought. It was a
$1279 laptop (8GB option) and I'd definitely gotten my money's worth. It was,
era-adjusted, one of the best products Apple has ever made, in a sea of
lemons.

Anytime the FA comes through with the drinks, I put away the laptop as a
matter of habit. Just isn't worth the risk.

------
jefflinwood
I've got a Macbook 12 (2017), and it's surprisingly fast - I think it's
definitely viable for iOS app development, as long as you have it hooked up to
an external screen.

I find that Xcode is a little cramped on the notebook screen if you have all
of the panels open, but if you can close at least one of them, there's enough
room to work.

I only have 8 gigs of ram in the Macbook (I have a Macbook Pro I use as my
daily driver with 16 gigs), and that seems to be fine with Xcode, as long as I
use Safari instead of Chrome, and don't keep Android Studio open at the same
time.

~~~
wingerlang
You might be interested in these shortcuts
[http://jontelang.com/blog/2016/01/12/xcode-shortcuts-for-
sma...](http://jontelang.com/blog/2016/01/12/xcode-shortcuts-for-small-
screens.html)

It basically maps cmd+123 to left/bottom/right panels. Even after upgrading to
a bigger screen I keep using them.

------
soulchild37
Did iOS development with Macbook Air before, works surprising well for normal
business app (app that just call API and decorate the response JSON with UI
stuff). Downside is no retina display (I used a Macbook Air 2013).

------
FR10
I used to have a Macbook 2017 and XCode development was kind of slow when you
run the simulator, but then again, it is completely usable, and the Retina
display is so worth (this was before the new Macbook Air).

------
temprunberkdk
I think the biggest drag will be running the simulator. You can go to the Mac
store and try it out. I am wrote an app on vm and that was much slower.

