

Ask HN: Do you use a 11“ MacBook Air for development? - kcovia

I&#x27;m considering getting a 11&quot; MacBook Air soon. The portability sounds great, as I have an old MacBook Pro 13&quot; now and it&#x27;s rather heavy.<p>The only concern, of course, is that it&#x27;s <i>too small.</i> Seems like an external monitor would solve any issues, though. What are your experiences?
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davelnewton
For me the limit is its dual-core-ness. I currently use a 13" Air as my main
development machine and for _most_ tasks it's fine. The resolution on the 11"
is bearable, although I notice the difference. I also think the screen bezel
is ugly at the 11" size.

When it comes to pushing out multiple VMs to simulate various real-life
scenarios the 8G limit comes into play and it's not always sufficient. My
earlier MBP w/ 16G was fine.

If I could have a 13" Retina Air with 16-32G I'd be a Very Happy Boy. As it is
I suspect I'll be moving back to an MBP after the Broadwell shift and I can
get 32G DDR4. Until then I likely won't make a change.

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jareds
I'm totally blind so the small screen is not a problem for me. I use a 2013
air with the 1.7 GHZ processor, 8 gigs of ram, and a 256 gig SSD for
development when booted into Windows. I find that it works well for most
things but I do find my self going to my desktop if I am doing heavy database
work or virtual machines which will be used heavily. The keyboard is decent
but I find myself sometimes plugging in an external keyboard if I'm sitting at
a desk and know I'm going to be typing for a while.

