

Ask HN: Using a mac as the main development system or not - gofullappleorno

Hello,<p>I&#x27;m mostly a .net developer. I occasionally work with PHP and node.js.<p>Recently, my &lt; 2year old laptop that I use as my main dev system has been behaving strangely. It&#x27;s still under warranty, but I&#x27;ve always wanted to develop apps for OSX and iOS.<p>So I was wondering if I should get a 15&#x27;&#x27; macbook pro and dual boot or use parallels to work with windows specific programs. But it seems very overpriced (€3000 ~ $3400) for its hardware. Specially since my current setup is not that bad (I think):<p>- i7-3630QM 4Cores 6MB cache<p>- 8GB ram<p>- 750GB @ 5400rpm<p>- nvidia GeForce GT 740M (I play games extremely rarely, so this is not an issue)<p>Battery life and screen size is not really an issue for me. I mainly want a mbp (or air) for ios\osx dev.<p>Should I still get the 15&#x27;&#x27; or:<p>a) Upgrade my system to 512GB SSD + 16 ram (€340 ~ $385) and get a mbp 13&#x27;&#x27; with (128 or 256 GB ) and (8 or 16) of ram ? just for ios\osx dev<p>b) Don&#x27;t upgrade my current setup and get a mbp 13&#x27;&#x27; with (128 or 256 GB ) and (8 or 16) of ram ? just for ios dev<p>c) Upgrade (or not) and get a MBA 13&#x27;&#x27; ?<p>Thank you
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Someone1234
Parallels works very well on the Mac, and while you won't be able to do much
that requires graphics acceleration in Windows, it otherwise works extremely
great (in particular on Macs with SSDs, but ok on HDDs too).

That being said, Bootcamp (dual booting) does not work well. It "works" in the
sense that Windows will load and you can do tasks, but the drivers are poorly
optimised, often broken, and Apple doesn't prioritise fixing them (and
provides near zero support either in-store or over the phone for Bootcamp).

So if you wish to do this, then just come to terms with the fact that OS X
will be your MAIN operating system and Windows will be a virtual machine you
work in. The whole experience will just be more pleasant that way, as the
Parallels team do support their product and DO fix the drivers that interact
with their virtual hardware.

If you plan on buying this and MUST duel boot into Windows, then the entire
plan is just a bad idea. Buy a Thinkpad instead (or Surface Pro, etc).

~~~
trentnelson
I use Bootcamp on all my Macs and regularly boot natively into Windows. Most
of my PyParallel development is done in Windows 8.1 running on my iMac 5K
retina.

The only complaint I have about natively booting into Bootcamp/Windows is that
the touchpad driver isn't anywhere near as nice on Windows as on OS X.

The fact that VMware will happily boot a virtualized instance of the Bootcamp
Windows partition (when I'm on OS X) is pretty damn fantastic too.

In the past I've also been able to do the reverse: use VMware to boot OS X
from within Windows.

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tonyarkles
I've got a mid-2010 (holy crap it's getting old!) MBP 13" that I've used for
iOS development for a long time. It's had a bit of an upgrade (1TB drive, 8GB
ram) but nothing major. You can definitely do iOS development on something
like this, and it's way underpowered compared to what you're looking at.

Having a second monitor (I've got a 24" Asus) at home/work is really handy,
but I have no problem using just the main screen when I'm working mobile.

~~~
gofullappleorno
Thank you for commenting. Do you think I should go for the 16gb of ram, or
would the 8gb be enough for ios dev? Assuming I don't plan on running any VM
in it

~~~
tonyarkles
I'd definitely bump it up as far as I could. I'm pretty sure ol' trusty here
maxes out at 8, so that's all it gets.

------
paraxisi
If possible you should definitely get an SSD; mac or otherwise, the speed bump
is more than worth the price. However, if developing for osx/ios is a
priority, you don't (easily) have a whole lot of choice.

I was in the same boat as you roughly two months ago (needing to develop on
ios/osx) and vmware/vbox ios wasn't cutting it. I was able to snag a 2014 mbp
on ebay for a measly $1,000 (ha).

Best of luck either way!

~~~
gofullappleorno
Thanks! Will keep an eye in ebay

------
iDemonix
I'd lean towards a, if you want to keep both, but if it was me I'd be going
for B and specced up high as I can do all of my work as a Systems
Administrator from my MBP. They're awesome machines and mine is coming up to 3
years old.

MBP's definitely need an SSD (not sure if they still come with HDDs). Mine had
a 500GB HDD, I dropped the laptop when using it and damaged the HDD. I
replaced it with a 128GB HDD (as I don't have much large software that's
double what I need) and the speed difference is insane. App launches are 5-6x
faster, bootup is probably 10x faster and more. If I let the battery run out
and it slept, when waking it'd take about 2-3 minutes to resume, now it's 2-3
seconds. I'll never own a machine with a HDD again.

------
segmondy
Get whatever you want, that's the truth. I'm currently on a 3 years chromebook
that I bought for $150. It works great for me, but you will probably hate it.
I added 8gb of ram to it for a total of 10gb. It has 16gb drive. I installed
crouton on it, still have 2gb free and I do plenty of dev on it. Pretty much
everything you do plus more. :-) I don't do OSX or iOS but if I did, I do
probably get an old apple Box, and use it as a headless workstation.

------
kzisme
My current laptop is four years old and I have been considering getting a mbp
for awhile now. It would be primarily used as a mobile dev station (primary),
but are there any downsides to this?

------
rrrx3
If your current machine is sufficient for the non-iOS/OSX dev work you do, I
don't see the value in putting money into it instead of a MBP. I would go for
option B, however i'd get a 15" with as large an SSD as you can afford with
16GB of memory. Unfortunately what you get with these newer models is what
you're stuck with, and I can tell you that anything less than 8GB on those
machines can be a PITA, especially if you start running VMs.

~~~
gofullappleorno
Thank you very much for you comment. I guess you're right, there's probably no
point in upgrading my current machine. But I'm curious you suggest the 15''
mbp with a large ssd. Wouldn't a 13'' mbp be enough as a secondary dev
machine? Assuming I run VM's on my main dev machine (windows).

~~~
c0wb0yc0d3r
I just bought the new 13" MBP a few months ago. How often are you in some
place where you won't have access to a larger screen? Save your money, and buy
the 13" MBP.

~~~
gofullappleorno
Indeed. If I may ask, which sort of development do you do? Web or app? How
much ram do you have? And shich ssd size did you choose?

Thanks

------
rawTruthHurts
I'm still using my 2007? 2008? second hand mbp (700 eur, I bought it on 2009
or 2010), 6GB, I forgot the Mhz, with bootcamp+windows for photoshop,
illustrator, After Effects, 3dsMax, and ocassionally php, js, openfl, as3.
Yeah, it's not that I'm all the time rendering full HD movies, my point is:
for php and node and toying around... have you considered a 2nd hand mbp?

------
dropit_sphere
Have you considered a Mac Mini? I was in the same boat (main dev machine a
linux/win dual boot) and a mini fit my needs perfectly.

~~~
Someone1234
The Mini is a nice inexpensive way to get into the Mac world.

I would like to add a small word of caution: The current generation Minis are
not upgradable. Previously you could pop them open and turn a 4 GB RAM Mini
into a 16 GB Mini for under $70, now the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard
so the configuration you buy is the configuration you're stuck with.

PS - This was done without physically shrinking the size of the Mini, so one
can only assume Apple did this for profit reasons (either manufacturing
savings OR forcing people to buy their overpriced upgrades during purchase).

~~~
astrodust
If it saves a step during assembly and makes the final product more reliable,
it'd make business sense to do it.

Very few people upgrade their machines after buying them, it's a small
percentage of their user base that ever bothers to. The inconvenience there is
worth the trade-off: Any Mini coming in for service is using factory memory,
no questions, past this point.

It's was always a nice to have, but it's not exactly a deal-breaker now, their
prices aren't anywhere as crazy as server vendors can be. It just means you
need to build-to-order a machine as they rarely stock the upgraded models.

~~~
Someone1234
That's a really Apple-apologist answer. You're essentially justifying it
because it makes "business sense [to them]." Of course making more money makes
business sense to them, that was never in question.

~~~
astrodust
Given Apple's target market is not hobbyists, that there is already an
embarrassment of components you can buy and build your own system from, being
able to add after-market memory was never a priority for them for this spot in
the product line.

Historically it wasn't advantageous to lock it down like that, people would
typically upgrade their memory several times over the course of a system's
lifecycle. If you look at what the original G3 case was like, where there was
a latch on the side that lays the case open with easy access to memory and
hard-drives, a design improved upon throughout the early Mac Pro models, you
can see they were never intentionally user-hostile.

In the interests of shrinking components and improving reliability, though, in
an appliance-like product such as the Mac Mini, it makes sense.

Notice that the new Mac Pro has _extremely_ easy access to the memory slots.

For most people, the memory that comes with their computer is the memory that
computer dies with. This holds true for all kinds of systems, especially
laptops where in most cases people don't even know or care how much memory
they have.

It was _nice_ to be able to save a little by buying third party memory, but
it's not the end of the world that you can't. The Mini can only go to 16GB, so
the savings are minor. The Mac Pro can go to 128GB, so it's almost _expected_
you can do that.

------
brudgers
If this is a hobby decision, then buying a Mac is spending money on your
hobby. If it's a business decision then YAGNI applies until you have paying
work developing iOS/OSX applications. Even then on the iOS front there are
things like Xamrin that cover the functional requirements for iOS and the
price of new hardware covers many months of subscription.

Good luck.

~~~
spott
>until you have paying work developing iOS/OSX applications.

Isn't it a little disingenuous to advertise that you are able to develop
iOS/OSX when you can't at the moment?

YAGNI doesn't really apply to building new skills or gaining new
capabilities... especially when said skills and capabilities open up new
markets.

~~~
brudgers
In my opinion, the way to move into iOS would be with a small project that is
adjunct to some larger project. If a person has never done commercial
development for iOS, owning a Mac or taking Code Academy's Swift course
doesn't really count for much in terms of professional experience anyway.
YMMV.

------
cweagans
If you're just toying with Mac/iOS development and you're mostly a .NET dev,
you should get a really beefy Windows box and run Mac OS in a VM. Spend your
money where you spend most of your time.

IMO, the Macbook Air is useless. I personally wouldn't bother with it.

~~~
gofullappleorno
Isn't running OSX in a VM against its TOS ? I could get my apple ID banned,
right? Why do you think the mba is useless? I wouldn't use any CPU intensive
programs (eg.: photoshop, video editing)

~~~
infinitone
I have 3 year old mb air, i made the mistake of getting the lowest spec
version, but even then I'm still able to do lightweight RoR development
(sublime, rails s, guard, chrome all running at once).

------
rayiner
Apple's refurb store (U.S.) has a July '14 MBP Retina with 16GB RAM and 256 GB
SSD for $1,609. I bought a '13 model last year for about that price, and it's
been a fantastic machine. The refurb units are indistinguishable from new.

~~~
gofullappleorno
Too bad my country's Apple store doesn't have refurbished products :(

------
hfourm
That seems overpriced to begin with.

You can get a 15" MBP new, with the dedicated graphics card, 16gb ram, and the
new SSDs for like... 2500 USD

~~~
fuj
OP may have rounded up a bit but in Europe it costs around €2850 ($3200).

\- [http://store.apple.com/fi/buy-mac/macbook-
pro](http://store.apple.com/fi/buy-mac/macbook-pro)

\- [http://store.apple.com/es/buy-mac/macbook-
pro](http://store.apple.com/es/buy-mac/macbook-pro)

\- [http://store.apple.com/pt/buy-mac/macbook-
pro](http://store.apple.com/pt/buy-mac/macbook-pro)

\- [http://store.apple.com/it/buy-mac/macbook-
pro](http://store.apple.com/it/buy-mac/macbook-pro)

\- [http://store.apple.com/ie/buy-mac/macbook-
pro](http://store.apple.com/ie/buy-mac/macbook-pro)

....

~~~
Someone1234
Which makes sense when you consider the 20% "sales tax" (VAT) and the fact
that it is included in the price, and not just at the checkout like in the US.

A $2500 machine even in the US might cost $2,700 after tax in the US
(depending on your state's sales tax % and if Apple has to pay it).

------
dimino
You don't buy an Apple product for the hardware performance, you buy it for
the OS.

~~~
b_t_s
Actually a lot of us buy Apple for the hardware performance, just not the kind
of performance you measure in GigaWhatevers :) A touchpad that's not horrific,
great battery life, a quality screen, and managing to fit it all into a
smaller/lighter package than anyone else are all high on my performance list.
A few years ago I was looking for basically an ubuntu macbook air. Hardly
anything even came close to an air & what did was generally still inferior and
just as expensive.

~~~
dimino
That's a great point I hadn't thought about. The UX for Apple products is
generally fantastic.

On a site where everyone's concerned with the Hz and the MBs, the UX regularly
gets left behind.

