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up vote 6 down vote favorite

About to start some iPhone dev, need a laptop. Leaving aside price, is the MacBook Air a suitable development environment? 13" vs 11"?

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I bought the 13" MAcBook Air and so far I am very happy with it. I deliberately didn't put much detail in the question as I wanted as broad a response as possible. I do value 'thin', I have to carry two laptops around at the moment, the Air and a Lenovo. Upgrading isn't much of an issue as I will likely replace it after three years. – WinstonChurchill Nov 19 '10 at 11:35
how much of RAM ? 4 or 8Gb? I am thinking of buying one.Is to enough for Android/J2EE and iPhone development ? – Umanga Dec 26 '12 at 6:52

6 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

It's obviously not going to be the fastest machine but it's perfectly suitable.

I'd say the 13" over the 11" because reasonable screen size is a big deal for development, and it can go up to 4Gb RAM rather than 2Gb (absolutely go for the 4Gb RAM model on day one and if you can afford it the faster processor as I suspect upgrading later isn't something Apple will be pushing).

Yes it's got limitations (basically the same as any laptop - essentially screen and power are limited next to a desktop) but I have the new one and it's entirely workable and I know others who use them (and used the old MacBook Air) day to day with no problems.

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And something to add to his answer is that you will not be able to upgrade later on, the parts are soldered/glued (forgot which) when made, so it cannot be upgraded. – sange Nov 11 '10 at 14:22
@sange - I say that - end of the second paragraph. – Jon Hopkins Nov 11 '10 at 14:23
@Jon Hopkins I just wanted to add the reasons behind not being able to upgrade later. – sange Nov 11 '10 at 14:30
"not the fastest..." - in what way? they have SSD and dedicated Gfx, so what is slow about it, in terms of iOS development? – JBRWilkinson Nov 11 '10 at 15:28
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One Joel article does not make for a scientific analysis. A better answer would be 'once all the required files have been cached by the file system, hard drive performance is irrelevant compared to CPU': macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD.html – JBRWilkinson Nov 19 '10 at 10:55
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up vote 6 down vote

You don't note your Mac experience, but leaving aside price, I would recommend a MacBook Pro for any serious development work instead. A MacBook Pro is more easily upgradeable to suit needs than an Air (if it is even upgradeable at all). The Air seems more targeted to lighter-weight uses.

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1  
the SSD can be upgraded, the RAM can NOT, it is soldered onto the motherboard. – Jarrod Roberson Nov 12 '10 at 19:30
I upgraded from an old iBook to a MacBook Pro and never looked back. – Kendall Hopkins Nov 12 '10 at 22:54
Downvote and no comment? Not very helpful, gang. – Philip Regan Nov 16 '10 at 0:32
up vote 2 down vote

Several people comment that MacBook Pro is more powerful, but this review says otherwise.

The gist: the new Air is extremely fast due to the flash drive.

I'm currently doing iOS dev on the bottom-of-the-line mac mini (only 2 GB of RAM) and it's been great, so I expected the new Air to work well, but I only use it for iOS dev. I have a windows box for running other apps (like mail, browser, etc.).

If you'll be using it as a full machine, I may recommend 4GB of RAM on the Air (an extra $100) and a larger display.

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up vote 1 down vote

XCode compiles iOS apps much faster on a MacBook Air, due to the SSD.

Only 2 GB works just fine for iPhone sized Xcode projects (as long as you're not trying to multitask with 20 web sites open on the side). The extra portability might allow you to comfortably develop apps in more locations (airline cattle-car class seating, tree house, etc.).

The Air can also run a large 24" or 27" monitor, which is really nice for iPad development.

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up vote 0 down vote

I still do some development on an old Powerbook 12"; though I do Rails development in TextMate I don't use XCode - that may be a little more greedy. Still, dev on an Air is totally do-able. It is a compromise for me, not the best dev machine I have but it can get the job done. An Air would be lighter and a lot cooler (temp wise!).

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up vote 0 down vote

It's more than enough for iPhone development. That said, the big selling point of the Air is the light weight. If you don't need something ultra light, I would encourage you to consider the MBP instead. I use the 13" MBP and love it! With the 8gb memory limit, you don't have to worry about bogging down with a few VMs running, which I never thought I'd use! I run WinXP in a VM so I can jump in and do "Windows" things when I need to. Just give it some thought. I almost bought an iMac because I didn't think I "needed" a laptop. It's an expensive mistake so don't just get what you think you "need". :)

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