Macbook Air For Web Development 2018

I've been meaning to write this article for the past eight months, but simply haven't had the chance. With the imminent MacBook Air refresh I thought it timely to take a few minutes to document my MacBook Air experience thus far.

My Mac history

Retina Display Four million pixels. One immersive experience. With a resolution of 2560-by-1600 for. 2018 Macbook Air for coding Hi guys, I'm looking into buying a laptop so I can practice writing code at home, learn new stuff and use it to store my projects and ideas that I want to develop to hopefully land a better job. Jan 13, 2019 Apple took their time updating the ageing MacBook Air line, but 2018 brought a slew of improvements that thoroughly brought it forward, improving on basically every facet of the device. In this post we're purely discussing the most popular products of the Mac range that Apple ships as of 2016, comparing each product of their lineup as possible candidates for the seasoned web developer. Read on for our take on the MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac for web development.

I've owned four Macs to date. The first was a Black MacBook circa 2006 and I loved it. Aside from the greasy hand and fingerprints the machine was a slick piece of work and I really enjoyed having it. The one downside for me was the chicklet keyboard, and that very element turned out to be the machine's single downfall. Towards the end, I lost the N key completely, never to be found again.

That machine was traded in to a Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, the last of the pre-unibody enclosures. It was awesome too. I wasn't actively disappointed with the Black MacBook's performance, but moving up to the Pro was a noticeable improvement. Plus: matte screen.

My next machine was an i7 unibody MacBook Pro with a standard hard drive and 4GB RAM. I outline these specs for comparison with the meat of this article. It was a great machine, my only negative comment revolves around the glossy screen. I'm a matte lifer. http://oblbji.xtgem.com/Blog/__xtblog_entry/19075226-uctox-2-5-1-full-featured-invoicing-apps#xt_blog.

Then came the Air. I picked up my (now current, soon to be ancient) MacBook Air nearly the day they became available; in hand by my first (or second) day at Iron to Iron. There were barely any in stock due to being so new so I maxed one out on the site and waited. Specs are a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM, SSD (naturally).

Initial impression before purchase

I'm a skeptic. Reviewing a MacBook Air as a possibility for a primary machine was no exception. I refused to believe that this axe-blade of a computer could in any way compete with the beastly i7 I was working with. I checked it out in store and I was pleasantly surprised, though. The first generation MacBook Air left a bad taste in my mouth as I heard a number of times that people simply didn't have the uninterrupted experience I had grown to love about using a Mac. Hard drive issues, fan issues, sleep issues, I can't even remember the list that had me scared.

Apple made it clear though, that this version was reworked. The presentation of the new model (and the price point) had me super curious as to whether or not it'd be feasible for my workflow. The two biggest benefits that kept me interested was the compressed resolution and the SSD.

MacBook Air + Web development

My focus of this piece is to outline my experience using a MacBook Air for my professional workflow: client-oriented Web front and back end development in OS X. My workflow involves the use of many tools, some of which overlap with a strictly designer's workflow, so perhaps my perception will be useful to designers (only) as well. I'm going to skip the general applications such as email, instant messaging, media, and the like simply because there are countless reviews outlining 'average use' of a MacBook Air — in short, it's awesome for that.

The kicker for me, though, is that my MacBook Air is the best Mac I've ever owned, hands down.

Photoshop

My development process begins in Photoshop. I'll receive final client-approved PSD comps from Kevin and work on static versions. Normal interaction with Photoshop is spot on with past machines if not a bit quicker, thanks to the SSD. Easyframe 2 6 1. Site asset generation from PSD to static files is overall surprisingly performant, and I expected it to be a bit more of a burden than it's proven to be.

Photoshop is slow by nature, and I would put the Air's handling of well designed site comps on par with the i7. I've heard from some other Air users that they do notice some slowdown when working in Photoshop, but it was likely due to the machine being the 1.8 GHz variety with 2GB RAM. Those specs are limiting for any machine running Photoshop.

Writing code

I've been dabbling in tons of tools over the past year. Of course, without fail, I've stuck with TextMate for the foreseeable future, but consistently keep an eye on Sublime Text 2. Just a few more feature ports and I'll be good to go there.

In addition to an editor, I'm running a local development environment via MAMP Pro and everything is lightning quick. I've got various SVN and git repos working at all times, and I've yet to see a bottleneck in the code space. I've also taken a step further in development by incorporating Xdebug into my workflow where appropriate and there's not a shadow of performance degradation there either.

I'm also doing more and more work with MySQL directly via Sequel Pro and it's marvelous. The code I write isn't ever compiled so that's not something I find myself doing too often (if at all) so I can't directly comment on performance there, but logic tells me it'd conform to the other experience I've had with the Air.

Overall, writing code should be a really speedy exercise and the Air facilitates that. Not to say that the actual inspiration of the code should come quickly, but the physical interaction itself should be, and is.

Additional information

My overall reaction to the Air in comparison to my recent i7 MacBook Pro is that performance difference is negligible. SSDs make a big difference. I imagine that if my i7 had an SSD, my resolution would be a bit different. I feel though, that comparing a MacBook Air to an i7 speaks towards what the Air is, and what it's to become.

As I mentioned, one of the largest draws to the Air for me was the compressed resolution. My 13″ Air has the same resolution my 15″ MacBook Pro (1440×900) and I loved that. I've always loved the 13″ form factor, but the smaller resolution always felt cramped. This seemed like an ideal solution.

While the boost in resolution is awesome as expected, it took some getting used to. Not in that the pixel density was hard to grasp, but I use an external monitor, and seeing a design on one monitor versus the other plays tricks on your eye. I'll have Photoshop open on the Air's display, working on the comp, and my browser on the external monitor. I'm constantly shifting from one to the other, and it absolutely took some time to get used to the difference. For the first few days I was repeatedly checking font sizes and image dimensions to make sure they were accurate. That tendency has since subdued and I'm more used to the difference now, but it's something to be aware of. Additionally, there are times when moving windows around the secondary display shows the onboard graphics. Things get a little jittery should you move windows around quite a bit, but it's really quite temporary and nothing to earn a demerit.

On an average day I'll simultaneously be running a number of applications, a common group of which include:

• Chrome
• TextMate (or Sublime Text 2)
• iTunes
• Mail
• OmniFocus
• Photoshop
• Twitter
• Transmit
• Versions
• Adium

I've yet to notice any lag, especially when comparing performance to my i7 MacBook Pro.

An unexpected benefit for me was portability. I don't travel too much but I've gone on a number of trips since November where the Air's shine was glowing. I've been a laptop guy for the past 6 years or so, but never really enjoyed a lasting battery. Finally, with the Air, I was able to get a staggering amount of work done before realizing that I wasn't plugged in to a wall. In addition to the battery life, the form factor is just the right boost of awesome. Laptops haven't been 'large' in many years, but I'm now completely spoiled by the dimensions of this computer. It would be disappointing to have to move back to a 15″ machine after getting used to the Air.

MacBook Air + the rest

In addition to my professional work, I also use my Air for a number of other things you may be interesting in comparing. I try to shoot photos with a Canon 7D, an 18 megapixel DSLR that generates ~30MB RAW files and I process these photos in Aperture 3. I tested Aperture in store and noticed that the sample photos were of a large size, but I was convinced (and not blaming that) Apple had used optimized assets in an effort to ‘wow'.

After working with 18MP RAW images in Aperture 3 (and Lightroom) for nearly the past year, I can say that the SSD helps bigtime. The MacBook Air is able to edit photos on par, if not a bit quicker than my Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (non unibody) could. The one reportable outcome is that the fans work hard when processing assets that large, and that always makes me nervous as heat and electronics don't mix with a positive outcome. I tend to do my post-processing of photos using a ‘scratch' library I've set up on the SSD itself, and once that work is done, I'll import that library into my main library stored on an external hard drive. This process has worked well, but dedicated graphics would be great in the future.

What I miss

With all of the good, there are a few niceties that I'd love to see in the possible MacBook Air refresh due this week. First and foremost: I miss the backlit keyboard. This is not something I expected as I came to take it for granted, but for those nights where I feel like doing some work from the living room couch without full room lighting, I'd love the benefit of a backlit keyboard. This update seems likely as of some recent news, so that's awesome.

The other major hardware change I'd love to see is an option with dedicated graphics, even if that meant a bit thicker of a form factor. It's not something integral to my professional workflow, but for those times when I'm processing photos or transcoding the occasional video, the boost in performance would be welcomed. I do my fair share of screencasts so not having the processor cranking and fans whirring for extended amounts of time would be great.

So there you have it; using a MacBook Air for Web development. Again, it's the best Mac I've ever owned, for both professional and personal use, and I will look forward to upgrading to a new Air when the time comes. It's that blend between a professional notebook and a portable netbook we've all been waiting for. The new Air's are going to sell like crazy.

How fast does your MacBook need to be to comfortably code iOS apps with Xcode? Is a MacBook Pro from 2-3 years ago good enough to learn Swift programming? Let's find out!

Here's what we'll get into:

• The minimum/recommended system requirements for Xcode 11
• Why you need – or don't need – a fancy $3.000 MacBook Pro
• Which second-hand Macs can run Xcode OK, and how you can find out

I've answered a lot of 'Is my MacBook good enough for iOS development and/or Xcode?'-type questions on Quora. A few of the most popular models include:

• The 3rd- and 4th-gen MacBook Pro, with 2.4+ GHz Intel Core i5, i7, i9 CPUs
• The 2nd-gen MacBook Air, with the 1.4+ GHz Intel Core i5 CPUs
• The 4th-generation iMac, with the 2.7+ GHz Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs

These models aren't the latest, that's for sure. Are they good enough to code iOS apps? And what about learning how to code? We'll find out in this article.

My Almost-Unbreakable 2013 MacBook Air

Since 2009 I've coded more than 50 apps for iOS, Android and the mobile web. Most of those apps, including all apps I've created between 2013 and 2018, were built on a 13″ MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and a 1.3 GHz Intel i5 CPU.

My first MacBook was the gorgeous, then-new MacBook White unibody (2009), which I traded in for a faster but heavier MacBook Pro (2011), which I traded in for that nimble workhorse, the mighty MacBook Air (2013). In 2018 I upgraded to a tricked out 13″ MacBook Pro, with much better specs.

Frankly, that MacBook Air from 2013 felt more sturdy and capable than my current MacBook Pro. After 5 years of daily intenstive use, the MacBook Air's battery is only through 50% of its max. cycle count. It's still going strong after 7 hours on battery power. Free photoshop software for windows 10.

In 2014, my trusty MacBook Air broke down on a beach in Thailand, 3 hours before a client deadline, with the next Apple Store 500 kilometer away. It turned out OK, of course. Guess what? My current MacBook Pro from 2018, its keyboard doesn't even work OK, I've had sound recording glitches, and occasionally the T2 causes a kernel panic. Like many of us, I wish we had 2013-2015 MacBook Air's and Pro's with today's specs. Oh, well…

Learn how to build iOS apps

Sign up for my iOS development course, and learn how to build great iOS 14 apps with Swift 5 and Xcode 12.

That 100 Mhz i486 PC I Learned to Code With

When I was about 11 years old I taught myself to code in BASIC, on a 100 Mhz i486 PC that was given to me by friends. It had a luxurious 16 MB of RAM, initially only ran MS-DOS, and later ran Windows 3.1 and '95.

A next upgrade came as a 400 Mhz AMD desktop, given again by friends, on which I ran a local EasyPHP webserver that I used to learn web development with PHP, MySQL and HTML/CSS. I coded a mod for Wolfenstein 3D on that machine, too.

We had no broadband internet at home back then, so I would download and print out coding tutorials at school. At the one library computer that had internet access, and I completed the tutorials at home. The source codes of turn-based web games, JavaScript tidbits and HTML page snippets were carried around on a 3.5″ floppy disk.

Later, when I started coding professionally around age 17, I finally bought my first laptop. My own! I still remember how happy I was. I got my first gig as a freelance coder: creating a PHP script that would aggregate RSS feeds, for which I earned about a hundred bucks. Those were the days!

Xcode, iOS, Swift and The MacBook Pro

The world is different today. Xcode simply doesn't run on an i486 PC, and you can't save your app's source code on a 1.44 MB floppy disk anymore. Your Mac probably doesn't have a CD drive, and you store your Swift code in a cloud-based Git repository somewhere.

Make no mistake: owning a MacBook is a luxury. Not because learning to code was harder 15 years ago, and not because computers were slower back then. It's because kids these days learn Python programming on a $25 Raspberry Pi.

I recently had a conversation with a young aspiring coder, who complained he had no access to 'decent' coding tutorials and mentoring, despite owning a MacBook Pro and having access to the internet. Among other things, I wrote the following:

You're competing with a world of people that are smarter than you, and have better resources. You're also competing against coders that have had it worse than you. They didn't win despite adversity, but because of it. Do you give up? NO! You work harder. It's the only thing you can do: work harder than the next person. When their conviction is wavering, you dig in your heels, you keep going, you persevere, and you'll win.

Winning Display maestro 3 0 8 mm. in this sense isn't like winning a race, of course. You're not competing with anyone else; you're only really up against yourself. If you want to learn how to code, don't dawdle over choosing a $3.000 or a $2.900 laptop. If anything, it'll keep you from developing the grit you need to learn coding.

Great ideas can change the world, but only if they're accompanied by deliberate action. Likewise, simply complaining about adversity isn't going to create opportunities for growth – unless you take action. I leapfrogged my way from one hand-me-down computer to the next. I'm not saying you should too, but I do want to underscore how it helped me develop character.

If you want to learn how to code, welcome adversity. Be excellent because of it, or despite it, and never give up. Start coding today! Don't wait until you've got all your ducks in a row.

That machine was traded in to a Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, the last of the pre-unibody enclosures. It was awesome too. I wasn't actively disappointed with the Black MacBook's performance, but moving up to the Pro was a noticeable improvement. Plus: matte screen.

My next machine was an i7 unibody MacBook Pro with a standard hard drive and 4GB RAM. I outline these specs for comparison with the meat of this article. It was a great machine, my only negative comment revolves around the glossy screen. I'm a matte lifer. http://oblbji.xtgem.com/Blog/__xtblog_entry/19075226-uctox-2-5-1-full-featured-invoicing-apps#xt_blog.

Then came the Air. I picked up my (now current, soon to be ancient) MacBook Air nearly the day they became available; in hand by my first (or second) day at Iron to Iron. There were barely any in stock due to being so new so I maxed one out on the site and waited. Specs are a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM, SSD (naturally).

Initial impression before purchase

I'm a skeptic. Reviewing a MacBook Air as a possibility for a primary machine was no exception. I refused to believe that this axe-blade of a computer could in any way compete with the beastly i7 I was working with. I checked it out in store and I was pleasantly surprised, though. The first generation MacBook Air left a bad taste in my mouth as I heard a number of times that people simply didn't have the uninterrupted experience I had grown to love about using a Mac. Hard drive issues, fan issues, sleep issues, I can't even remember the list that had me scared.

Apple made it clear though, that this version was reworked. The presentation of the new model (and the price point) had me super curious as to whether or not it'd be feasible for my workflow. The two biggest benefits that kept me interested was the compressed resolution and the SSD.

MacBook Air + Web development

My focus of this piece is to outline my experience using a MacBook Air for my professional workflow: client-oriented Web front and back end development in OS X. My workflow involves the use of many tools, some of which overlap with a strictly designer's workflow, so perhaps my perception will be useful to designers (only) as well. I'm going to skip the general applications such as email, instant messaging, media, and the like simply because there are countless reviews outlining 'average use' of a MacBook Air — in short, it's awesome for that.

The kicker for me, though, is that my MacBook Air is the best Mac I've ever owned, hands down.

Photoshop

My development process begins in Photoshop. I'll receive final client-approved PSD comps from Kevin and work on static versions. Normal interaction with Photoshop is spot on with past machines if not a bit quicker, thanks to the SSD. Easyframe 2 6 1. Site asset generation from PSD to static files is overall surprisingly performant, and I expected it to be a bit more of a burden than it's proven to be.

Photoshop is slow by nature, and I would put the Air's handling of well designed site comps on par with the i7. I've heard from some other Air users that they do notice some slowdown when working in Photoshop, but it was likely due to the machine being the 1.8 GHz variety with 2GB RAM. Those specs are limiting for any machine running Photoshop.

Writing code

I've been dabbling in tons of tools over the past year. Of course, without fail, I've stuck with TextMate for the foreseeable future, but consistently keep an eye on Sublime Text 2. Just a few more feature ports and I'll be good to go there.

In addition to an editor, I'm running a local development environment via MAMP Pro and everything is lightning quick. I've got various SVN and git repos working at all times, and I've yet to see a bottleneck in the code space. I've also taken a step further in development by incorporating Xdebug into my workflow where appropriate and there's not a shadow of performance degradation there either.

I'm also doing more and more work with MySQL directly via Sequel Pro and it's marvelous. The code I write isn't ever compiled so that's not something I find myself doing too often (if at all) so I can't directly comment on performance there, but logic tells me it'd conform to the other experience I've had with the Air.

Overall, writing code should be a really speedy exercise and the Air facilitates that. Not to say that the actual inspiration of the code should come quickly, but the physical interaction itself should be, and is.

Additional information

My overall reaction to the Air in comparison to my recent i7 MacBook Pro is that performance difference is negligible. SSDs make a big difference. I imagine that if my i7 had an SSD, my resolution would be a bit different. I feel though, that comparing a MacBook Air to an i7 speaks towards what the Air is, and what it's to become.

As I mentioned, one of the largest draws to the Air for me was the compressed resolution. My 13″ Air has the same resolution my 15″ MacBook Pro (1440×900) and I loved that. I've always loved the 13″ form factor, but the smaller resolution always felt cramped. This seemed like an ideal solution.

While the boost in resolution is awesome as expected, it took some getting used to. Not in that the pixel density was hard to grasp, but I use an external monitor, and seeing a design on one monitor versus the other plays tricks on your eye. I'll have Photoshop open on the Air's display, working on the comp, and my browser on the external monitor. I'm constantly shifting from one to the other, and it absolutely took some time to get used to the difference. For the first few days I was repeatedly checking font sizes and image dimensions to make sure they were accurate. That tendency has since subdued and I'm more used to the difference now, but it's something to be aware of. Additionally, there are times when moving windows around the secondary display shows the onboard graphics. Things get a little jittery should you move windows around quite a bit, but it's really quite temporary and nothing to earn a demerit.

On an average day I'll simultaneously be running a number of applications, a common group of which include:

• Chrome
• TextMate (or Sublime Text 2)
• iTunes
• Mail
• OmniFocus
• Photoshop
• Twitter
• Transmit
• Versions
• Adium

I've yet to notice any lag, especially when comparing performance to my i7 MacBook Pro.

An unexpected benefit for me was portability. I don't travel too much but I've gone on a number of trips since November where the Air's shine was glowing. I've been a laptop guy for the past 6 years or so, but never really enjoyed a lasting battery. Finally, with the Air, I was able to get a staggering amount of work done before realizing that I wasn't plugged in to a wall. In addition to the battery life, the form factor is just the right boost of awesome. Laptops haven't been 'large' in many years, but I'm now completely spoiled by the dimensions of this computer. It would be disappointing to have to move back to a 15″ machine after getting used to the Air.

MacBook Air + the rest

In addition to my professional work, I also use my Air for a number of other things you may be interesting in comparing. I try to shoot photos with a Canon 7D, an 18 megapixel DSLR that generates ~30MB RAW files and I process these photos in Aperture 3. I tested Aperture in store and noticed that the sample photos were of a large size, but I was convinced (and not blaming that) Apple had used optimized assets in an effort to ‘wow'.

After working with 18MP RAW images in Aperture 3 (and Lightroom) for nearly the past year, I can say that the SSD helps bigtime. The MacBook Air is able to edit photos on par, if not a bit quicker than my Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (non unibody) could. The one reportable outcome is that the fans work hard when processing assets that large, and that always makes me nervous as heat and electronics don't mix with a positive outcome. I tend to do my post-processing of photos using a ‘scratch' library I've set up on the SSD itself, and once that work is done, I'll import that library into my main library stored on an external hard drive. This process has worked well, but dedicated graphics would be great in the future.

What I miss

With all of the good, there are a few niceties that I'd love to see in the possible MacBook Air refresh due this week. First and foremost: I miss the backlit keyboard. This is not something I expected as I came to take it for granted, but for those nights where I feel like doing some work from the living room couch without full room lighting, I'd love the benefit of a backlit keyboard. This update seems likely as of some recent news, so that's awesome.

The other major hardware change I'd love to see is an option with dedicated graphics, even if that meant a bit thicker of a form factor. It's not something integral to my professional workflow, but for those times when I'm processing photos or transcoding the occasional video, the boost in performance would be welcomed. I do my fair share of screencasts so not having the processor cranking and fans whirring for extended amounts of time would be great.

So there you have it; using a MacBook Air for Web development. Again, it's the best Mac I've ever owned, for both professional and personal use, and I will look forward to upgrading to a new Air when the time comes. It's that blend between a professional notebook and a portable netbook we've all been waiting for. The new Air's are going to sell like crazy.

How fast does your MacBook need to be to comfortably code iOS apps with Xcode? Is a MacBook Pro from 2-3 years ago good enough to learn Swift programming? Let's find out!

Here's what we'll get into:

• The minimum/recommended system requirements for Xcode 11
• Why you need – or don't need – a fancy $3.000 MacBook Pro
• Which second-hand Macs can run Xcode OK, and how you can find out

I've answered a lot of 'Is my MacBook good enough for iOS development and/or Xcode?'-type questions on Quora. A few of the most popular models include:

• The 3rd- and 4th-gen MacBook Pro, with 2.4+ GHz Intel Core i5, i7, i9 CPUs
• The 2nd-gen MacBook Air, with the 1.4+ GHz Intel Core i5 CPUs
• The 4th-generation iMac, with the 2.7+ GHz Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs

These models aren't the latest, that's for sure. Are they good enough to code iOS apps? And what about learning how to code? We'll find out in this article.

My Almost-Unbreakable 2013 MacBook Air

Since 2009 I've coded more than 50 apps for iOS, Android and the mobile web. Most of those apps, including all apps I've created between 2013 and 2018, were built on a 13″ MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and a 1.3 GHz Intel i5 CPU.

My first MacBook was the gorgeous, then-new MacBook White unibody (2009), which I traded in for a faster but heavier MacBook Pro (2011), which I traded in for that nimble workhorse, the mighty MacBook Air (2013). In 2018 I upgraded to a tricked out 13″ MacBook Pro, with much better specs.

Frankly, that MacBook Air from 2013 felt more sturdy and capable than my current MacBook Pro. After 5 years of daily intenstive use, the MacBook Air's battery is only through 50% of its max. cycle count. It's still going strong after 7 hours on battery power. Free photoshop software for windows 10.

In 2014, my trusty MacBook Air broke down on a beach in Thailand, 3 hours before a client deadline, with the next Apple Store 500 kilometer away. It turned out OK, of course. Guess what? My current MacBook Pro from 2018, its keyboard doesn't even work OK, I've had sound recording glitches, and occasionally the T2 causes a kernel panic. Like many of us, I wish we had 2013-2015 MacBook Air's and Pro's with today's specs. Oh, well…

Learn how to build iOS apps

Sign up for my iOS development course, and learn how to build great iOS 14 apps with Swift 5 and Xcode 12.

That 100 Mhz i486 PC I Learned to Code With

When I was about 11 years old I taught myself to code in BASIC, on a 100 Mhz i486 PC that was given to me by friends. It had a luxurious 16 MB of RAM, initially only ran MS-DOS, and later ran Windows 3.1 and '95.

A next upgrade came as a 400 Mhz AMD desktop, given again by friends, on which I ran a local EasyPHP webserver that I used to learn web development with PHP, MySQL and HTML/CSS. I coded a mod for Wolfenstein 3D on that machine, too.

We had no broadband internet at home back then, so I would download and print out coding tutorials at school. At the one library computer that had internet access, and I completed the tutorials at home. The source codes of turn-based web games, JavaScript tidbits and HTML page snippets were carried around on a 3.5″ floppy disk.

Later, when I started coding professionally around age 17, I finally bought my first laptop. My own! I still remember how happy I was. I got my first gig as a freelance coder: creating a PHP script that would aggregate RSS feeds, for which I earned about a hundred bucks. Those were the days!

Xcode, iOS, Swift and The MacBook Pro

The world is different today. Xcode simply doesn't run on an i486 PC, and you can't save your app's source code on a 1.44 MB floppy disk anymore. Your Mac probably doesn't have a CD drive, and you store your Swift code in a cloud-based Git repository somewhere.

Make no mistake: owning a MacBook is a luxury. Not because learning to code was harder 15 years ago, and not because computers were slower back then. It's because kids these days learn Python programming on a $25 Raspberry Pi.

I recently had a conversation with a young aspiring coder, who complained he had no access to 'decent' coding tutorials and mentoring, despite owning a MacBook Pro and having access to the internet. Among other things, I wrote the following:

You're competing with a world of people that are smarter than you, and have better resources. You're also competing against coders that have had it worse than you. They didn't win despite adversity, but because of it. Do you give up? NO! You work harder. It's the only thing you can do: work harder than the next person. When their conviction is wavering, you dig in your heels, you keep going, you persevere, and you'll win.

Winning Display maestro 3 0 8 mm. in this sense isn't like winning a race, of course. You're not competing with anyone else; you're only really up against yourself. If you want to learn how to code, don't dawdle over choosing a $3.000 or a $2.900 laptop. If anything, it'll keep you from developing the grit you need to learn coding.

Great ideas can change the world, but only if they're accompanied by deliberate action. Likewise, simply complaining about adversity isn't going to create opportunities for growth – unless you take action. I leapfrogged my way from one hand-me-down computer to the next. I'm not saying you should too, but I do want to underscore how it helped me develop character.

If you want to learn how to code, welcome adversity. Be excellent because of it, or despite it, and never give up. Start coding today! Don't wait until you've got all your ducks in a row.

Which MacBook is Fast Enough for Xcode 11?

The recommended system specs to run Xcode 11 are:

• A Mac with macOS Catalina (10.15.2) for Xcode 11.5 or macOS Mojave (10.14.4) for Xcode 11.0 (see alternatives for PC here)
• At least an Intel i5- or i7-equivalent CPU, so about 2.0 GHz should be enough
• At least 8 GB of RAM, but 16 GB lets you run more apps at the same time
• At least 256 GB disk storage, although 512 GB is more comfortable
• You'll need about 8 GB of disk space, but Xcode's intermediate files can take up to 10-30 GB of extra disk space

Looking for a second-hand Mac? The following models should be fast enough for Xcode, but YMMV!

• 4th-generation MacBook Pro (2016)
• 3rd-generation Mac Mini (2014)
• 2nd-generation MacBook Air (2017)
• 5th-generation iMac (2015)

When you're looking for a Mac or MacBook to purchase, make sure it runs the latest version of macOS. Xcode versions you can run are tied to macOS versions your hardware runs, and iOS versions you can build for are tied to Xcode versions. See how that works? This is especially true for SwiftUI, which is iOS 13.0 and up only. Make sure you can run the latest!

Pro tip: You can often find the latest macOS version a device model supports on their Wikipedia page (see above links, scroll down to Supported macOS releases). You can then cross-reference that with Xcode's minimum OS requirements (see here, scroll to min macOS to run), and see which iOS versions you'll be able to run.

Further Reading

Awesome! We've discussed what you need to run Xcode on your Mac. You might not need as much as you think you do. Likewise, it's smart to invest in a future-proof development machine.

Whatever you do, don't ever think you need an expensive computer to learn how to code. Maybe the one thing you really want to invest in is frustration tolerance. You can make do, without the luxury of a MacBook Pro. A hand-me-down i486 is enough. Or… is it?

Want to learn more? Check out these resources:

Learn how to build iOS apps

2018 Macbook Air 13 Inch

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Sign up for my iOS development course, and learn how to build great iOS 14 apps with Swift 5 and Xcode 12.