Best Macbook For Programming

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Best Macbook For Programming For Beginners
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Best Mac For Programming

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 best Mac laptop for most people is the 13-inch MacBook Air with Apple’s M1 processor. It’s more than fast enough for the things most people use a computer for—web browsing, working on. Apple is considered the best at making high-end laptops that run their own powerful operating system. The new Apple MacBook Pro continues the tradition with a trusty laptop that just works for any. The new MacBook Air is the best MacBook for most people. This latest model demonstrates the capabilities of Apple's M1 chip, which transforms the Air from an underpowered entry-level option to one.

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 tutorial.

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.

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

Get started with iOS 14 and Swift 5

That 100 Mhz i486 PC I Learned to Code With

Html ide for mac os. 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 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.

What Makes The Best Computer For Programming?

Unlike many PCs, contemporary Macs are virtually impossible to upgrade, due to their unibody designs, which means that if you need a new Mac laptop you should buy the best developer laptop right away. But what makes it so?

CPU: Programming apps like Xcode for Mac, Docker, and even Chrome require significant processing power to run quickly. Hence, you should look for a processor that’s at least dual-core or more. The entry-level i3 is also not recommended — i5 is fine, but also consider i7 to take full advantage of hyper-threading.

GPU: Unless you develop games, your graphics card should be less of a worry. General Apple app development should function perfectly on whatever the default GPU option for your new Mac is.

RAM: When it comes to picking the best laptop for developers, you should definitely focus on having enough memory capacity to accommodate all the simultaneous processes that would be taking place. Even simply running Xcode for Mac on its own takes a lot of RAM. So don’t even consider anything with less than 8 GB, and the more the better.

Screen: It’s always nice to have a lot of screen real estate at your disposal. In app development too, lots of things are happening at once and you’ll have multiple app windows open at any given moment. Having a big enough screen will let you do that comfortably. Retina displays also come with the advantage of scaled resolutions, so you can cram even more code into your view. Overall, you should strive for something larger than 13 inches.

Battery: Obviously, the issue of battery only comes up when choosing the best laptop for programming and doesn’t apply to desktops. The truth is if you pick a Mac from the latest lineup, all of them have decently sized batteries, so running out of power mid-day shouldn’t be an issue.

Ports: While it’s nice to have more ports for all your external hard drives, screens, input devices, and so on — even Macs with just two USB-Cs are doing fine here, thanks to the proliferation of USB-C hubs that can turn one port into eight in no time.

Storage: For your hard drive options, you should get an SSD without a question. Solid-state drives are faster and much more dependable. Since storage solutions are seemingly getting cheaper every day, don’t max out your internal one: 256 GB is more than enough, although you shouldn’t go lower than 128 GB.

In general, if you’re truly after the best laptop for coding, it’s strongly advised to get a new Mac, or maybe the one from last year or two, and not earlier than that. New Macs will have the longest macOS and Xcode for Mac compatibility, so your investment will pay off in the years to come.

The Best MacBook Air

If money is not unlimited, you can still build a formidable MacBook Air for programming at a reasonable cost, using its newest discounted model.

Start with the 256 GB option for $999. Definitely upgrade the processor to i7 (or at least i5). Increase the memory to 16 GB as well, and you’ll have one of the best developer laptops for about $1,449.

The Best MacBook Pro

For those who want a MacBook Pro, there’s little reason to get the 13-inch model (which is served better by the MacBook Air), unless you really want it.

So a recommendation here would be to go for the 16-inch model with 512 GB of storage. There have been some reports of this laptop being prone to overheating on an 8-core processor, so the 6-core one should be perfectly fine. The only potential upgrade here could be to 32 or 64 GB of RAM if your budget allows for it. In the end, you can get a true MacBook beast for around $2,799.

The Best iMac

Not everyone enjoys bringing their laptop with them wherever they go. Oftentimes working at a well-defined space, such as your desk, lets you focus and get more done. That’s when getting an iMac desktop computer makes a lot of sense.

While Apple still lets you choose between a 21.5 and 27-inch iMac, go for the larger screen to reap the maximum benefits out of your new best Mac for programming. As a bonus, all the latest 27-inch Macs come with a 5K Retina display.

Out of the three options for iMacs presented, go for the mid-tier 3.1 GHz 6-core processor and then optionally upgrade to the 3.6 GHz i9. Definitely get at least 16 GB of RAM or more and upgrade to at least 256 GB of SSD. That’s how you can build a future-proof and powerful iMac for just $2,799.

What about iMac Pro and Mac Pro? While both of them are extraordinary machines, they are likely to be an overkill (as they start at $5,000) when it comes to Apple app development, unless you work in power-taxing fields like gaming or VR.

The Best Mac mini

Even though it’s frequently overlooked, Mac mini can be compact and swift, and certainly fight for the best Mac for app development title. It’s resistant to coffee spills and broken screens, and can be quite portable too. Mac mini also supports one 5K display or two 4K ones.

To create the best version of Mac mini, pick a 3.0 GHz 6-core i5 processor option and upgrade it to 3.2 GHz 6-core i7. Get at least 16 GB of RAM. Optionally, you can now choose a 10 Gigabit Ethernet for $100, which is a great feature for those who rely on the internet in their work (i.e. all of us). In total, a developer-ready Mac mini should cost you $1,599.

How to export from Sketch like a pro

After you get set up with the best computer for programming, it’s time to get the best coding software. Whether you’re working in web or app development these days, you’ll definitely come across Sketch a lot, which is a very popular design tool. The problem is the tedious process of moving every detail of the design into Xcode for Mac.

Apple music macos. Sketch Export for Xcode drastically speeds up any app development by automatically crawling all the colors in the design and giving you easy options to transfer them right into your coding environment in clean Swift, thus eliminating any guesswork. Even color names will be filled out for you.

How to easily create progressive apps

Everyone knows that native apps are generally better performing than their progressive counterparts. However, crafting a web app followed by separate apps for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android takes a lot of resources that not many businesses can afford.

Unite is an amazing app development tool, since it allows you to instantly transform any website into a macOS app, no coding required. Further you can customize the app and, for example, get rid of web-based features (such as ads) that you don’t need to arrive at a clean and user-friendly experience. Since Unite apps are still using a browser shell, your new app will be compatible with most of the web plugins out there too.

How to code faster right now

Free Macbook Pro For Students

When you start dabbling in Apple app development and using Xcode for Mac, you quickly find out how repetitive much of the code is. If only there was an autofill for all that syntax and functions!

TeaCode is a complete library of coding templates you can access with a simple shortcut in whatever text editor you prefer. This app also covers a wide range of languages, from Swift to PHP to Objective C — and you can create new shortcuts yourself to avoid ever wasting time on repeating common snippets of code.

So now you should not only be equipped with one of the best computers for programming but also have some of the best coding software installed on it: Sketch Export for Xcode, Unite, and TeaCode.

Best of all, every app mentioned above is available to you absolutely free for seven days via Setapp, a platform with more than 200 top-rated Mac apps for any task at hand, from mind-mapping (MindNode) to writing notes (Ulysses). Sign up and try them all at no cost today!

Setapp lives on Mac and iOS. Please come back from another device.