Ask HN: Anyone swapped to a MacBook Air as a primary development machine?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2200836

by lox • 15 years ago

16 14 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm considering swapping from my recent gen MacBook Pro and virtual machine development environment to a MacBook Air and a server in a cloud somewhere. Does anyone have any experience on this? Is the latency frustrating?

I'm a LAMP/Ruby developer and I typically work with databases around the 5-10GB mark, so quite light.

bergie• 15 years ago

I've been using the first-gen MacBook Air as my primary machine from around when it was released to about a week ago when its hard drive died. A bit slow at times, but the ease of carrying it compensates for that easily. And I've understood the SSDs on the new ones fix the speed issue.

Depends of course on what kind of tools you expect to use. I'm a web developer working on the PHP stack (even using a PHP-based app server instead of Apache), so I just need a simple Ubuntu desktop with a text editor, terminal and a browser.

cmer• 15 years ago

I ditched my 15" MBP for an Air and couldn't be happier. The SSD actually makes it feel much faster. I do the same kind of work as you do. I think you'll be very happy with your purchase. I already converted 2 people to the Air and they also love it.

pg2• 15 years ago

I have for the last 2 years. Lots of YC founders seem to. It never occurred to me there was anything unusual about it.

listic• 15 years ago

How about desktops? Are they out of fashion among YC founders? I thought every developer appreciates convenience of large screen and plenty of computing power.

Do you/YC developers hook up your MacBook Airs to large screens or don't bother?

pg2• 15 years ago

I believe most people use laptops that they hook up to larger screens when at their desks.

epynonymous• 15 years ago

i personally recommend a macbook pro with an i5 or better, why? the cores, the macbook pro/air 13" use the outdated core 2 duo which supplies at best 2 cores, the i5 and i7 have 4. from a memory perspective, you'll only get 4 GB at best with an mba, with the pros you can go to 8 GB. this is great for running not just virtualization, but also if you're like me and you have 20 things open and running at the same time.

i dev in jquery + python + a mysql backend on fedora 14 running on vmware fusion. it's fine on my macbook pro 13 (2.66 GHz/2 cores/8GB Memory). highly recommend getting an SSD and maxing out the memory. my only complaint is the number of cores, wish i could have more cores.

in terms of being able to dev on an mba, it's totally possible, it's not like you're compiling code. so it really comes down to how much memory and how responsive you need the machine to be. also if weight plays a role in your decision making.

yakto• 15 years ago

Love my 13" MBA (2nd gen) with 2GB. Gave up a $4K 15" MBP with 8GB and SSD for it, and haven't regretted the decision once in 3 months or so.

MBA is much quieter (fan rarely runs, when it does it's much quieter), way more comfy on the lap or in bed, much cooler, and has a strikingly better display (brighter, crisper, slightly smaller size no big deal since rez the same).

I work in a Rails + MongoDB stack plus do a lot of design, so I'll routinely have RubyMine, Photoshop, Illustrator, mongod, mongrels, 3 browsers, and a few dozen browser tabs open at once.

If I had to make the purchase again, I'd get the 4GB model, since it's RAM that usually limits me, even though the swapping is fast with SSD.

Miss the Firewire occasionally since I like to use a Duet to lay down guitar tracks in Logic, but will probably get a dedicated iMac for the studio soon.

jgv• 15 years ago

I use a MacBook Air for all of my work when I'm not in the office and I love it. I could even use it as my primary dev machine at work and feel great about it.

I'm very happy with my machine, which is a souped up 11 inch. The only contraint is monitor size, which is easily remedied with a large external monitor or an iPad via Air Display (http://avatron.com/apps/air-display). The MacBook Air honestly feels much faster than my work MBP due to the flash memory.

rdouble• 15 years ago

Yes. I'm making an iPhone game, and it's fine. The downsides are: the fan spins up when I watch Youtube, and I don't really like the glossy screen.

mr_eel• 15 years ago

I use one every day, mainly doing RoR development. I also have SQL Developer connected to oracle for most of the day; seems more responsive than my MBP tbh, I think it might be due to the SSD.

I also use it for image editing/gfx work.

The only time the performance has been noticeable has been installing apps via homebrew. Compilation is — obviously — slower than my MBP, but honestly it's not so slow that it'd worry anyone. Unless you're compiling a lot of stuff, all the time, you're not gonna notice.

It's my primary dev machine and I love it. I heartily recommend it.

And to reiterate some of the recommendations; get the 4gig of ram. I'd also recommend the 11" over the 13". I mean, if you're gonna get a small laptop, you should get the smallest one you can comfortably use.

I hook mine up to an external monitor + mouse + keyboard. It's sweeeeet.

grah3• 15 years ago

I switched my primary from a macpro to the maxed 11" air back in december and have had no problems with it. I'm also a LAMP dev and designer with some slices for dev environments.

The screen res is workable with an external monitor and latency hasn't been an issue so far. I recommend upping the ram to 4gb though.

divtxt• 15 years ago

The new Air is titled "The Next Generation of MacBooks" and, having had mine for 2 months, I have to agree.

I expect one of the MBPs to drop the DVD and go SSD only and the result to be some amazing improvements in weight/thinness and battery life.

My recommendation: WAIT to see if this happens in the upcoming MBP updates. (the inventory stories seem to indicate this is 4-6 weeks away)

cosgroveb• 15 years ago

I do this with my CR-48.

bowmande• 15 years ago

I switched from the pain of developing Ruby on windows to a 13inch Macbook air with 4Gb of ram and am loving it. I do ruby and mobile development on the machine and couldn't be happier.

Ask HN: Anyone swapped to a MacBook Air as a primary development machine?

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