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:
TL;DR; Go with a cheapest 15' Macbook Pro with 4 cores. I've used 13' for iOS development for some time, and switched to 15'. The difference is night and day. Which laptop is best for xamarin development MAC or Windows? And Which IDE is best? Most of my iOS work is done in Xamarin Studio on OSX, I do also have Parallels and a Windows VM on the box for Visual Studio, but I dont really need it. You dont have to have Visual Studio, its just a nice to have if coming from a VS background. IOS SDK, or Software Development Kit, is integrated with the Cocoa Touch UI framework. The framework provides graphical elements, user interface controls, and others. XCode is the official integrated development environment (IDE) for iOS development. Swift Playgrounds is a development. Memory is vital (16GB SHOULD be enough for any app not explicitly calling for more in its requirements). My pitiful late 2014 Mac Mini (i5M and 8GB, plenty of magnetic disk space) was fine until Xcode 9, now I'm using Xcode 10.2 and build times for a medium iOS project are slow but bearable, however Xcode's normal background activities seem to be crippling its UI much of the time.
- 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
Best 303 vst plugin. 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. Click 1 download.
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…
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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 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?
Best Laptop For Ios Development Tool
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!
Best Laptop For Ios Development Settings
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.
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!
Best Laptop For Ios Development Settings
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
Get started with iOS 14 and Swift 5
Sign up for my iOS development course, and learn how to build great iOS 14 apps with Swift 5 and Xcode 12.
Don't be fooled by the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It is not worth paying an extra $200 for the word Pro. Instead you should get the quad-core i5 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory for $1299.
You can get a Mac mini with similar specs for $1000, but most people prefer the portability of a laptop so that's what I cover here. If your budget is under $1000 you should buy a used Mac. Get one with a quad-core i5 processor, at least 8GB of memory and a solid state drive.
How I picked
The most important metrics for a personal development machine are the number of years you can upgrade to the latest Xcode and the build time for incremental builds. If your employer is paying, you can convince them that any extra performance is worth it, but when you're paying you realize it's not. Spending twice the money will probably make the difference between getting 8 years or 9 years out of a computer.
Other important factors to consider are the project size and number of storyboard scenes the computer can handle and the time it takes to launch a simulator. A computer with short build times will do well at all of these.
The MacBook Air has the newest generation of keyboard which is a big improvement over the keyboards of the last four years. If you are buying a used MacBook make sure you try out the keyboard to see if you like it before you buy.
Selecting the 8GB model would be fine for now, but upgrading memory is not an option in any of the MacBooks that work with Xcode 12. At some time in the next 8 years you will need 16GB of memory, so get it now.
The Research
I work full time as an iOS developer and have used nine consecutive versions of Xcode. I run Xcode on my personal late 2012 MacBook Pro Retina which has a dual-core i5 processor with 8GB of memory. I also run Xcode on my work MacBook Pro which has an 8-core i9 processor with 32GB of memory. After 8 years my personal Mac still works great, but it does feel a bit under-powered compared to the work computer. The price and performance of my personal Mac was right in the middle of Apple's product line when I bought it. The MacBook Air I recommend today falls in the same place.
I'm only considering an upgrade now because I won't be able to update to macOS Big Sur. My computer doesn't get the update because Intel stopped supporting firmware updates for 2012 processors. Today's MacBook Air has the 10th generation i5 processor, while MacBook Pro is still on the 8th Generation. The 8th generation of processors is a year older, so it's likely to be dropped a year before the 10th generation. Another strike against MacBook Pro.
Should you get more memory or a better processor?
I analyzed community sourced incremental build times to answer that question. This data was gathered by building the same project on many different computers. My analysis showed that incremental build time does not improve on computers with more than 4 cores or on computers with more than 16GB of memory.
The standard 256GB drive should also be enough. The latest version of macOS plus Xcode and the iOS Simulator only take up 36GB.
When should you upgrade?
Improvements in computers come very slowly so there's few reasons to upgrade as long as you can run the latest version of macOS. Once you can't do that you know that you only have about 18 months until that computer can no longer submit apps to the App Store. Only then is it time to look for an upgrade.
It's unlikely that we will see a better development computer come to the market any time soon. For that reason I think it's a great time to get the $1299 MacBook Air.
November 2020 Update: You can now buy a MacBook Air with M1 chip and 16 GB unified memory for $1199. This is an even better deal than before. Just make sure to check that the 3rd-party software you use is compatible with the new chip.
