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Thread: MacBooks or Mac Mini 2018 for Software Development

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    MacBooks or Mac Mini 2018 for Software Development

    Been looking at purchasing a MacBook of some kind for software development. I’m not looking for the best spec as I feel like a can get by with a basic set up. No doubt I can look at upgrading in the future when the time comes and when the budget increases!

    What are people’s thoughts on the new Apple products announced at yesterday October event, specifically the MacBook Air and Mac Mini?

    Specification wise, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13 inch (without touch-bar) are the options I’m looking at, however the Mac Mini looks a very good option now, however sacrificing portability.




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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: MacBooks or Mac Mini 2018 for Software Development

    Pays your money and take your choice. Laptop is portable so if you are working away from home anything else is a deal breaker.

    OTOH, depending on what you are doing, you have a huge choice of monitors (Apple and :rd party) so if a larger screen is a must then Mac mini. You can use an external screen with a MacBook of course - depending on how you configure it, either dual screen or mirrored, but at a cost.

    Bottom line - how important is portability?
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    Re: MacBooks or Mac Mini 2018 for Software Development

    Agreed, it pretty much boils down to portability.

    Essentially, I’m only looking to use the laptop at home, with the flexibility to use it as a daily driver for other things other than software development.

    If we was to isolate the MacBook Air refresh and MacBook Pro 13 inch without touch-bar, what would be the better option? If you compare the speciation of each, they are almost identical apart from the CPU they use. Although the the Air uses a newer 8th gen compared to the older 7th gen on the MacBook Pro, the Air uses a lower power U processor which I’m sceptical about.




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    mush-mushroom b0redom's Avatar
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    Re: MacBooks or Mac Mini 2018 for Software Development

    What sort of software are you developing? If it's something you're building/testing/running locally, you want more power. If it's done in the cloud then personally I'd go for the lightest laptop I could get away with.

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