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General Discussion

Posted by mayur
mayur
820 Points

Is MacBook Air 2015 13 inch (4GBRAM/256GB Flash/i5 1.6GHz) sufficient to for iOS dev & also for SolidWorks?

I want to learn iOS development and also I am student who uses CAD software like SolidWorks, CATIA and I am confused whether I should go with Macbook Air 2015 or Pro2015. If there will be significant differences in speed and performance for the specific tasks that I mentioned, only then I am interested in Pro2015. So please tell me which macbook to buy.

3 Answers

miikis
miikis
44,957 Points
miikis
miikis
44,957 Points

Get the MacBook with the highest amount of RAM you can afford; DO NOT go below 4GB! In fact, since you'll be using a lot of CAD software, I recommend you go at least 8GB RAM; you won't regret it. However, if you don't care too much about voiding warranties and such, it might be cheaper for you to buy the RAM from a 3rd party and install it yourself... or get a technician to do it. Either way, you can never really have enough RAM — you can always get an external hard-drive for extra storage space.

mayur
mayur
820 Points
mayur
mayur
820 Points

Thank you. And what if I want to use it only for learning Swift and built iOS apps and NOT for CAD software. Is Air with 4 RAM with 256 GB Flash sufficient ?

miikis
miikis
44,957 Points

Then yeah, 4GB should be fine... 8GB would still be more ideal. After all, if you're building mobile apps then you're probably going to want to build wireframes and mockups in some bitmap+vector editor(s) — the extra RAM will come in handy then.

mayur
mayur
820 Points
mayur
mayur
820 Points

fine .. thank you. I will buy Macbook Air 2015 with 4GB RAM.