I'm going to pipe up here with a counter argument. Buy an ultrabook. Just as light and portable as a mac, just as easy to develop on. Battery life is great and even with 8gb, it's going to be cheaper than a mac.
Richard On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 8:58 PM, Ben Hoskings <[email protected]> wrote: > It depends on what you're running. > > I often head down the road to my local and do a battery's worth of > hacking. If I left all my apps open I doubt I'd get that much, but if I > quit the stuff I'm not using (leaving just sublime/terminal/safari) and > make sure the brightness isn't too high then yeah, I'll get 3.5-4 hours out > of it. > > There are a bunch of apps (Apple Mail is one) that use non-trivial CPU in > the background. That makes a big difference because CPU (along with > antennas and display backlighting) make up the bulk of the device's power > drain. > > Also depends on the kind of dev work I'm doing. Working on a big rails > app, you're going to burn the battery running specs and loading pages, no > way around it. But if I'm hacking on babushka, which is pure ruby, then > there's no app or spec boot time, so the battery goes a lot further. > > - Ben > > > > On 25/10/2012, at 11:43 AM, Daryl Manning <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Funnily enough, my only beef with the older MBA I had was the battery > life. I'd be lucky to get 3 hours out of the thing, and I really felt like > I need something that can hit 7-8 hours (enough for the majority of a long > haul flight). Especially with an Ipad topping 10 hours, it drives me nuts > when a plane doesn't have plugs for power when I'm out and about. > > > > You could really get 3-4 hours out of the 11"? > > > > Can anyone comment on the latest time-to-dead for typical dev load on > the newer 13" MBAs vs say, the new 13" retina MBP? Curious... (and real > time to dead, not apple claimed...). > > > > ciao ! > > Daryl. > > > > > > On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Ben Hoskings <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Rich, > > > > My only machine is an 11" Air (one revision old, i.e. 1.8GHz i7, 4GB > RAM). I'd fully recommend it as a primary development box. > > > > In particular, 4GB is plenty for my workload (multiple Sublime projects > & shells, browsers, mail, and the rest). This is what my RAM profile looks > like after a week of uptime: http://d.pr/qtmH > > > > It's a wonderful machine to cart around (it's not much heavier than an > iPad) and the battery life is very good (if you watch the brightness, 3-4 > hours). > > > > - Ben > > > > > > > > On 25/10/2012, at 10:26 AM, Rich Buggy <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi everyone > > > > > > I'm planning to switch my development machine from Windows to > Macintosh. Is a MacBook Air (with 4GB memory) sufficient for Rails > development? The tech specs are better than my current Windows laptop, > which works fine for me, but I've never developed on a Mac so I'm not sure > if should be spending the extra on MacBook Pro. Any advice is appreciated. > > > > > > Rich > > > > > > -- > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > > > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rails-oceania/-/B7UIq0vYIZsJ. > > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > > > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > > > > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
