On Jul 19, 2012, at 12:23 AM, Chris McCann wrote: > I'm debating getting a new MacBook for Rails/Ruby development and can't > decide between a 13" Air or a 15" Retina. Anyone care to chime in with their > own experiences or analyses?
I have the previous-generation 13” Air, which was my secondary machine (I do dev on a 27” iMac with an external 27” display, and I’ve no idea why more developers don’t have such a setup; anyway), but which from time to time I did dev on. By the time I loaded up postgres, text editor, web browser with a bunch of tabs, PGAdmin, terminal, … it was all out of puff. Mostly because it only had 4GB of RAM. So no doubt whatever, you need 8GB RAM. I just got an 11” Air maxed out. It’s running Migration Assistant right now (which is going to take over 24 hours because it has to go via Wifi…). I’d be happy to let you know what I make of it in a few days. Note that it can hook up to up to 2x27” displays. A very nice option would be to get an Air (maybe even an 11”), and when you’re at your desk, hook it up to Apple’s gorgeous 27” display (or even 2 of them). Notes on the displays: Apple’s is the best and close to the cheapest (really!). And if you’re being rational about it, the fabulous display will last you between 5 and 10 years, whereas the laptop might last you 3. That makes spending on the great display to work on a much cheaper investment than a computer. Which also brings up the point: perhaps you should buy an external display and keep your existing laptop for a bit longer. That might be a better investment in your productivity. -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
