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Performance

1

12345aa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 9, 2012
14
0
First post. Be gentle.
I haven't used a Mac since 1991.
I make a living writing software. Mostly either server side or mainframe. UIs aren't my thing.

For no good reason I have a hankering to try to write an iPad app- mainly for the practice because I haven't written real c code for years, so I'm looking at a mbp. I waited three weeks for the new one only because it was coming soon and this is a sorta impulse purchase.

So drifting slowly to the point. I use a bunch of DBs - Postgres, Oracle, MySQL et al. I use Java, Camel, AMQP, Spring and a bunch of other stuff in the same vein - on a beefy desktop with a couple of monitors. For the playtime web stuff I use xampp, but that's not exactly CPU intensive.

Will this machine be enough to run that - assuming I max out ram and use an SSD? Or should I just use it as a web browser and iPad dev toy? It won't change my purchase - I want it to try XCode -but it would be nice to know up front.
 
J

joewillmott

macrumors regular
May 22, 2012
170
0
England
Over the past couple of years I have been doing exactly what you are (now moving onto iOS app development because of the "fun factor") and I have been doing it with relative ease on a machine that pales in comparison to the current MBP, let alone the new ones.

I am sure the new one will be able to handle what you do just fine, I am also going to be giving it a shot when they are released.

FYI; I have been using an i5 Toshiba with 4GB RAM and 1TB HDD, not SSD. I do get the occasional frustration, but overall it has handled it (until last month I destroyed it through physical wear, which is why I am buying the new MBP).

For a while I was worried about forking out all that money and finding it doesn't work for what I want, then I realized they lose value very very slowly so if it doesn't perform I can just sell it and move on, so there's nothing to lose but a lot to gain!

EDIT: Now I think about it, my performance has been quite poor and I have just got used to it. I had a 17" screen which was okay for doing little bits but used a 43" and 17" externals as well for managing a few tasks/projects at once. Tbh it does depend on how you like to work on things... I would still advise giving the new MBP a chance though, possibly upgrading the RAM as I think that's one of the things that takes a bashing when handling multiple databases (I may be wrong, I stopped paying attention to this stuff over recent years).
 
Last edited:
Xcallibur

Xcallibur

macrumors 6502a
Jul 24, 2011
520
9
Manchester
I haven't used all the the programming languages/databases you listed but I presume many of them are developed in the usual IDE's and simulators/servers/DBMS's, if so its more dependant on the CPU (as you probably know) and the OS, the best CPU you will get will be a quad core i7, which is perfectly capable of running what you want, the OS however is just as stable as Windows, many will claim its better/worse (although Lion was less stable than Snow Leopard, but I'd presume Mountain Lion will make up for that).

I'm not quite sure if I've answered your question properly but the Macbook Pro is certainly capable of much more than simple web browsing that's for sure!
 
Last edited:
plinden

plinden

macrumors 601
Apr 8, 2004
4,029
142
I do pretty much the same on my 2010 MBP, no problems. If you're used to coding on Unix you'd have no problems using a MBP for the work you're doing now, except for Oracle - it doesn't work on Lion (last time I looked) but I run a Linux VM for that.

However, unless you want the portability (I did) an iMac would provide more performance for less.
 
1

12345aa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 9, 2012
14
0
4G ram isn't going to cut it. I'd be shoving in 16+ before trying to install anything. If I couldnt do that then it would be a netbook. Sounds like it'll suffice, so I may as well suck it and see. Worse case it's an Xcode compiler...
Thx.
 
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