I think you're overthinking it. Fellow dev here, even a 2011 MBA with 4GB of ram can handle modern development. What it comes down to IMO is whether you want the 13" or 15". I also don't think you should upgrade the ram past 16GB unless you work with a lot of VMs.
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13" MBP 2018 for Web Development
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I think you're overthinking it. Fellow dev here, even a 2011 MBA with 4GB of ram can handle modern development. What it comes down to IMO is whether you want the 13" or 15". I also don't think you should upgrade the ram past 16GB unless you work with a lot of VMs.
I don't disagree about overthinking. I would like it to last for a long long time, like I said, I'm still running a 2011 MBP. But yes, I tend to overthink things dropping that much money 🙂
Apple does have that 14 day return policy. There is no shame in getting what you feel would likely be your best bet, use it for a week; if you're still on the fence get the other one and live with both for another week, then keep the one you like best.
And what it'll come down to for your use case is just monitor size/not getting configurations you don't need. I do not think extra RAM is worth the upgrade for your use case and 16GB should be plenty for people who aren't pushing the machine in other facets.
Assuming you NEED 512GB SSD,
If you get the 13", upgrade the RAM, SSD.
If you get the 15", upgrade the SSD
Disagree with the 16gb RAM suggestion, just because you don't deal with VMs now, you can hardly make that assurance a year from now, such is the life of a modern developer.
And I respectfully disagree as well. Web development is not remotely intensive, nor is there anything on the horizon that would imply the need for 32GB RAM. 16GB is already overkill at this very moment considering you could feasibly do any work you need off 4GB. 32GB may be a standard some day in the future, but it won't be within the next five years for web development. Other kinds of development? Sure.
I agree with you if the computer is guaranteed to be used solely for web development for the next 5+ years but irl most people use their devices for multiple usages, especially developers. Photo editing, mobile development, working with datasets etc. are all tasks that are quite likely to be assigned to a web developer in a small company and that could benefit from more RAM.
Hakiroto
macrumors 6502a
That's not entirely true. You might not need 16 GM RAM to actually write markup and JavaScript, for example, but there's more to development than just writing the code. I've regularly hit the 16 GB limit on my work 2015 MacBook Pro when doing web development. VirtualBox with a RAM-hungry VM, a browser with a bunch of tabs, an editor or IDE, iTerm with a couple of node processes running, RAM-hungry like Slack, Spotify, a task management app, etc. You quickly get up there, especially if you're using Chrome with lots of tabs.
I’m glad you mentioned Chrome, that thing is a stealthy resource hog, especially if you run at least a dozen different extensions or utilities on it.
Gudd
macrumors member
Just my 2P in the ring...
I develop a monster of a web based app in Java EE all day every day (around 300,000 lines at last count). I did this quite happily on a 2013 11" i7 Air connected to THREE external screens. The ultimate in portability since I was travelling reasonably frequently and convenience when in the office. I just learned to make extensive use of full screen and swiping between applications when travelling. It coped admirably for years but eventually started to chug by which time Apple had discontinued the 11" Air.
I bought (and currently use) a 2017 13" MBP with Touch Bar. i7 /16 Ram / 512 SSD. I am moving offices this week and have made the decision to drop the 3 external screens down to 2 + internal, but that is down to the disaster that Apple made of external screens in 10.13.4 and Jetbrains finally supporting the touch bar. I only bought the i7 because there was not much difference in price and I have always had i7. In reality I think an i5 would have been perfectly fine these days.
My project will build in just over a minute now. On the machine before the Air it used to take around 5 minutes and the build server (an HP Microserver) currently takes around 12 minutes. So the CPU on the 13" i7 2017 model is pretty quick.
The biggest godsend is the 512GB SSD. I'm so glad I did that. As I have two users on the laptop, one for work, one for personal I was always up against it for space. Add bootcamp or any form of VM and you will thank us for getting as large a drive as you can afford. I think 32GB of memory would be overkill, but as with all things, if you can afford it, go for it.
I personally don't see the point in going bigger with the 15" unless you need dedicated GPU (not very powerful but dedicated), or you spend most of your time away from your external monitors. In which case personally I'd still say go smaller. Of course what you really want is a 13" with an eGPU connected to 3x external screens. But that is probably WAY overkill. Just don't be tempted by the Black Magic thing.
I develop a monster of a web based app in Java EE all day every day (around 300,000 lines at last count). I did this quite happily on a 2013 11" i7 Air connected to THREE external screens. The ultimate in portability since I was travelling reasonably frequently and convenience when in the office. I just learned to make extensive use of full screen and swiping between applications when travelling. It coped admirably for years but eventually started to chug by which time Apple had discontinued the 11" Air.
I bought (and currently use) a 2017 13" MBP with Touch Bar. i7 /16 Ram / 512 SSD. I am moving offices this week and have made the decision to drop the 3 external screens down to 2 + internal, but that is down to the disaster that Apple made of external screens in 10.13.4 and Jetbrains finally supporting the touch bar. I only bought the i7 because there was not much difference in price and I have always had i7. In reality I think an i5 would have been perfectly fine these days.
My project will build in just over a minute now. On the machine before the Air it used to take around 5 minutes and the build server (an HP Microserver) currently takes around 12 minutes. So the CPU on the 13" i7 2017 model is pretty quick.
The biggest godsend is the 512GB SSD. I'm so glad I did that. As I have two users on the laptop, one for work, one for personal I was always up against it for space. Add bootcamp or any form of VM and you will thank us for getting as large a drive as you can afford. I think 32GB of memory would be overkill, but as with all things, if you can afford it, go for it.
I personally don't see the point in going bigger with the 15" unless you need dedicated GPU (not very powerful but dedicated), or you spend most of your time away from your external monitors. In which case personally I'd still say go smaller. Of course what you really want is a 13" with an eGPU connected to 3x external screens. But that is probably WAY overkill. Just don't be tempted by the Black Magic thing.
I am a computer science teacher in germany and frequently do coding work in java and swift. I used the 2013 13“ MacBook till last week. I switched to the 2018 15“ MacBook last week because the screen was too small for me after some years. (Maybe I am getting old). I really enjoy the bigger screen
I've just got the base 2018 15" with 512gb SSD after using a 2016 13" with 16gb RAM and the performance is a lot better as you would expect. I was driving 2 4K monitors before and it struggled with that and when I was doing anything intensive or using google chrome (why Chrome, why are you so awful on macs!) it would kick up a fuss. So far I have had 0 issues with the new 15" performance wise. Chrome still runs up the fans but it doesn't stutter or struggle on 4K video.
That being said, the 15" is far larger and heavier. The 13" really is a stunningly portable machine. Light, slim and generally a far better proportioned laptop. If I was not using 2 4K monitors I would potentially have gone for the top spec 13" this year as its got a quad core processor making it far better for a lot of CPU intensive stuff.
I'm still waiting for an eGPU that outputs to 2 USB-C/thunderbolt 3 monitors. I love the fact that I just plug in two cables and everything at my desk is connected as well as delivering power. The LG ultrafines are a bit gimped in a number of areas but the ability to plug a single cable in for power, display and a hub is great.
Another factor not been mentioned about screen size and portability is when you’re required to work for lengthy periods without access to an external monitor. If you frequent hackathons, conferences and find yourself sometimes working in hotel rooms for instance, then the extra screen real estate of a 15’ makes a considerable QOL difference.
You could just get an eGPU enclosure with power delivery and a few usb ports, save some money and get monitors without usb-c and hubs and connect them via DP. Here you go, 1 wire and everything is connected and powered.
It's super easy to fill up most of the RAM, but what's the pressure?
I'd also argue that it might make more sense to use something like Docker if the aim is to have a consistent developer experience for the team w/ application isolation - much more efficient/speedy to use containers for this purpose. Anyone using VirtualBox for this reason is living in 2015, man 🙂
There are some cases where I feel going above 16GB would be super helpful
- If you need to regularly do activities that are highly resource intensive, like resource rendering or CAD work
- If there is a need to replicate production locally with something like a Kubernetes cluster (unlikely anyone *needs* to do this though)
- Doing some type of training for machine learning
- If you do cross-platform native work on top of web dev (I've been in this situation a couple times), so have to run a Windows VM, possibly use XCode
Unless you're coming in as a consultant, your workplace should be procuring the laptop with the specs that fit the job. If for some reason the machine you end up getting is no longer sufficient a year or two down the road then its on them to get you a new machine.
I've been in jobs in the past where something like a maxxed 15" would be beneficial. That said, in the two job offers that I'm fielding right now (these are lead roles) I'm likely going with a 13" unless they can detail reasons why that wouldn't be sufficient.
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Ma2k5
macrumors 68030
For web development (from personal dev experience working for many companies, including for very complex highly data driven web app's) even a MacBook Air would suffice, so an i5 13" rMBP is perfectly capable. As for screen size, truthfully even a 15" doesn't really cover the shortfall of having either dual display or a very large one, so I wouldn't get hung over the screen size on that. I usually hook up 13" laptops to a 27" 4K or ultrawide monitor's and work like that.