Debating on which one to get for development

[snappleyum]

I'm on the fence about which new 2016 MacBook to pick up. I could go either 13 inch or 15 inch but I'm not sure where the bottleneck in hardware will be. I know for sure I'm getting 16 gigs of ram. My question is if it's even worth it to get a quad-core or is it fine to just get the dual-core i7 or even i5?

Basically I will be running Xcode (swift) which is a processor hog for compiling and an Ubuntu Vagrant box + docker. I'm guessing the ram will be my issue before the processor difference is even noticeable but I haven't been looking at hardware in awhile.

 

[mctrials23]

Depends whether portability or a little more power is more important to you. Personally I am in a similar situation to you and I am considering the 13" middle spec with 16gb RAM

 

[snappleyum]

Depends whether portability or a little more power is more important to you. Personally I am in a similar situation to you and I am considering the 13" middle spec with 16gb RAM

Yea I think the portability might be more important if processing power isn't really noticeable.

 

[mildocjr]

I'm looking at the lower 15" MBP with Touch Bar. I could see that being helpful with debugging, the quad-core seems to be worth it when it comes to compiling large projects.

 

[jerryk]

I went with a 15" screen for development. I find with debugging, code, and UI windows I needed as much screen real estate as possible.

 

[cambookpro]

I've gone for a 13" one with an adapter so I can use my Thunderbolt Display. Only went with 8GB RAM as that was all that the budget would allow, in an ideal world I would've picked 16 but 8 should be fine for 90% of the time. My current 2011 MBP only has 8 and it copes with most of my Xcode projects fine so I hope it'll suffice.

 

[snappleyum]

I've gone for a 13" one with an adapter so I can use my Thunderbolt Display. Only went with 8GB RAM as that was all that the budget would allow, in an ideal world I would've picked 16 but 8 should be fine for 90% of the time. My current 2011 MBP only has 8 and it copes with most of my Xcode projects fine so I hope it'll suffice.

Yea good point. I have an 8gb air right now and it can deal with projects fine. Maybe I'm overly worried about specs.

 

[poorcody]

I went with a 15" screen for development. I find with debugging, code, and UI windows I needed as much screen real estate as possible.

Ditto here... I just never have enough screen real estate with development... especially with all those Xcode panels. I particularly like Retina screens because I can drop the resolution when space isn't as tight to make things bigger without any noticeable fuzziness. I had stayed away from the 15-inches until now because of size, but the new one doesn't seem much bigger than my 13" Air (and is actually thinner).

Honestly I would think a dual-core would be enough, but obviously you can't get that at 15".

 

[antipex]

I've been doing iOS and Mac development on a 13" rMBP for a year and a half now; I just ordered a 15" version of the new rMBP. The extra resolution will be very helpful, and I'm looking forward to having a dedicated GPU so I can play a few games on the side.