Developing Retina Apps with Xcode on Macbook Air

If you can afford to wait, it might be worth seeing if this years Air models have a retina display. I'd suspect new models around June-July given past history (July 2011, June 2012, June 2013). Intel's integrated graphics should be good enough to handle a retina display now - just a matter of price/power/weight on the panel.

Or you might be able to make a big monitor emulate retina using SwitchResX. I'm not sure your 29" would be high enough resolution - I'd want to use at least a 2560x1600, or better a 4k TV/monitor.

Note: I don't have an air to test on, but my rMBP 15" can definitely do it on a 4k TV. Unfortunately, I have the discrete GPU version (650m), so not necessarily comparable to Air

 

You could go with a cheap refurb if you need it NOW, also you mite try posting this in the programming forum

HTH

 

Hmmm... I'd be interested in the answer to this question. If you could post a link to the other thread when/if you end up re-posting to the Programming forum, it would be most appreciated! I'll keep an eye out for it either way.

Just ordered a MBA with the intention of using it exclusively for programming purposes (mostly web, but eventually iOS as well). Using a retina external monitor sounds like a serviceable solution, but also limiting in that you can't fully test when developing on the go. ><

 

cmon man...there is little difference between mbpr 13 and mba 13 in terms of thickness, just mba is "longer" to say so, when mbpr is more compact and in terms of price they are almost the same on refurbs.

 

No programming for a retina app and a non-retina app is the same. If you use all Apple built in objects. If you use your own objects (drawing your own) or use own images, then you can just export your vector drawings to a retina.

Really, not a difference.