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MacBook Air adequate for web dev/web design?

S

SHNXX

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 2, 2013
1,901
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I have a retina i7 MacBook Pro from 2012 which is dying (overheating, always slow as ****).

Since I have a 2010 Mac Pro and a 2014 i7 imac (non 5k), I want to get a small laptop like the air.

Is the air sufficient for web development and web design?
I find the MacBook Pro woefully insufficient right now...
 
The MBA should be more powerful than an overheating i7 rMBP, because it rarely overheats, and the SSD is much faster. :cool:

SHNXX said:
I have a retina i7 MacBook Pro from 2012 which is dying (overheating, always slow as ****).

Since I have a 2010 Mac Pro and a 2014 i7 imac (non 5k), I want to get a small laptop like the air.

Is the air sufficient for web development and web design?
I find the MacBook Pro woefully insufficient right now...
Click to expand...
 
yosemit said:
The MBA should be more powerful than an overheating i7 rMBP, because it rarely overheats, and the SSD is much faster. :cool:
Click to expand...


I have SSD on the MBP. Not sure what the problem is really.
 
SHNXX said:
I have a retina i7 MacBook Pro from 2012 which is dying (overheating, always slow as ****).

Since I have a 2010 Mac Pro and a 2014 i7 imac (non 5k), I want to get a small laptop like the air.

Is the air sufficient for web development and web design?
I find the MacBook Pro woefully insufficient right now...
Click to expand...

What kind of web development do you do that an i7 from 2012 is too slow?

The web development I do is mostly editing text files. I think I could do it just as well on a computer that was 10 years old.
 
motrek said:
What kind of web development do you do that an i7 from 2012 is too slow?



The web development I do is mostly editing text files. I think I could do it just as well on a computer that was 10 years old.
Click to expand...


It's not the web dev that's the problem.
It's just general slowness.
 
Also, what do you mean by "overheats?" Does it reach temperatures so high it shuts itself down for protection or do you just mean it gets hot to the touch?

And I don't see how a 2012 i7 MacBook Pro could be slow.
 
SHNXX said:
Is the air sufficient for web development and web design?
Click to expand...

I can't say anything about your MBP situation except that it sounds curious, but I'd say for myself as a Web Developer that I *COULD* do my work on a MBA, but I'm not sure I'd want to. I do a mix of front end and back end and especially for the front end stuff, it's nice to have a little more screen space to see how everything comes together.

I like all the screen space I can get for back end stuff too, but it's the front end work where I really really start missing extra screen space.

I think you need to get your rMPA checked. That don't sound right.
 
Even though the OP seems to be gone for good. For the record: It sounds like his macbook is broken.
 
For the record, web development can be demanding, and the 17" mbp I use from 2009 should have been replaced 2 years ago. Between multiple VMs, adobe, and mavericks expecting an ssd, it gets slow...
 
Last edited:
I think I just have to replace my MacBook Pro soon.
The battery needs servicing and it just shows general sluggishness when I have too many things open.

Compared to my iMac (2014 non-retina), Mac Pro (2010 I think, quad core 16GB ram) and my lady's 2014 Macbook pro, it's night and day how slow the MacBook Pro is.
 
SHNXX said:
I think I just have to replace my MacBook Pro soon.
The battery needs servicing and it just shows general sluggishness when I have too many things open.

Compared to my iMac (2014 non-retina), Mac Pro (2010 I think, quad core 16GB ram) and my lady's 2014 Macbook pro, it's night and day how slow the MacBook Pro is.
Click to expand...

Never mentioned if ye had an SSD, that would make a big difference. I was doing web developin on a C2D 2010 MbP with 4gb up til 2013, the difference was I had a Samsung 830 SSD in it. The only slow oart ever was compiling and launching the IOS simulator when I was programming IOS apps instead of my RoR stack or PHP stuffs.

The i7 CPU should be more than adaquate if you had at least 8GB of RAM. A HDD would kill any modern mac, thats been my general observation for many many years now, esp since they use the slower 5400 rpm in lappy.
 
iizmoo said:
Never mentioned if ye had an SSD, that would make a big difference. I was doing web developin on a C2D 2010 MbP with 4gb up til 2013, the difference was I had a Samsung 830 SSD in it. The only slow oart ever was compiling and launching the IOS simulator when I was programming IOS apps instead of my RoR stack or PHP stuffs.

The i7 CPU should be more than adaquate if you had at least 8GB of RAM. A HDD would kill any modern mac, thats been my general observation for many many years now, esp since they use the slower 5400 rpm in lappy.
Click to expand...

I have a SSD in the "slow" MacBook pro.
it's i7 and 8gb ram.

but it's been a couple of years so perhaps that's why?
 
BlackMagic disk speed test your SSD and post what the results is? With an SSD it should not be slow, unless it's a bad quality 3rd party SSD without TRIM and it's totally full or something.
 
iizmoo said:
BlackMagic disk speed test your SSD and post what the results is? With an SSD it should not be slow, unless it's a bad quality 3rd party SSD without TRIM and it's totally full or something.
Click to expand...

it's showing around 380MB/s write and 450MB/s read.
 
SHNXX said:
it's showing around 380MB/s write and 450MB/s read.
Click to expand...

What does Activity Monitor show when your computer is being sluggish? Anything using significant CPU? Memory pressure yellow or red? Lots of disk IO operations?

Should be pretty easy to pin down what's wrong.
 
Interestingly, I tested my other computers:
iMac with hybrid drive got about 200, 600MB/s write read speed.
Mac Pro with non-SSD got about 130, 130MB/s.
So I guess the reason for sluggishness is probably not disk.

----------
motrek said:
What does Activity Monitor show when your computer is being sluggish? Anything using significant CPU? Memory pressure yellow or red? Lots of disk IO operations?

Should be pretty easy to pin down what's wrong.
Click to expand...

What do I look for in memory?

I see
physical memory
memory used
virtual memory
swap used
 
SHNXX said:
What do I look for in memory?

I see
physical memory
memory used
virtual memory
swap used
Click to expand...

Swap used is interesting, but mainly what is the memory pressure graph showing? What percentage is it at (you'll have to estimate) and what color is it?
 
If you need to ask if a $1,000 computer is adequate for web development/design then maybe... you should rethink your occupation :D.
 
MacBook Air adequate for web dev/web design?

HeyHeyHeyy said:
If you need to ask if a $1,000 computer is adequate for web development/design then maybe... you should rethink your occupation :D.
Click to expand...


I'm not a professional web developer.
I'm just starting a website myself for a company.

Also I have two MacBook pros, 2014 imac and an older Mac Pro available for web design/development already.
I was just curious how capable the airs were since I travel often
 
thejadedmonkey said:
For the record, web development can[/] be demanding, and the 17" mbp I use from 2009 should have been replaced 2 years ago. Between multiple VMs, adobe, and mavericks expecting an sad, it gets slow...
Click to expand...
if it overheats it's broken.
And of course you are right that pro web devs could multitask apps that would require a MP.
 
SHNXX said:
it's showing around 380MB/s write and 450MB/s read.
Click to expand...

That's some mighty good speed :D Back in the old days (Circa 2005), I was working with HDD, and back in my days, we only got about 80MB even if it was a contiguously big file. Otherwise you random read and writes were in the single digit most of the time :eek:

So, it's not your CPU, SSD, and RAM as far as I can tell. Do you want to describe what "slow" mean in more specific details?

Sometimes on new SSD I've gotten freezing and stuttering in the first few weeks. Then after you've used it a while it all settle down and goes smooth. There's differences in responsiveness speed, data transfer once everything is moving, and IO continuity so that it feel smooth in between actions.
 
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