MacBook Pro 13” or 15” for a developer?

[someonea93]

Hi,

I’m going to order 2018 MacBook Pro for me as a beginner in developing mobile, web, and desktop applications. Also, I’ll use it for light designing on Adobe Photoshop, run windows as virtual machine to work on Visual Basic. I’m confused between these cases:

- 15” 2.2Ghz / 555x / 32GB / 1TB. $3108 (to be used for more than 5 years)

- 13” 2.3Ghz / 16GB / 512GB. $1963 (to be used for 3 years then replace it with the new generation)

Currently I’m using MBP 15” late 2011 with i7 2.2 / 512 GPU / 16GB / 240 SSD / 500 GB HDD. But unfortunately the GPU became defective and it doesn’t work now! (more than 300GB used, the ram usually 11-13GB used)

I’m really confused and I don’t know also if the screen size of the 13” will be convenient or not because I used to use 15” all the time.

Please help me to take the decision.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Either machine would be fine for your needs. If you can comfortably afford the jump to 15", you get a lot more power, so you might as well go for that. If it's a stretch you need to justify, the 13" is still absolutely fine.

 

[someonea93]

Either machine would be fine for your needs. If you can comfortably afford the jump to 15", you get a lot more power, so you might as well go for that. If it's a stretch you need to justify, the 13" is still absolutely fine.

I can afford it, but at the same time I don’t want to spend more money on things I’ll never use. Also I don’t want to regret when I choose low specifications or a small screen!

 

[keysofanxiety]

I can afford it, but at the same time I don’t want to spend more money on things I’ll never use. Also I don’t want to regret when I choose low specifications or a small screen!

Go for the 15", you get a lot more for your money, it's futureproofed, and has a larger screen.

 

[someonea93]

Go for the 15", you get a lot more for your money, it's futureproofed, and has a larger screen.

What about the GPU? Is 555x fine or I need 560x?

I don’t like to play games and I’m not a video editor! Just for graphics design and developing apps.

 

[keysofanxiety]

What about the GPU? Is 555x fine or I need 560x?

I don’t like to play games and I’m not a video editor! Just for graphics design and developing apps.

555's fine.

 

[someonea93]

555's fine.

I appreciate your recommendation. Thank you!

I’ll see what the others have experienced and what they’ll recommend me to go with.

 

[Toutou]

The 13" is totally fine performance wise, and the size doesn't matter that much, as long as you use an external screen — which is almost inevitable in order to do any kind of comfortable development anyway, anything under 21" and Full HD is just too cramped for today's complicated IDEs and workflows.

I'm not saying the 15" is a bad choice, just that if you're even remotely concerned about the budget, the 13" will do just fine.

 

[FlushedNotRushed]

I'm a software engineer and I'm leaning towards the 2017 or 2018 15" Model. They will both have similar specs besides the upgraded quad-core (7th generation) to 6-core (8th generation), 16GB RAM, 256GB Storage. I just hope for the 2018 15", they fixed the thermal throttling / bridgeOS / KP caused by the T2 Chip.

Otherwise, I would have purchased the 2018 already but I'm waiting to see how the problems continue.

 

[someonea93]

The 13" is totally fine performance wise, and the size doesn't matter that much, as long as you use an external screen — which is almost inevitable in order to do any kind of comfortable development anyway, anything under 21" and Full HD is just too cramped for today's complicated IDEs and workflows.

I'm not saying the 15" is a bad choice, just that if you're even remotely concerned about the budget, the 13" will do just fine.

I need it to be used alone without external monitors. I like to work on it anywhere at home and the university so I need to feel free with convenient screen size.

 

[Howard2k]

I need it to be used alone without external monitors. I like to work on it anywhere at home and the university so I need to feel free with convenient screen size.

The common theme is the the 13" is pretty useless unless you're attaching it to a large external monitor but the 15" works great. I don't wholly agree though. I use a 13" as my primary device and although I don't do development I do some light photo and video editing.

The convenience and price make sense to me.

But don't buy the nTB at this point. There is a new 13" being announced next week so I'd consider waiting to see what that looks like too.

 

[someonea93]

The common theme is the the 13" is pretty useless unless you're attaching it to a large external monitor but the 15" works great. I don't wholly agree though. I use a 13" as my primary device and although I don't do development I do some light photo and video editing.

The convenience and price make sense to me.

But don't buy the nTB at this point. There is a new 13" being announced next week so I'd consider waiting to see what that looks like too.

I like to work on it everywhere. So, I don’t have a good external screen. While I was using my old 15” MBP 2011 the screen size was great!