Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

blindpacemaker

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 31, 2016
33
5
I've been waiting for the new 13 (thought maybe 14) inch macbook range to be released before making my decision. Thing is, even though I use computers constantly for my work (Im a software engineer) embarrassingly I know next to nothing about hardware. I've been looking at forum posts here and people are saying that upgrading from the i5 to the i7 in the new MBP 13" is a waste of money, but I have no idea why!

I use my machine for building mainly web apps. I browse and tend to have a huge amount of tabs open at the same time, and often have a lot of apps running concurrently. I wouldn't say I'm a light user but I'm also not doing _any_ graphical stuff at all. I want to get a machine that will still run smooth in 3+ years as they're a big investment. Ideally I would like to get the 16" but it's a lot of money and I thought I'd ask here about the 13" because it's a lot more affordable, I just don't know enough about hardware to know whether it's suitable for me. There's a ton of different configuration options available and while i know i want 16gb ram, processors are things I just don't know about.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, is the Air an option for me? Again, I use lots of apps concurrently and when I do personal projects on my work laptop (high spec 2019 mbp 15") the fans go quite a lot. So I guess I need a good CPU but GPU not as important?

Cheers
 
Last edited:
I'd say you need a good amount of RAM, don't buy a laptop with only 8GB.
The Air may be an option, but the CPU on the MBP is better. What is your budget?
An Air with 512GB storage and 16 of RAM costs 1499, for 1799 you can buy the MBP 13" with same storage and RAM but you get a better CPU, better GPU and 4 USB-C ports. I think it is a good machine for those kind of tasks.
 
My advice would be save some money for a large monitor as well, developing on a small 13" screen is no fun.

I enjoy coding much more when my 13" MBP is plugged into it's 34" ultra-wide companion (3440x1440), and that has a greater effect on my productivity than the speed of the CPU in-my-humble-opinion.

NB: That I'd previously tweaked my MacOS config files to allow using the higher 1920x1200 resolution on the 13" MBP was really just a symptom of the fact I needed more screen real-estate than the 13" would allow.
 
I'd say you need a good amount of RAM, don't buy a laptop with only 8GB.
The Air may be an option, but the CPU on the MBP is better. What is your budget?
An Air with 512GB storage and 16 of RAM costs 1499, for 1799 you can buy the MBP 13" with same storage and RAM but you get a better CPU, better GPU and 4 USB-C ports. I think it is a good machine for those kind of tasks.

Yeah I'm definitely going for 16gb RAM. You make a really good point about the MBP only being 300 more for a better machine. Do you think upgrading the MBP from the i5 to the i7 is worth it?
[automerge]1588847400[/automerge]
My advice would be save some money for a large monitor as well, developing on a small 13" screen is no fun.

I enjoy coding much more when my 13" MBP is plugged into it's 34" ultra-wide companion (3440x1440), and that has a greater effect on my productivity than the speed of the CPU in-my-humble-opinion.

NB: That I'd previously tweaked my MacOS config files to allow using the higher 1920x1200 resolution on the 13" MBP was really just a symptom of the fact I needed more screen real-estate than the 13" would allow.

I hear you on that, I've got external monitors that I can use but I do a lot of my work either out & about (though not at the moment obviously!) or just with my laptop literally sitting on my lap. Ideally I'd go for the base model 16" but it's just so, so expensive.
 
Yeah I'm definitely going for 16gb RAM. You make a really good point about the MBP only being 300 more for a better machine. Do you think upgrading the MBP from the i5 to the i7 is worth it?

If I had $200 extra to spend I'd rather upgrade the storage first, then the CPU. Is 512 enough for you?
A faster CPU is not going to make a huge difference for web development in my opinion. But if the storage is OK then go for it

When I bought my 16" I needed asap so I bought for a stock model (and I found a really good deal on it) so I went for the most expensive one, because I wanted to have 1TB storage. I also got the 8 core CPU, but it isn't a game changer in my daily work (app development and some web development)
It is fast, but compared to my previous 4 core laptop I just gained a few seconds when I build a big project, the web development part doesn't feel any different, it was fast already
 
Last edited:
I use my machine for building mainly web apps. I browse and tend to have a huge amount of tabs open at the same time, and often have a lot of apps running concurrently. I wouldn't say I'm a light user but I'm also not doing _any_ graphical stuff at all. I want to get a machine that will still run smooth in 3+ years as they're a big investment. Ideally I would like to get the 16" but it's a lot of money and I thought I'd ask here about the 13" because it's a lot more affordable, I just don't know enough about hardware to know whether it's suitable for me. There's a ton of different configuration options available and while i know i want 16gb ram, processors are things I just don't know about.

Depends on what you're coding. If you use VMs, you might want to get 32GB RAM. In any case, if you have to choose between upgrading CPU or RAM, I'd suggest upgrading the RAM. I also tend to go for larger SSD as well.
 
Depends on what you're coding. If you use VMs, you might want to get 32GB RAM. In any case, if you have to choose between upgrading CPU or RAM, I'd suggest upgrading the RAM. I also tend to go for larger SSD as well.

Does a larger SSD do anything other than give me more disk space though? 512 seems like way more than enough for me, I've never used more than 200 on any machine I don't think.
[automerge]1588858592[/automerge]

Well, I was going to get 16gb RAM for sure, to be honest it was more a question of what is actually decent value for money based on my needs. This is the machine I was looking at:


From what I'm hearing the cpu upgrade from i5 to i7 doesn't matter much? That upgrade is 200, so I don't need to worry about that. I don't need any more SSD than 512 as I've never needed more than 200 in the past (unless more SSD does something other than simply give you more disk space) and im not sure about the RAM, 32gb seems like overkill but maybe it futureproofs it a bit? I don't use VM's.
 
Last edited:
Check out this article, there are benchmarks for the new MBP
 
If the MBP will be your main machine, I'd sure go for the 1TB storage.
Running an SSD at over 90% capacity will really slows its performance down too, so good to have some headroom.

1588931736669.png

260GB Other <-- Vagrant, VMWare VMs and snapshots, homebrew, steam, Content Cache, etc.
73GB Music
56GB Photos
41GB Apps
26GB iOS Files
16GB Documents and others
15GB Books
10GB Podcasts
11GB System
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.