Macbook for college, software development

AppleKidd

Been a mac user for years, currently have a late 2013 mac pro. Starting college in September doing Software Development and looking for a notebook. Personally I have nothing against windows but prefer Mac OS X. The plan is to get a macbook and run Bootcamp on it to get both Mac OS and Windows on it. I know software Dev in college is all done on windows and I don't want a PC I want to stick with a mac. the notebook will be a runaround machine and the mac pro with will be the primary machine. I will not be buying this years model I will be buying mid 2014 model 8GB Ram and 256SSD 2.6GHz Intel i5.

What do ye think?

yoyo

Moved from Comp & Tech.

Creamy Goodness

What development will you be doing? unless it's something like C# you can probably do it on a mac and not boot into bootcamp at all. Even still I think Microsoft have made it possible to do C# now on all platforms so maybe you'll be lucky.

the macbook you've picked will be fine for programming, I still use a 2011 Air with 4gb of ram and an i7. So you'll be grand on that front.

AppleKidd

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

What development will you be doing? unless it's something like C# you can probably do it on a mac and not boot into bootcamp at all. Even still I think Microsoft have made it possible to do C# now on all platforms so maybe you'll be lucky.

the macbook you've picked will be fine for programming, I still use a 2011 Air with 4gb of ram and an i7. So you'll be grand on that front.

I may consider an old mac because of the mac pro, to save a bit of cash.

(Java, C#, .Net, Expression Blend), System Analyst/Modeller (UML, Rational Rose, JUnit), Web Designer/Developer (DreamWeaver, CS5, PHP), Database Developer/Administrator (SQL Server, MySQL), Test Engineer, Games and Mobile App Developer (XNA, Android).

I see no problem myself with the different languages.

I may consider 128GB macbook due to be cheaper. What size SSD do you have in yours and are you running bootcamp along side mac os x.

whiterebel

If you don't want the latest/greatest keep an eye on the refurb store on the Apple website. First place I go these days.

uck51js9zml2yt

A lot of people I was in college with had serious problems getting programs to run on Mac.
Was doing ruby on rails and c# asp.net
They all ended up buying a windows laptop or being tied to work on the college computers.

colm_c

As a full time software developer the only two reasons to use Windows over Mac (costs aside) is:
- your work is heavily dependent on the Microsoft ecosystem
- personal preference

In fact, almost all developer setups are built around the Mac OS including rails, node, Mongolia, mudslides, php, java, android, Xcode etc.

If there is some small requirement for windows at college then you can always use bootcamp or some form of virtualization.

shanec1928

Visual studio is coming to OS X so should be no hassle there with c# etc..