Need Recommedation of MacBook for Xamarin Development

[tompkin]

Hello,
I am a lifelong Windows user but have need of an Apple machine in order to develop iPhone apps with the new Visual Studio/Xamarin. (I'm doing the actual development on Windows. )As I understood by the Microsoft tutorials, I need to have an Apple machine hooked up remotely in order to compile for iPhone.

Can anyone recommend a decent MacBook that will not break the bank? Thanks

[DevTech]

On 4/29/2016 at 10:01 AM, tompkin said:

Hello,
I am a lifelong Windows user but have need of an Apple machine in order to develop iPhone apps with the new Visual Studio/Xamarin. (I'm doing the actual development on Windows. )As I understood by the Microsoft tutorials, I need to have an Apple machine hooked up remotely in order to compile for iPhone.

Can anyone recommend a decent MacBook that will not break the bank? Thanks

I have a thread in hardware covering modern development laptops for which Macs are not on the list due to lack of touch ability which is rather important to emulate mobile devices.

 

You could consider using a Windows computer and then get a low cost Mac Mini to satisfy Apple's legal app submission requirement. Might as well keep their extortion to a minimum.

 

[ITOps]

Best thing to do when developing for mobile is to purchase the device you will be testing on, which is the only way to truly know how your app will perform and work out hardware only issues if possible.

 

The 15 Inch 256GB MacBook Pro is recommended if you are not creating games, if you are then the 2.5Ghz 512GB MacBook Pro is recommended.  If your making smaller less resource intensive apps and do not require much testing then the 13 inch should do fine.  I would recommend running Windows on your MacBook Pro if possible as it runs very nicely, even in a virtual machine.

[DevTech]

4 minutes ago, ITOps said:

Best thing to do when developing for mobile is to purchase the device you will be testing on, which is the only way to truly know how your app will perform and work out hardware only issues if possible.

 

The 15 Inch 256GB MacBook Pro is recommended if you are not creating games, if you are then the 2.5Ghz 512GB MacBook Pro is recommended.  If your making smaller less resource intensive apps and do not require much testing then the 13 inch should do fine.  I would recommend running Windows on your MacBook Pro if possible as it runs very nicely, even in a virtual machine.

If you are making an App for yourself then buying the device is a great idea although it is nice to iterate on development without uploading to other hardware all the time.

 

But, if you are making an App for the general market then emulation is your "Knight in Shining Armor" until you can afford to buy hundreds of test devices.

 

Really advise strongly against a Mac for mobile development but everyone has their preferences. Watch out carefully for Macs made in the last couple of years as they have their RAM insanely soldered onto the motherboard and are NOT expandable. If you are buying new, make sure the RAM is the max you will ever need which basically means 16 gigs since no Skylake. Used models are the same problem. The used market has plenty of 4 gig and 8 gig models for sale since it is the only way a Mac owner can upgrade the RAM. And of course ignore the silly Mac Myth that "Macs don't use RAM" since 1) it isn't true, Photoshop uses all the RAM you can give it on either O/S and 2) you will be running Windows anyways.

 

And not to completely beat up on Macs stupid soldered RAM, the Microsoft Surface Book has the same problem. REALLY BAD TREND (tm *BadDesignCorp)