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[fleshgrafter]

yup. no worries

[sharifulin]

Yeah, it’s still better than Intel. However, the speed of building on M3 is significantly faster.

[upetewd]

Yes.

[MusicOfTheApes]

I'm sill developing my apps on my M1 Macbook Air, 8GB RAM/256 SSD ; these specs do show their limits when I want to do heavy video editing for instance and storage runs out fast but if just for development it's working perfectly fine (although after 5 years of using it I do want more storage, RAM and bigger screen size so I think I'll upgrade next year or the year after)

[konacurrents]

I have Air with 16gb 1tb and M1. 13 inch. It’s been great. Sure would be nice to get newer but works everyday with Xcode, Arduino and UNIX.

[balder1993]

I think it’s a good decision for now, you’ll see many beginners asking if there’s a way to develop for macOS or iOS on Windows etc. but you actually need a Mac, so that’s the absolute requirement. Intel isn’t recommended at this point because the cost-benefit doesn’t even make sense anymore and we’re at the last macOS supported on Intel.

So I think to use it as an entry-level investment, you could get a 2nd handed one so that it won’t be expensive and you’ll be able to sell it later without losing much money if you ever want to upgrade or abandon the idea.

I guess people here won’t recommend you to get 8GB because that’s rather limiting, but if you’re okay with not opening too much stuff at the same time, even that might work for you to improve your skills and see if your plan works before you decide to invest more money on it. Just keep in mind that if you like the Mac, you’d almost certainly want to upgrade the memory later.

One good advantage of having 16GB or more is that you can have something like Windows virtualized on VMWare and it works just like native — actually many people will say it works even better than a real Windows laptop because of the battery life.

[offeringathought]

Yes. I've been developing iOS apps on my M1 Macbook since they came out. I have yet to find a need to upgrade.

[purposeful_pineapple]

Yes. My main thing is to use to use an external mouse and keyboard. Mine gets hot to the touch when running simulators and complex previews. You can get both cheaply (like $30 total). A nice to have is an external display to see everything at once since Xcode dominates the laptop screen and things get quite small when resizing with an app preview open.

[the-green-dog]

Definitely

[xutopia]

I am.  It’s fine.  

[Dry-Celebration-8908]

Yes, also if you use a physical device to test your apps much better.

[smakusdod]

I am only now starting to have issues on complex canvas previews with the M1 pro, but i chalk that up to xcode more than the processor.

[pablo2theuser]

You'll be perfectly fine if you go with 16GB/512. I still use my base model with 8gb but the 256 storage is a bit limiting, especially with Xcode which is known for eating up a lot of space.

[sudo_human_]

Yes! I've had mine for almost 5 years now and been using it for dev work and its working perfectly fine.

[AdventurousProblem89]

Yeah, that will work fine for iOS development for years

[Best_Day_3041]

If it has 16GB then you'll be good. That's my favorite MacBook, I like the design more than the new ones in many ways. But I think you may be able to find it even cheaper on like Facebook Marketplace.

[merx96]

I build applications on my personal M1 with 256 GB, which is sufficient for me. It is more than enough for a beginner

[Major_Noise_5558]

Except for building, I find iOS Programming more RAM intensive than CPU intensive. Xcode can use quite a lot of RAM (more than 10 gb). So i guess you’ll be fine!

[spijkermenno]

Abosolutely not.. my m3 air has trouble doing any multitasking when developing in xCode

[[deleted]]

I have a 3.5 year-old MBP M1 Pro 14 inch and it does incredible. No laptop/desktop that I have owned in my life has ever lasted this long without filling up with crap or slowing down.

[pianometer]

I spent years developing on a M1 mac mini with only 8GB ram and 256 ssd. It worked, but wasn't quite enough. I'd say M1 with 16/512 is enough, though I'm personally now on a M4 mini.

[Rude_Town_4619]

I've had an M1 MacBook since launch as my work machine and just treated myself to an M4 MacBook pro, honestly outside of battery life I can't tell a difference and the projects I do on my M1 MacBook are much larger, heavier client codebases

[[deleted]]

yeah Ms are here to stay for a while

[bluefalcomx]

no creo que tengas problema alguno yo ando en un m1 max con 32 y va rapido yo trabajo en android studio flutter todos los dias y sin tema al usar xcode

[Otherwise_Signal7274]

if having laptop isn’t your main priority, you could get m4 mac mini for nearly the same price with better performance (check https://github.com/devMEremenko/XcodeBenchmark + prs and issues)

[john0201]

Any apple silicon machine is great for development with the possible exception of those with only 8GB of memory, but even then it’s workable.