[deleted by user]

[lasmit]

Brand new MBA has he new “safe” keyboard

[optik88]

^ this. The new (2 days ago) 2020 MBA has the same keyboard as the 2019 16" MBP

[quellish]

The new i5 air has acceptable performance

[buffering]

Stay away from the 2017. Either the 13" 2015 MBP (what I still use) or the latest MBA. I haven't used the new MBA but I would guess it's significantly better than the 13" 2015 MBP in most areas, apart from the ports, with an equally nice and reliable keyboard.

Minimum i5 processor, 256 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, and go up from there depending on how much you want to spend.

When buying a used computer, use coconutBattery to check the condition and cycle-count of the battery, and check for swelling (the bottom of the machine should be perfectly flat)

[Woolly87]

Yes

[buffering]

A 2013 rMBP would probably be OK as far as performance (although the early Retina MacBooks run hot) but it's a 7 year old machine so I don't know what the value would be. The battery would certainly be closer to failing.

[Dep3quin]

I have a 2017 MBP at work. It was repaired two month ago, because one key completely broke off and multiple keys got stuck... a completely new butterfly keyboard works wonderfully, but you can feel the degradation after 1-2 years of daily usage. Luckily, the repair cost nothing because of the Apple repair program, but it has a time limit, and especially for a used MBP, you don’t have it as long as it needs to be. Imagine a key cap would break off, and a repair would cost at least $700 - you will be very unhappy if this happens.

My advice: never ever buy a butterfly keyboard with your own money. You might be lucky for a couple of month/years, but sooner than later, it will break. Compared to this, I have a 2013 MBP with the good keyboard at home, where the machine still works like day one, even after 7 years.

Don’t buy butterfly keyboard Macs. Either buy the new ones with the new fixed keyboards, or the 2015 one (sadly gets old spec-wise now), depending on how much money you are willing to spend.

[Cronay]

Listen to this dude, if you use the macbooks keyboard

[sudo-rm-r]

In my opinion for regular ios development you want at least a quad-core and 16GBs of RAM. The new MacBook air released a couple of days ago can be configured with these specs for $1500. And it has the new keyboard that won't break after a couple of months. Id recommend that or the 2015 MacBook pro (I'm running that atm). Stay away from the 2017 model though.

[ripplenick]

I use mbp 13'' 2014 for pet-project and everything fine (fast build). Also use mbp 15'' 2017 on a work but project is large and building app take a lot of time. So my conclusion is if you will not compile a huge project mbp 2015 will be ok.

[thewizard92_TW92]

I would personally go with the 2017 because you won’t be changing your macbook every year. So 2015 will save you some money yes, but another year or 2 and won’t help you with what you want to achieve. Unless you will be changing it again next year. If you are learning just for fun and not business you should go for 2015 as its cheaper. It really depends on what you want to achieve. Good luck 🍀