MacBook for a programmer. Is it worth it? How I adapted my Mac to develop Macbook Air for programming

Hello everyone, today we will find out whether it is worth purchasing a macbook air 13 2017 as a work tool. Let's consider its use in areas such as

• programming
• design
• video editing

Let me clarify right away that programming will include all stages of web development and development mobile applications.
By design we mean web design, creation of interfaces and other graphic activities aimed at the web.

To give a specific answer, I will clearly show the launch speed and operation of the following programs:

• Sublime Text 3
• Koala
• Xcode
• Photoshop CC
• Illustrator CC
• Sketch
• Final Cut Pro

Accordingly, in the field of programming, we will look at the Sublime Text 3 code editor, the Koala and Xcode CSS preprocessor compiler for developing mobile applications.
For design - Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch, and for video editing, a popular program on Mac OS - Final Cut Pro.

Before we start the analysis, I’ll tell you about the characteristics of my laptop. This Macbook Air 2017 release and he has:

• Core i5 processor
• Processor frequency 1.8
• RAM 8GB
• SSD disk 256GB
• Diagonal 13.3 inches
• Resolution 1440x900

I chose the 256 GB SSD consciously. I understood that 128GB would not be enough, given the programs I planned to use. For example, there was a high probability that in order to edit a video clip, I would need to make cuts from 4K videos, which I would download from my iPhone. This video was no exception. However, if you plan to do only web development or design, then 128GB will definitely be enough for you. You can store all work materials on your laptop, and the rest of the content, for example, photos on an external hard drive.

Perhaps someone will ask why I didn’t choose the retina screen, which is in the pro versions, then I have a simple explanation for this. I have external peripherals in case I display a picture on a larger screen. A 23-inch monitor with a resolution of 1920×1080 copes with its task perfectly. This is more than enough for my work.

Moreover, the macbook air's screen characteristics are superior even to my old laptop, which has a 15-inch screen and a resolution of 1366x768.

For comparison, I am attaching a photo that shows that on the Wikipedia website we see more information on a 13-inch laptop due to the higher resolution.

I would also like to add a few words about the touchpad. Of course, its response is many times better than that of other laptop manufacturers, but I do not count myself in the group of people who claim that a mouse is not needed at all.
When it comes to serious work, where it is extremely important to concentrate 200%, then you cannot do without a mouse. However, if I'm relaxing, browsing through social networks or doing simple work, then yes, I can get by with just a touchpad.

Go ahead. Why did you choose an Apple laptop? There are several reasons.
Firstly, I didn’t want to install an additional hackintosh system in a laptop with Windows, but it was necessary to start learning how to use XCode and Sketch programs, because... In addition to website development, I am involved in drawing mobile interfaces, and Illustrator in this regard is significantly inferior to Sketch.
Secondly, I was looking for a portable and at the same time powerful laptop, because... I often leave the city, and the work must be done remotely. I'm pretty tired of constantly carrying a 4-kilogram laptop with me.
Thirdly, it was really time to replace my Windows laptop with a new one because of its endless lag. But that's a completely different story.

That’s how the idea of ​​buying a MacBook came up. The only thing I doubted was the processor frequency. Let me remind you that the processor frequency in the Macbook Air is 1.8, while in my old laptop this value reached 2.7. Perhaps you also doubt that the macbook air is capable of handling serious work. That is why the purpose of this video is to show how well or poorly this laptop copes with the tasks that are relevant to me in my work.

Laptop autonomy

The autonomy of the laptop is the first thing I want to talk about. The laptop discharges in about 8-9 hours in quiet operation mode, without opening heavy programs, at low brightness. If you use it to watch movies or work hard, running several heavy programs, then it will work less - somewhere around 5-6 hours.

For the test, I decided to find out how much percent it would discharge if I taught a lesson. By the way, you can learn more about courses for layout designers by following this link. I will also duplicate the link in the description of the video. So, the lesson lasted 1.5 hours and from 100% it was discharged to 30. Were active the following programs:
— Skype with video broadcast and screen sharing
— Quick Time, who recorded this lesson
—Photoshop
— Illustrator.

The last two programs are especially resource-intensive, so the result, in my opinion, is more than good.
For comparison, my old laptop discharged from 100 percent to 0 under such a load after 30-40 minutes. It was impossible to conduct a lesson without recharging. Therefore, draw conclusions whether this indicator is good or bad.

Macbook Air for programming

This section will be of interest to web developers, as well as those involved in application development. I’ll say right away that this laptop will be more than enough for you. Especially if you are involved in website layout. You will need a code editor, the Koala compiler, possibly programs for Git systems, as well as work with Photoshop, which can be partially replaced by the Avocode program.

But if you are a mobile application developer, then everything is not so simple here. In general, the work will also be comfortable, but there is one caveat. When you start the smartphone simulator, the smartphone itself on its native screen will be cropped for all models with a screen larger than 4.7 inches. Those. You can only work comfortably with iPhone 5, 5s, se. It will look something like this. I will demonstrate running the iPhone X in Xcode.
If you have an external monitor, then this problem will disappear by itself. You must evaluate whether this fact will prevent you from working comfortably with the program or not. If you don't have external monitor, then the right decision would be to look at the Pro versions, because the difference in cost between air and pro is precisely the cost good monitor. And the screen resolution in the pro version will just allow you to work on a laptop without connecting extra devices.

Macbook Air for design

This section will be of interest to web designers and interface designers. Let's look at working in Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch. To begin with, I will demonstrate the speed of launching these programs.
As we can see, Photoshop launches the fastest, but when working in Illustrator and Photoshop at the same time, I don’t notice any delays. Everything works much faster than on Windows. The only thing is that the programs begin to freeze a little when sharing the screen on Skype during lessons, because at this moment there is a serious load on the video card, which, by the way, is integrated. However, I don't think most of you plan to work in graphics programs by running screen sharing, do you?

Just like in programming, there is a nuance here. If you are professionally involved in graphics, especially 3D graphics or work with photography, then the best choice for you is the pro version. Air most likely will not suit you due to the weak characteristics of the video card and screen. For working with web interfaces and website design, Air will be a good helper, especially if you are just studying and want to learn the basics of this specialization. I can say with confidence, as a person who constantly opens several layouts and works with interfaces, that working in these programs takes place in a comfortable mode, without any brakes.

Macbook Air for video editing

The last section will be of particular interest to those who want to use this laptop for video editing. It’s difficult for me to give advice for professionals in this field, but if you want to create short videos, trim videos, make gluing, add simple special effects or work with video in at least 4K format, then the MacBook Air will definitely not let you down. The Final Cut Pro editing program will work stably and is unlikely to let you down. For example, this video was created from 4K video stitches and the program worked stably all this time. I didn’t even turn it off specifically for several days to check if it would somehow affect the speed of work in other programs. My conclusion is that the laptop worked equally stably both before installation and after the program was launched. My Windows laptop definitely couldn’t afford this, despite the fact that it had geforce video card and there were 8 gigabytes random access memory.

What can be concluded?

The 2017 Macbook Air is a capable laptop that handles everything I ask of it. It is suitable for web development, mobile app creation, website design, interface design and video editing.

But it’s important to remember that you shouldn’t expect miracles from an integrated video card. If you are professionally involved in graphics, especially 3D, photography or video editing, then I would recommend taking a closer look at the pro versions.

I think you will make the right choice and I have helped a little for those who are now faced with the difficult choice of buying a macbook AIR or PRO version. Be sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Bye everyone!

Video answer to the question: “Is it worth purchasing a 2017 Macbook Air 13 for programming, design and video editing”

Two recent articles on SitePoint talked about how people are building their development environments. Zach Wallace talked about setting up a Windows development environment, and Shaumik Daityari talked about his experience with Ubuntu Linux.

In this article I want to talk about how to set up a development environment on Mac OS X. But first, a little about the program data.

I am a freelance developer (freelancer) software and technical documentation. Given this, I need a variety of tools on a regular basis, be it for software development, scientific research, writing or experimenting.

This of course requires everything from code management, access to remote database servers and management to writing and viewing content. However, the great thing about Mac is that there are many tools available for it.

Basic Tools

New Macs include iWork suite, Safari, Preview and Unarchiver, among a number of other tools with graphical interface. On the command line they are found with various tools with open source code, such as SSH, Wget and cURL. However, they alone are not enough. To create proper web development and technical writing, we will need a number of other tools. Specifically, I regularly use a combination of the following:

• Dropbox and Google Drive
• Firefox, Google Chrome and Chromium
• Pixelmator and Skitch
• Colloquium, Skype, Slack Evernote and Wunderlist.

These tools are almost indispensable in your everyday base.

Dpopbox and Google allow me to share files with clients. I could use the browser versions, but installing apps makes syncing easier.

And no development environment would be complete without all the modern browsers. Because Internet Explorer is not supported on Mac like Zack, I use a wide range of tools - such as BrowserStack - to test sites in IE.

Pixelmator and Skitch help you easily edit and annotate your images. Pixelmator isn't free, but it isn't expensive either. You can use GIMP instead, but I think its interface leaves a lot to be desired.

I use Evernote to create and store notes. And everything you need for project management is in Wunderlist. With it, I can do everything that needs to be done for the client, as well as keep notes on the conversations we had and what I still need to do.

Editors

But now let's look at a more serious topic: editing. I create two types of editing - content and code, so my discussion of editors will reflect that. No matter which one you create, there are several very good editors, available for Mac.

When I write, I write in Markdown format. It allows you to write structured data in any text editor without the need for special software (such as Microsoft Word). Using tools like Pandoc, you can export content to almost any other file format.

Text editors

For writing in Markdown, there are several excellent native apps available, including MacDown, iA Writer, and Writer Pro and Mou. Heck, you can even use TextEdit, although it's not very well suited for this task. Additionally, there are various online Markdown editors, including Gingko, Draft, and Bruno Škvorc's favorite, StackEdit.

I've used them and can vouch for all of them, although I don't use them regularly. For me, the best tool is Vim, ideally MacVim. Will take a little longer to install and configure it. But once you do this, you will be satisfied. Moreover, it's free. If you're interested, check out my Vim configuration repository on GitHub.

Coding Applications

There is always Sublime Text 3 of excellent quality, which I often use and recommend. There's also TextMate 3, which is lightweight, simple, and extensible. But my editor's choice is PhpStorm. Based on IntelliJ, it does a lot; and for what it doesn't natively do there most likely exists a plugin. It's not free. But the price isn't really that bad, especially when you weigh the benefits.

Version control

Next, let's look at version control. If I write or code, I always use version control. And my version control of choice is Git. This is obvious to me. However, you can use Mercurial just as comfortably. If you are using Subversion, OK. But I honestly can't support CVS.

When it comes to using Git, I think there are several good Mac tools to choose from. First, there is a more simplified GitX. Open source and free to use. And Mac Clone Of Linus Torvold's GitK, it provides the key functionality needed for repository management and provides a nice in-program diff viewer.

Next is the source code repository. If you're looking for one app that does it all, look no further than SourceTree. I've been using it for ages (I used Git from the command line before) and it's excellent.

I can also recommend SmartGit.

Of the three, I've used Source Tree the most and highly recommend it. However, as with MacVim, my Editor's Choice, I manage Git repositories from the command line. (I'm not saying you should use command line. But I will say that the time spent is worth learning how to use it as it will help you become much more productive. That being said, if you're not a command line person, then SourceTree is the help!)

Server

For servers, I take one of two options. I either use embedded servers like those with Ruby and PHP and run without the overhead of additional software, or I run virtual machine. I've used VirtualBox and Ubuntu Linux for this, but more and more I'm building my own using Ansible and Vagrant.

There's a whole host of tools you can turn to, and there are a lot of language libraries and extensions by default that aren't installed on the Mac, and even the versions that are installed may not be new enough. To get around this problem, I use Homebrew, one of two great management packages for the Mac.

Homebrew works similarly to APT and yum on Linux, in that you can search for a package repository and install, update and configure packages using it. For a good understanding of how it works and what it offers, check out the Homebrew documentation online.

Database

To work with databases, I mainly use MySQL. I guess you could attribute this to my PHP heritage. But I also work regularly with both PostgreSQL and SQLite. To install any of these databases, you can download them from the respective providers using the links.

While I'd like to think of myself as a hardcore command line guru, I'm not one when it comes to databases. I've been using Navicat Lite for several years for this. This is a great tool that provides one-stop access to a wide range of databases.

Navicat not only supports MySQL, PostreSQL and SQLite, but also Oracle and SQLServer. It allows you to painlessly create any schema element, manually create and run queries, search, create and update records - everything you would expect from a database management tool.

External access

For external access, I regularly use the SSH tool library, whether SSHing into a remote server, or copying files to or from my development environment. In addition to this, I also regularly use cURL and Wget to grab files and to make API requests and interact with the site.

But if you're not so command-line inclined, there are some really good GUI tools. There's also the venerable FileZilla, as well as the faster Cyberduck and Transmit. Each of these three tools will allow you to remotely manage files with just a mouse.

Summing up

This is how I set up the environment with all the tools I need. I admit that I am quite slow using the command line. But I've also covered a number of GUI tools that you can use instead, if that's your style of working.

Despite the frequent derisive comments about the Mac, rest assured, there is a lot of software available for it. And because of its BSD heritage, it also has access to open source and POSIX-compliant tools. So no matter which path you take when working and growing with a Mac, you'll have a wide range of tools at your disposal.

So how does my setup compare to yours?

Costs! Of course it's worth it!

Any Mac owner will tell you 100 reasons why you should use a MacBook, and I’m one of them. I'm an Apple fan and always give this technology a thumbs up. In this article I want to explain why I think so.

I'll start, after all, with the shortcomings.

Disadvantage 1- they are expensive.

Yes, indeed, maki-books are more expensive than other equipment. Yes, you will have to fork out some cash. But! Don't forget about the option of a used computer. I have right now MacBook Pro 15’ 2013, which has seen two owners before me and works great without any complaints.

I didn’t find any other disadvantages... so let’s move on to the pros.

Plus 1- high-quality and beautiful assembly.

Apple equipment is assembled to a very high quality. The body is made of pure aluminum, everything fits snugly, nothing hangs, dangles, falls off, or plays. You take it in your hands and it’s nice... like, in fact, everything from Apple)

And if you ever take it apart...you will also see the inner beauty of the MacBook. Everything is measured, verified, the fans are exactly opposite each other. Beauty!

Plus 2- everything is turnkey.

If you not advanced user and you don’t really understand what it is operating system and drivers, then apple is definitely for you. When buying a MacBook, you don’t worry about the filling at all. You bought a computer, unpacked it and can use it right away. The only thing you have to install is some additional programs, specific to your hobbies. Even in order to install the program, you do not need to install anything additional, run installers, and so on. You simply take the program icon and drag it into the applications folder on your computer. Yes, this is exactly how installation happens - just drag and drop)

Plus 3- touchpad.

Previously, I did not understand people who work on touchpads. On all laptops, the touchpads are wildly small and uncomfortable, but on a Mac it’s a pleasure to use the touchpad.

First of all, it's huge!

Secondly, it is configured perfectly! I would say it is configured for MacOS. Since I installed Windows on my beech and it’s just as inconvenient to work with it as in all laptops. But when I launch MacOS, everything changes. It is a paradise.

Oh...I forgot to say that the touchpad supports a lot of gestures. And you can not just move the mouse, but also... in general, you can do a lot of things... it’s better to see once than to read a hundred times.

Plus 4- operating system.

All Macs have an operating room MacOS system. It's very simple.

To make it clearer, imagine a phone the size of a computer, a keyboard with a touchpad was attached to it, and a program for working with files was added. In short, this is MacOS. I don’t even know what else to tell. Everything is just very simple and clear.

Plus 5- it doesn't hang.

You read that right. It doesn't hang. Almost... Of course, like any technology, it can freeze, but not like Windows. If, in some case, Windows freezes completely and for a long time, then in MacOS only the “heavy” program freezes, and while you are waiting for it to “freeze”, you can go to VK and look through the news. In addition, these “freezes” are very short-term and come very rarely, so you practically do not notice them.

Plus 6- battery

The battery lasts a very long time. From 3 to 6 hours depending on the load. But with active use, such joy will continue for a couple of years, then the service life comes to an end and you become attached to charging forever)

But even with a dying battery, your laptop will be able to work quietly for an hour or two in order to show a design project at a meeting with a client.

Plus 7 is a UNIX-like operating system.

Now we come to why this is convenient for programmers.

UNIX-like - this means that you have a Terminal. Normal progers work a lot with the terminal. And many things for programming cannot be installed on Windows without modifications. Well, for example, coding in RubyOnRails on Windows will be difficult. Very difficult.

In short, for those who already use Linux, nothing changes, except that you also get a slender laptop with a beautiful, well-thought-out operating system as a bonus.

And those who do not want to stop developing websites on simple html pages will sooner or later come to some kind of framework that will require a UNIX-like operating system.

Yes, on Windows you can do all this in the same way. But on Linux or Mac it will be much easier, without hassle and without unnecessary dances with a tambourine.

Therefore, to summarize the title of the article, then YES, it is very convenient to program on a MacBook, it is possible and it is unrealistically cool!

At the end, I also want to tell you some general questions not related to the pros and cons, but they simply need to be answered.

• If you have a Retina screen, then this does not affect your life in any way. Many people ask the question: “How will I layout websites for a 1280px monitor if I have a 2880px?” It doesn't interfere. Apart from the fact that the picture will be very clear and beautiful, nothing will change.
• If you are a Windows user you will have to get used to it. It took me a week to get used to it. This is fine. The first days it was not at all clear how to use it and I thought about taking the mac back to the store. But once you figure it out, you won’t be able to refuse.

There are no problems in terms of programs on MacOS. Everything you have on Windows is on Mac, or you can find a replacement. A lot of programs are now made for both Windows and Mac OS.

When I bought my first MacBook, everyone around me said that I bought it to show off. Although I didn’t even have such thoughts. They were probably jealous.

If the iPhone can be bought for show-off, then the Mac is first and foremost a thoroughbred workhorse.

Think of your MacBook as an investment in yourself and your time.

1) Still, whatever one may say, Apple technology is a certain status. And coming to a meeting with a MacBook will count as a plus.

2) My first MacBook worked for me for 6 years. Every day, from morning to evening, he helped me earn money by developing websites with stubborn loyalty. 6 years! Think about it! Do you know many computers that are willing to live that long? And keep in mind that my laptop works day and night.

From experience, I can say that my first laptop worked for 2 years and its screen broke off, and the second laptop worked for 2 months and burned out... you can draw your own conclusion.

___________________________________

And one last tip: How to choose a MacBook?

Do you know what I like about apple? Because with her you don’t have to ask these questions. Don't think about how many processors you have or how much RAM. No need. You are buying a well-built device that will work quickly and conveniently in any case.

To purchase you need to decide on two things:

Why do you need a computer?

Globally, Apple technology is divided into 3 sectors:

a) MacBook Air is small, compact, thin and not very powerful computer. It is for those who just need to surf the Internet, watch movies, and write articles in Word. Well, as a last resort, work in Photoshop.

b) MacBook Pro is a powerful laptop. It is for those who need a portable, powerful computer for work.

c) iMac is desktop computer. It's big, it's powerful, but it's not portable. For those for whom it is important to have a good workhorse that stays in one stall and does not move between cities)

How much money do you have?

Good luck with programming and hopefully buying a MacBook)