Can you suggest hardware for Xcode 7?

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Created Sep ’15

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I'm having a little trouble finding any decent information on the minimum (and/or suggested) hardware requirements for the latest Xcode. I'm soon going to be starting iOS development, but I want to see whether I ought to get a new Mac or not. I currently have:

MacBook Air (13-inch, Late 2010)

2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM

Running OS X Yosemite

I have read that this MacBook will support El Capitan, which the newest Xcode will require, but I've no idea if it will run it well. In your guys experience, would it run the latest Xcode alright, or is it a bit of a memory hog? It will be something I want to last at least a few more years, so wondering whether I'll need to make that investment now or will it hold off? I appreciate the 13-inch size is going to be rather small, and I'll be hooking it up to an external monitor, so this is purely down to the capabilities of the system. I have a feeling it will work, but was hoping for someone's experience in the matter to suggest whether (for a newbie iOS develop) it would be really scraping the barrel in performance or if it should suffice. Sorry for the amount of ambiguity and personal preference this question might include!

Regards

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Answer 1

Mirror OP

Nov ’15

ever find out what the best processor is to program ios app?

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Answer 2

KMT OP

Nov ’15

Xcode could care less. Any Mac sold in the last 2 years or so is more than capable. But in the end, it's wise to remember that a dev rarely only runs Xcode. Safari, text, audio, image and video editors...those are where the load comes from.

Max the physical ram (soldered on now in many new macs), determine the maximum harddrive you'll need, then double it (and while SSDs run faster, they tend to also fill up faster, making free space a juggling act), add a backup scheme and consider using additional monitors.

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