Hi! I'm going to buy a Mac to start developing for iOS. Is an i5/8Gb MacBook Pro (non-Retina) enough for development? Will i7/8Gb Air be better or worse? They both should be OK for writing code, but I wonder about iOS Simulator performance. Thanks!
Is i5 CPU enough for development?
RAM > CPU.
My portable development machine is a 11 inch MacBook Air with 4 GB RAM and a 1.3 GHz i5 (with 128 GB SSD). It does a decent job and I got a good deal on it (used) last year.
However, since those Macs are pretty much impossible to upgrade, I wouldn't get anything under 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. CPU isn't really relevant.
I use 2010-era Macbook that has a Core 2 Duo processor and it works fine for development. I even published an Apple Watch app using it recently.
Any current mac has enough CPU - but it eventually comes down to what type of dev work is involved. In all cases, max the ram, get double the HD size you think you need and be sure to have a reliable backup once you get going. As well consider adding a monitor to make work easier on that MBP.