Choosing a 13” MacBook for Mobile Development

Question

excentrist OP

Created Oct ’22

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Hello everyone,

I’d like to ask an advice about getting a 13” MacBook.

I’m a Flutter developer creating apps for iOS & Android, so the heaviest workload I can imagine will consist of running Xcode and Android Studio while debugging an app (including Simulator and Android Emulator), having Safari with ~20 tabs open while surfing the web, maybe having some other productivity apps open such as Trello, GitHub Desktop, etc. simultaneously. With that in mind, I’m considering getting a machine with 16GB of RAM.

Which of the four (M1 Air, M1 Pro, M2 Air, M2 Pro) do you think is enough for my needs? They’re all pretty powerful from my perspective so I’m having a problem at picking one. What’s your recommendation?

Or is it that all of them suit my needs and are performant enough, so it’s only a question of relative speed and snappiness?

Also, can M1 Pro be more performant than M2 Air in my scenario?

Thanks for your answers in advance!

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Answer 1

Claude31 OP

Oct ’22

I don't think the CPU performance is the major point here. A bigger screen (like an external monitor) is certainly much more value for your comfort and productivity.

So any machine OK CPU-wise.

Need to take care of RAM (16 GB should be OK thanks to M-architecture).

Look also at disk space : I recommend at lest 1 TB.

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