[LRUG] MacBook for Ruby dev work

[Gabe da Silveira]

I don't think a MacBook is a suitable machine for a developer.  It's good
for extreme portability and very light workloads.  I might recommend it to
my mother for instance.  However, the fanless design necessitates an
extremely under-powered CPU that will just never be competitive, even with
an Air (although they'll probably be killing the Air).  I understand
Apple's mentality with the new MB, but I think they took this a step too
far.  That extra millimeter of thin-ness and utter silence might go over
well with consumers, but I can't recommend it for anyone doing anything
serious with a computer.

On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 9:27 PM, Matthew Rudy Jacobs <
matthewrudyjacobs at gmail.com> wrote:

> Our CTO bought the 12" Macbook bought last year,
> and it struggles viewing our Trello projects on Chrome
> (we have a lot of cards)
>
> He doesn't recommend it!
>
>
>
> On 19 July 2016 at 08:01, Jim Myhrberg <contact at jimeh.me> wrote:
>
>> I know a couple of people who use plain MacBooks for work, I'll try and
>> get a hold of them to see if they want to chime in.
>>
>> Personally, while it's not a plain MacBook, I've been using a 2012
>> MacBook Air (dual-core 2.0GHz i7, 8GB RAM) for the past 4 years as my main
>> machine for all development work. It's fine, and still does a good job. CPU
>> isn't always as fast as I'd like it to be, but 95% of the time it's enough.
>>
>> As far as I recall the first version of the plain MacBook was about
>> equivalent to the maxed out 2011 Air. And I believe the recently updated
>> MacBook brings performance up close to the 2012 Air I have.
>>
>> As for what I do, Emacs is my editor, I run mysql, redis and
>> elasticsearch in Docker Beta, and most of my work is Ruby. Basic Rails apps
>> takes a few seconds to boot, while more typical large ones are around 10-15
>> seconds.
>>
>> And more recently I've been on a Microservice project, where booting
>> everything locally kicks up around 30 separate Ruby processes. That boot up
>> is really the only time the CPU is painful as things kind of freeze for
>> 10-30 seconds. But once it's all up and running everything is fine.
>>
>> And on top of that I run Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Skype, and more than a
>> handful other apps too at all times.
>>
>> Only reason I haven't gotten a MacBook myself is that it's a lot of money
>> for something that's roughly the same as the Air I already have. If I'm
>> gonna upgrade, the idea is it'd be an actual upgrade.
>>
>> However if I was in your position and offered a choice between a MacBook
>> Pro and a MacBook at work, it might be difficult to say no to the MacBook I
>> think. Unless the MBP was a 13-inch retina with fully max specs of course.
>>
>> Best of luck :)
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 18 Jul 2016, 23:02 Andi Studer, <andi.studer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone have first hand experience in using a MacBook for Ruby dev
>>> work?
>>>
>>> I am being offered new hardware at work, and can't make up my mind
>>> between trusty steed MacBook Pro and feather weight MacBook.
>>>
>>> My setup is fairly standard. I use Atom as editor, my projects need
>>> local PostgresSQL and ElasticSearch servers and I'd like to run DockerBeta.
>>>
>>> Feedback welcome
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