Web Devs: Which Mac do you Recommend?

Sorry if I am asking again, but it is 2017 and couldn’t find a relevant thread.

So I have saved enough to buy myself a Mac (All thanks to envato and eForm). I have been using Windows, since I don’t know when (PS: I am 27) and have always looked with wonder what the Mac fuss is all about. They obviously look great. Had bought an iPad Air 2 a few months back and really liked the display. So why not switch to a Mac for my work too? Right?

But I am currently in a dilemma whether to go for MacBook Pro 13" 512GB SSD or an iMac 3.5GHz with Radeon Pro 575.

Things that I currently use (under Windows 10, running on a quite nice build https://novabench.com/view/1058512 ) on daily basis

  • Affinity Designer
  • Of course Sublimetext 3
  • VVV (Vagrant) with VirtualBox
  • Grunt, NPM, Composer etc etc.

Things that I will definitely reuse for which so ever Mac I buy

  • My Asus Cerberus Keyboard - I am very old fashioned, can’t type without the mechanical feeling
  • Dell S2240L and S2240T (basically two nice Dell monitor, one with touch screen and one without)
  • A Logitech G402 - Although I am more a developer and very less a designer, so it doesn’t matter much

So my question is will the MacBook Pro 13" be able to fit my requirement and be as smooth as my current PC? I know the iMac will (just looking at the config, it seems really nice) but very reluctant about the MacBook Pro. I have never used any Mac before and the MacBook Pro 15" are just out of budget.

PS: My sole decision for buying a Mac is basically for three reasons:

  • They look awesome. Especially the MacBooks.
  • The hurdle I had to face to install VVV with working NPM for my WordPress project under Windows, is not just worth it. To get symlink support, lock support etc (and what not) I had to very hackishly use WinNFSd and Vagrant::WinNFSd.
  • I prefer the portability of a Laptop. I have monitors and keyboard where I can dock when I am working at home. But when I am travelling I would like to have a laptop which would be great if was my primary workstation.

If you’ve been happily using PCs all this time then I can’t really see the point of changing to a Mac. They might be slightly more reliable than the average PC and will probably last a bit longer… but with that budget, you don’t need to settle for an ‘average PC’.

Plus, you’ll get better specs on a PC and the latest graphics drivers from the manufacturer… rather than whenever Apple decide to send them over.

If you want your laptop to look good, then maybe consider an Asus ZenBook. They look great, work really well, have decent specs and they’re a lot cheaper than a comparable Mac. Or maybe one of those premium black HP ones with the gold trim and the ultra-thin action.

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@SpaceStockFootage thank you for the insights. For me, if I buy a laptop PC, then it will be used only like 10-20 times a year :frowning: Knowing myself, I will just sit on my Desktop for work.

So the plan is, if MacBook Pro is good enough, then I will buy that and use for all development work. If it is going to perform not good enough to run the software I use for development, then I will stick to my PC.

I’m not really sure of the specs required for coding. I used a BBC Micro back in the day, but that was for BASIC, not sure if it would handle the C with plus and the plus action.

:frowning: That surely won’t cut it :frowning:

So you’re saying you might need an Amiga 500?! That’s some next level tech right there!

But anyway, hopefully somebody will be along at some point with some useful answers! :grin:

Back in the day, my first PC was running Pentium I with 64MB of SD-RAM. Don’t remember the HDD, but surely was not more than 32GB :grin: That’s as far as I can go.

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Yeah, the Amiga came with 1MB of RAM, but you could upgrade it to 10MB if you were feeling fancy. My mates had those, but my folks wouldn’t shell out for one, so I had to settle for a Spectrum 48K and an Atari 2600 for some hardcore gaming.

I had a PC in 2007 and it only had 12GB or memory! Was an old one though. Can’t remember my first PC, I think it was a Windows 95 machine… Had a 24k dial up modem! I remember trying to watch that ‘Troops’ Star Wars fan film that had just come out… and it was saying 8 weeks to download.

You know you’re getting old when you can remember not only floppy disks, but floppy disks that were actually floppy!

FloppyDisk

How we’ve come along!

I remember installing games from floppy. But those were 3.5" smaller ones. Called the B:\ drive.

Now a days new gen call them “Save Icon” :laughing: