hojjat's avatar

new macbook 12 inch is good enough for web development ?

hi im a php developer and wanna to buy a macbook but im worried about the new macbook 12inch (core-m5) anyone can help me about this? (im not very good at english ,sorry )

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StefanJanssen's avatar

What kind of PC are you working on at the moment? Are you able to connect a monitor to your laptop?

I'm a Windows developer myself (17 inch laptop + second screen), but a lot of people I work with have a 12 inch or 15 inch macbook. I myself cannot program on a 12 inch macbook because I don't have a good overview of everything. On 15 inch I can work fine, but I feel my productivity is better with a 17 inch screen with a second 17 inch screen next to it.

This is just a personal opinion and depends per person and what you are used to.

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hojjat's avatar

thanks for your answer i have 14 inch windows laptop now and im ok with small screens because im moving a lot and my laptop must be small if we put aside small screen core-m5 can process fast enough for php developing?

tekmi's avatar
tekmi
Best Answer
Level 23

@hojjat Depends on what is your development environment and to which tools you got used to.

If you tend to develop on guest system by virtualizing other systems, like Ubuntu, check out how much memory and how many virtual CPUs your host machine can share - If you think of using Docker or Valet, this may not be an issue though.

If you want to use modern IDE, like PHPStorm, you must be aware of their minimum system requirements: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/system-requirements.html

If you plan to use Chrome browser, check out their requirements too https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7100626?hl=en, however in this case it should never be an issue imho.

Before you buy anything, please think twice about your display size. As an example I currently use Macbook 15.4 inch and honestly without second monitor, it's hard for me to code efficiently.

When I travel, I have not choice so I use Macbook's screen only - however I constantly need to change the whole IDE settings :)

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StefanJanssen's avatar

A screen like the ASUS ZenScreen MB16AC might be handy if you travel a lot. I don't have it myself yet, but I might buy it later since I would love to have a third screen at work.

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hojjat's avatar

i checked that but all my worry its about the CPU im ok with keyboard and screen size if you have any experience about cpu i thankful to share that with me.

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