I’m looking to purchase a new MacBook and am trying to decide between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro (without Touch Bar), both 13” and 256GB hard disk capacity. There is a considerable price difference between the two, and I wanted some feedback on whether the current MacBook Air is adequate for the purpose of iOS Development. I am currently sitting on a newer Macbook pro 13' working on windows either from bootcamp or through parallels. I use the same laptop for development, but in my case for ASP.NET Core and it works perfectly. For Windows dev I'd either go with Macbook pro 15' or some high-end Lenovo/Dell.
Update December 2016: Apple has released a new version of the MacBook Pro featuring the new Touch Bar feature. I do not recommend buying this model.
+ Tuesday, May 19, 2015 introduced an updated MacBook Pro and iMac and lowering the price for its top-end iMac. The updated 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop has a new style of trackpad, faster flash. Remove the aluminum housing and you have total access to the system. The logic board is dual-sided, making it easy to add and remove components. Processor, graphics, and expansion on one side. Storage and memory on the other. Mac Pro is ready for customization when you are. See the inside of Mac Pro in AR See the inside of Mac Pro in AR. Also this month we review the 13-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2020): this $1799 model delivers a modest CPU and big graphics boost. Plus, check out our review of the new 2020 iPad Pro. Also in this month.
- Worse battery life
- Worse keyboard
- Touch Bar feature is pretty useless for Bootcamp or virtualization – you will miss the usual function keys
- USB-C only. Expect to spend 100s on adapters.
- The original Bootcamp drivers actually physically blew the speakers when running Windows
Luckily Apple still sell the 2015 model without Touch Bar. I would recommend buying one of those.
Original post continues below…
I’ve been using OSX alongside Windows for almost 8 years now. In this post I will outline why a Mac is handsdown the best development laptop you can buy even if you are primarily a Windows or .NET developer. I use a Retina Macbook Pro 13 inch at home and for side projects, plus a Retina Macbook Pro 15 inch at work.
Reason 1: You need access to OS X as a professional software developer
If you care about maximizing the value you can provide as a practitioner of building software, you need access to OS X. OS X is the only way to build native iOS applications – and as a .NET developer without access to OS X, you’ll never even be able to use Xamarin to run your C# code on iOS natively. You’ll also miss out on the wider community and the rest of the development world – Javascript, Ruby, Python and Scala developers all use Unix-based operating systems to do their work, not Windows, and most of the time their preferred platform is OS X. If you want to dabble in Ruby over the weekend, or even teach yourself a new skill, OS X on a Mac is the only way to get first class support as most non-.NET/Java developers run their stuff on Macs (a small minority use a Linux distribution to do their work). No laptop other than a Macbook Pro or Air will give you access to this world and you will find yourself increasingly isolated professionally if you can only use Windows.
Reason 2: It’s the only laptop that lets you run OS X and Windows at the same time
Since Apple put Intel chips in their machines, you’ve always been able to run Windows natively on a Mac by creating a second partition using the built-in Bootcamp utility. Since the middle of 2014, this has gotten even better with the introduction of native UEFI support. Gone is the 80s-era BIOS emulation, and now Windows boots just as fast as OSX itself. The Windows 8 startup circle animation even starts rendering before the Mac bootup sound finishes playing.
You don’t have to reboot when you want to use Windows – you can attach that same native partition within a virtual machine using Parallels or VMWare Fusion. That means you can run both OSX and Windows side by side, rebooting into the native Windows partition when you need the full power of the machine. Plus, its really cool to be able to do this:
(As a side note, I get much better performance out of Parallels Desktop 10 than VMWare Fusion when running Windows 8.1 or the Windows 10 Tech Preview – the Parallels virtual display driver is WDDM 1.2 compatible, rather than VMWare’s WDDM 1.0 compatible version. WDDM 1.0 is from the Vista era.)
Reason 3: Multiple monitor support is amazing
All the Retina Macbook Pros have two Thunderbolt ports, which double up as Mini DisplayPort ports, and an HDMI port. The Retina Macbook Pro 13 inch can support 2 external monitors under OSX, and three under Linux or native Windows. The 15 inch version can support 3 external monitors and the internal screen at the same time. Both these limits can be extended by using USB 3.0 “DisplayLink” adapters or docks at the cost of CPU power and graphics quality. With virtualisation, you can set Windows up to use any number of monitors.
Reason 4: You can test your work on multiple retina display implementations
Both the 13 inch and 15 Retina Macbook Pros have amazing high resolution screens. If you are building web applications, you need to be able to test your work on “retina” displays and this is the quickest way of doing it, without getting a 4K monitor. Most retina displays in the wild are on Apple devices too (iPad, iPhone etc). The ridiculous resolution of the 15 model (2880×1800!) even enables you to test your apps and sites in Windows at up to 200% DPI scaling without an external monitor.
Reason 5: The Apple Store retail support network
Say what you want about the “cult of Mac”, they have retail support available in almost every major city on earth through their Apple Store network. If you need a new charger or accessory, you can walk in and buy one from an actual shop. If you have a problem, you can go in and (sometimes pay for) a repair – not phone an offshore support line and get a box posted to you. Acer, Dell, Samsung etc do not have the meatspace reach of Apple (unless you like to shop at PC World). The thought of having to buy a replacement AC adaptor for a “Acer Aspire S3-392G” machine at short notice is quite scary. If you have a preference for the US keyboard layout, a Mac is the only laptop stocked in retail available with a selection of keyboard layouts – when in Tokyo, Apple were the only people in the whole city that stocked laptops with US keyboards.
Reason 6: The .NET Framework is becoming multiplatform
In case you missed the news, Microsoft have committed to making the core of the next .NET Framework version work on both Linux and OSX, instead of leaving it up to Mono to provide an implementation. This is a direct result of the leaders in the .NET space stretching C# out of it’s comfort zone of Windows and Visual Studio. ASP.NET vNext supports development using Sublime Text on a Mac. The OmniSharp project brings C# support to Sublime text, Emacs and Atom. Visual Studio is not required. From 2016 onwards, I expect ASP.NET vNext to start featuring in C# developer job ads, and they are going to expect you to be able to at least run applications without Visual Studio. Deployment of greenfield applications to Linux servers using Docker containers will start becoming the norm from next year.
In Summary
I haven’t even touched on the other reasons why this is now my preferred setup – the now native SMB 2.0 support in OSX, OneNote finally on Mac, the quality of the keyboards and trackpads – but using non-Apple laptops is painful sometimes. I was once issued the 2nd generation of the fabled Lenovo Thinkpad line of X1 Carbons that got rid of the function keys and replaced them with comedy touch “context sensitive media buttons” (the 3rd gen reversed this bonkers choice). My last two companies have eventually managed to sort out a top of the line 15 inch Retina Macbook Pro as my corporate machine and thanks to the proliferation of Macs in the corporate setting, IT departments are slowly warming up to the idea.
If you have any questions about how I use the above, drop me a line in the comments or send me an email and I’ll be happy to respond.
There are generally 3 ways to get visual studio on Macbook Pro:
- Install windows via Bootcamp,
- Run windows via a virtual machine,
- Install windows via Bootcamp then run the image as a VM with parallel.
Apple store malwarebytes. In this article I am focusing on the first option to dedicate maximum CPU and ram for visual studio, MSSQL and IIS.
Check if your Macbook Pro is supported
Anything 2013 early 15” Retina and later should support 10. If you’re not sure, check Apple’s list at https://support.apple.com/en-sg/HT204990#models
Getting windows 10 installer image
For those on Bizspark, you can download the enterprise edition iso at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads
(To reach here from Bizspark website after logging in, click on the small “get tools” link on the top right, and again “MSDN Subscription” in the same area on the new page.)
(To reach here from Bizspark website after logging in, click on the small “get tools” link on the top right, and again “MSDN Subscription” in the same area on the new page.)
If you’re wondering why some versions have a “N” suffix, those are versions without media technologies (media player, codecs, etc.) bundled.
Run Bootcamp assistant
Allocating space for windows partition
The windows 10 OS itself took up about 20GB. Office will take up another 1.5~2GB. Visual studio installer alone takes up 6GB, and take up some 15-20GB installed.
If you are not planning on doing anything other than development work in Visual Studio, recommend at least 50~60GB of space for the new partition.
Windows Support Software
If you get the error “The Windows Support Software Could Not Be Saved To The Selected Drive”, try only checking the first option and perform 2nd and 3rd later. In my case, I proceeded with the install without downloading the support drivers first, and only came back to MacOS for it after the first boot into windows.
Installing Windows
If your windows installer complaints that “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see setup log files”, try resetting your NVRAM:
Reboot your Mac, hold down Control, Option, R and P on the keyboard right after the chime. Keep holding until the Mac reboots and you hear the chime again. After that complete the BCA procedure as normal.
(Referenced from last page of https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7020233?start=45&tstart=0)
Macbook Pro Net Development Time
Install boot camp support software on windows
Go to your USB drive and look for a bootcamp folder or similar. You should see a setup.exe inside. Run it.
If you get a “The version of Boot Camp is not intended for this computer model”, you may have manually downloaded a version via apple’s website. Those are meant for widows 7 and earlier, so reboot into MacOS and use the boot camp assistant to download the right version.
If you get a “The version of Boot Camp is not intended for this computer model”, you may have manually downloaded a version via apple’s website. Those are meant for widows 7 and earlier, so reboot into MacOS and use the boot camp assistant to download the right version.
Stuck at Realtek?
If your set up stucks on “Realtek Audio”, try these to work around:
- Keep the installer running (do not force quit)
- go to your bootcamp folder, manually install the realtek driver, at the end of the install, do not restart
- after manually setting up realtek, open Task Manager, and kill the “RealtekSetup” process
- bootcamp will now skip the Realtek step and proceed.
(Referenced from https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6567790?tstart=0 )
In Windows land
Configuring keyboard and trackpad
Access the boot camp control panel from the status area (right most of the task bar), it’s the grey diamond icon. Click on it once then select “Boot Camp Control Panel”
Select the options you need in the “Keyboard” and “Trackpad” tabs in the new window.
Want to use the command key as ctrl? Apple remote desktop download free. Download sharp keys from http://www.randyrants.com/category/sharpkeys/
Want to use the command key as ctrl? Apple remote desktop download free. Download sharp keys from http://www.randyrants.com/category/sharpkeys/
Installing Visual Studio
Macbook Pro Net Development Costs
To mount the iso, select the iso file in explorer, and a new menu “Disc Image Tools” should appear. Clicking on it should give you 2 options “Mount” or “Burn”. Select “Mount” and run the set up application at the root of the disc (mine was “vs_enterprise.exe”).
Select custom installation so you can select the components you need. Video editing software for old mac. For me I enabled “SQL Server Data Tools” and some Git tools under “Common Tools”. If you are also doing frontend development, you can install node.js here too.
Enable any mobile-related components and the installation size jumps to 30+ GB as it auto-selects windows SDK and Android Native Development Kit (taking up about 5GB each) among others.
Enable any mobile-related components and the installation size jumps to 30+ GB as it auto-selects windows SDK and Android Native Development Kit (taking up about 5GB each) among others.
Install IIS
Open the “Programme and features” section of control panel and stay tuned for Part 2!