Recommended hardware requirements for xcode 11

Hello all,


I'm thinking about buying my first macbook pro because I want to build iOS apps with xcode 11 and SwiftUI.

I can't find system requirements for xcode but based on your experience what is the best hardware setup for macbook pro to build ios apps? I want the 15inch version for bigger area.

I really don't like slow computers so I thought about throwing in the highest specs possible, but that might be overkill and overkills the budget too. 😂

Is it better to buy a 6 core or 8 core? Is 32GB or RAM overkill or 16GB is perfectly enough? What about disk space, is 1TB enough for projects and IDE? Do I need a better GPU?

I have no idea what the system and IDE requires iecause I've never had an apple computer.


Thanks!

Replies

See thes recent thread: System Requirements for XCode


Cores & GPU might not be as big a factor as ram...always max it. Any modern mac can run Xcode, but the more ram you have, the less pain you'll see day/to/day.

  • I have found the opposite to be the case. I worked on a team of 14 on a very large, old, and well-established 5-star app, and I did not notice any significant Xcode workflow performance gains when I went from a 8GB MacBook Pro to 16GB.

    Similarly, when we decided to buy a 12-core, 32GB Mac Pro for our primary CI workstation, the build time improvements were underwhelming.

    Above the level of a competent modern MacBook Pro at 8GB, there is surprisingly little ROI at throwing cores and RAM expecting big gains , its just doesn't scale that way for reasons I've never been able to find online.

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Memory is vital (16GB SHOULD be enough for any app not explicitly calling for more in its requirements). Maybe even GPU. My pitiful late 2014 Mac Mini (i5M and 8GB, plenty of magnetic disk space) was fine until Xcode 9, now I'm using Xcode 10.2 and build times for a medium iOS project are slow but bearable, however Xcode's normal background activities seem to be crippling its UI much of the time. I click a file in my project tree and sometimes the editor opens immediately, sometimes nothing happens for 5, 10, even 30 seconds. Sometimes I get impatient and click the file again and moments later the file opens in a new window (false double-click). Even just clicking Xcode in the dock does nothing for long periods. This with a simulator open but no app running, or even no simulator opened. No other apps running but Finder and Dropbox. I'm hoping Apple can tune a future version for better foreground performance, otherwise they should explicitly warn and specify when/where more CPU GHz/Cores/RAM are needed. Oddly, running activity monitor (or top), I can't really see what is seizing all the resources. Swap space empty, no disk thrash, 5.7 of 8 GB physical memory used. Maybe it isn't the hardware...

Is it the case that that Xcode's ability to compile/function correctly does relate to your Mac hardware spec? I'm starting to assume yes. I'm getting the following error when I wouldn't have thought I should for example:


"The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions"


So it's as if my MacBookPro is taking too long, and so this is what get's thrown up?


I'm on:

* MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012),

* 2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

( 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

In our company (where I am developer), my Xcode 12.4 (current latest) App runs fine with my 8 GB RAM,
And actually, I even always have 3 GB unused RAM (as cached-files and Xcode only uses about 1.5 GB RAM).

To be precise, I have iMac 4K with Core i5 @3 GHz while 70% or 90% CPU is almost always (if not compiling) unused as well.

So in short, OMG you are not Bitcoin-Mining! what do you think you need all that 32 GB RAM for???

I have 16 GB Ram and 750 GB storage, works perfectly.