As a mobile app developer, you need a machine that is powerful, efficient and capable of handling the tough tasks involved in mobile app development. But you probably don't want to lug around some behemoth laptop, and you probably don't want to spend too much on specs you don't really need (unless it's company money, in which case, just buy it). An important consideration in finding the ultimate coding companion is the amount of RAM your MacBook should have.
Apple recently released the latest model in the MacBook Air lineup, the 15-inch MacBook Air. So in this article, we take a highly pragmatic approach to addressing a pressing question: Do most MacBook models, including MacBook models, come standard with 8GB of RAM? Will MacBooks Air and 13" Pros provide enough power for the typical mobile developer? Or is it critical to upgrade to 16GB or higher to avoid memory-related performance issues? To answer that question, we set out on an adventure Journey, using an M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM and an M1 Mac Mini with 8GB of RAM, carefully tracked the RAM used during a typical day of work.
day's work
We'll use sound science, by using a sample size of 1, based on typical tasks developers perform, including checking email, attending Teams meetings, managing Jira requirements, and assisting with customer support requests. Oh, and developing for mobile devices application.
test setup
Instead of just guessing or estimating the amount of RAM a mobile app developer uses, we'll check it directly by measuring a developer's RAM usage over the course of a day. Testing was done on two MacOS machines:
13-inch M1 MacBook Pro
16GB memory
512GB