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Comment by misterpigs | Hacker News Reader

I took the plunge with the second gen MacBook Air after seeing fellow devs at WWDC haul them around as if they were nothing. I initially noticed the slower HDD and performance hit, but didn't miss it after the first week. The mobility was a huge boon. I was working for myself and often meeting clients or working from the coffee shop, bar, etc. I held on to it until the MacBook caught up in size/weight.

Source: me. I write iOS apps.

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Once the SSDs became standard (or a reasonably-priced option, I forget), the Air hit its stride, I think. I had a 2010 that I did dev work on (iOS and Mac), and it was great with plenty of power for what I was doing. My wife still has a hand-me-down 2011 that works fine. Getting a bit long in the tooth, and she sees more beach balls than she should, but it does what she needs it to do.

I can’t imagine having to work with one with the old iPod drives in them. Those things were dogs what with a small amount of RAM and a severe penalty for hitting disk. But, hey, I’m glad it served your needs! :-)

Interesting…the original MacBook Air I know was pretty slow and underpowered. How did it feel developing on it?

I was upgrading from a medium spec second gen Intel MacBook Pro so the performance hit wasn't as drastic for me. Development was fine honestly. The Air was my primary development machine for the next 4 years.

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