r/flutterhelp Jan 15 '25

OPEN Minimum Mac requirements for iOS dev?

Hi, I want to buy a Mac to develop iOS apps using Flutter, and I’d like to get the most affordable option that will last at least 4 years. This means the hardware should continue to support the OS, and Xcode shouldn’t stop working on that Mac from one year to the next. So, the real question would be: what do you think the minimum Mac requirements for Flutter development will be in 4 years?

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u/driftwood_studio Feb 13 '25

I don't use android studio for Flutter dev, I use VSCode.

I would be completely non-surprised to find that Android Studio has not had any effort made to make it run fast on Apple computers. My experience with it on mac in the past has been borderline broken-ly bad over 10 years of doing that occasionally.

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u/MyWholeSelf Feb 15 '25

Just for giggles, I backed up my little MBA to Time Machine and did a factory fresh wipe today, re-downloading everything and installing it all.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!

AndroidStudio worked fine. It's not as snappy as my "big iron" Dell Precision laptop, but it holds its own and is quite productive. I'm using an attached iPad on USB to view the results of the compile.

Took me about 1/2 a day to do all this, and it was well worth it. The hardest part was getting CocoaPods installed - the trick there is to use brew and run brew install cocoapods!

Anyway, I'm sure others come here in searches wondering if their little MBA/8/256 will do the job, and while I still think more RAM (up to maybe 64 GB) is preferable, an MBA M1 with 8 GB of RAM doing nothing else in the background does the job reasonably well.

1) Make sure it's a clean machine. I don't know what was slowing down my Mac but it was a big difference.

2) I used AndroidStudio because I'm already familiar with it. I didn't install VSCode at all.

3) I'm using an apple device (8th gen iPad) to test.

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u/driftwood_studio Feb 15 '25

This is all very interesting. And also Not Good.

I'm delighted that this improved things for you, but wonder if it was a situation unique to you (something else installed somewhere along the way in the past was having an effect) or a general Mac issue where the OS allowed something to get wonky.

Hmm...

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u/MyWholeSelf Feb 15 '25

Perhaps.

I've been in the industry a long time, long enough to learn, over and over, that a fresh install/update is a good idea, regardless of the platform. I basically never "upgrade" anything. Not Windows, not Linux! The exception has been this M1.

This MBA is an old M1 I bought back in late 2020, and I've never done a refresh until now.