iMac 21" for php development and as a home computer?

[macaso]

Hello,

I want to renew my 5 year old PC, and I'm thinking in buying a 21" late-2015 iMac, the 1,6GHz one with 8GB RAM and the 1TB HDD.

My current computer is running Windows 10, and I use this machine for web browsing, sharing files with eMule, storing/organizing photos (no photoshop, only some digital albums), doing some documents with Word and Excel and, the most important thing for me: doing non professional PHP development.

Currently, for the PHP development I'm working with a virtual machine with Linux (Lubuntu), Apache, PostgreSQL and Netbeans (I'm not using Vagrant), but I want to work running Netbeans native (in the "host" OS) and using a small virtual machine to host the Apache Server and the PostgreSQL server (a simple 512Mb Linux VM with Vagrant).

Anyone here is using an iMac with a setup like this? What cons and pros are there when moving from Windows 10 to Mac for web development? Is this iMac (the MK142XX/A with 8GB) enough for this work for the next 5-6 years?

 

[chas_m]

It can certainly handle all the things you describe easily. The one thing most of us around here don't like about the 21.5-inch model is that the RAM is not upgradeable. If that's not an issue, then I can see no reason why that machine wouldn't work out fine for you, but you may want to wait for other members who use Macs for web development to weigh in. I don't.

 

[vansmith]

A Mac is largely no better or worse than any other *nix box. Apache and PHP are installed out of the box although MySQL isn't (if you're going to need it). I don't think they get updated all that often but since OS X is updated yearly, you'll never be all that far behind (OS X 10.11.2 comes with Apache 2.4.16 and PHP 5.5.30 which are a few versions behind as Apache is at 2.4.18 and PHP 7 was just released). All in all though, it'll do the job just fine.

 

[macaso]

A Mac is largely no better or worse than any other *nix box. Apache and PHP are installed out of the box although MySQL isn't (if you're going to need it). I don't think they get updated all that often but since OS X is updated yearly, you'll never be all that far behind (OS X 10.11.2 comes with Apache 2.4.16 and PHP 5.5.30 which are a few versions behind as Apache is at 2.4.18 and PHP 7 was just released). All in all though, it'll do the job just fine.

For me there is no problem if Apache and PHP aren't updated; I want to use Vagrant to replicate my production server, using the same packages and versions, so this way it's difficult to have compatibility problems when moving to production.

My main concern about this computer is: will I have memory or CPU problems? Are you may know, PHP is a really low-intense computing language and, at least with Windows 10 and with Linux, with 8Gb RAM there is plenty of free RAM...

 

[chas_m]

Yes I think you'll find that 8GB will be plenty for your use on El Capitan and later. Of course, nobody can predict the future, so you may want to explore your options when ordering and consider how long you'll have the machine and what else you might use it for when weighing those up.

 

[vansmith]

8GB of RAM is fine for now and if you don't plan to do anything intensive, you should be fine. 8GB will do for day to day things and should be fine for PHP development, especially if you're not doing anything crazy.