.Net programming on a Apple computer

Question

I really would like to write an app or apps for iPhone / iPad. I've never done this so far because most of my work has been in windows environment. I recently got an i7 with windows 7 and love it, and this is what I am using to do development on currently. I would love to try out writing a simple App on a mac for either an iPhone or iPad.

The question I had was are there any developers using a macbook to do windows based programming as well as writing apps? And what is their setups like? (example: using bootcamp)

Most importantly, is it recommended based on the experience they had doing so? any problems / performance issue?

These are the concerns I have to address before justifying spending time and money on this.

Thanks, Voodoo

Answer 1

I use VMWare Fusion on my Mac, and made a living as a .NET programmer for several years. As long as you have at least 4 GB of RAM, I never really had any performance problems, even running SQL Server and Visual Studio both in the virtual machine. Just for reference, my machine is a MacBook Pro 15", 2.93Ghz, dual core. That's more than enough to run OS X and Windows 7 at the same time.

I was not a fan of Boot Camp, because of the reboot requirement, but if that is not an issue for you... then running Windows under Boot Camp is completely indistinguishable from a normal Windows notebook.

I would get some sort of cooling pad to set the MacBook (or Pro) on, as the fan drivers do not run as efficiently under Windows, and it will get a little warm (but I have never had any hardware issues due to heat).

EDIT: One other thing I thought of... the one thing that running two OSes at the same time will fight over is your hard drive. Tip: don't play iTunes on the Mac while trying to run Visual Studio in VMWare... it really will be frustrating, especially when you know that the computer is capable of so much more. If you have the cash, a SSD will less this problem TREMENDOUSLY, and really is the best upgrade you can possibly do for your computer, once it has at least 4gb of RAM.