A MacBook 12 inch could spend its later life as a Swift Playground machine
This time, I want to write that when you decide to study Swift with Swift Playground, an old Mac can still be a viable option.
I really felt this on the Shinkansen ride to the Kinosaki Onsen workation retreat: trying to use the current Xcode on a MacBook 12 inch is quite difficult.
Not only is Xcode heavy, but the iPhone Simulator is also heavy, so the spinning beach ball appears quickly.
The MacBook 12 inch is still perfectly usable for Web development. But after the pandemic began, running Docker while talking on Zoom became heavy, and I gradually stopped using it.
Around that time, one of the recurring VR booms arrived, and I started wanting an NVIDIA graphics card, so I shifted toward using a Windows machine as my main machine. Now the MacBook is spending its later life as a checking machine.
I already had Swift Playground installed on my iPad Pro 11 inch, but I had only thought I would use it when I had free time, and ended up barely touching it until now.
Then it occurred to me that installing and using Swift Playground on the Mac might be more comfortable than using Xcode. Looking at the official site, it says it can be used on Mac too.
After installing it, Swift Playground was still a little heavy on the MacBook 12 inch, but it was far better than running Xcode. In terms of editor lightness, using VSCode is also an option, though I have not tried that yet. But the great thing about building in Swift Playground is that the project can later be used in Xcode.
Incidentally, projects created on the iPad can be synced and edited on the Mac as well. That means when going out, you can experiment a little on the iPad, then later build it out properly on the Mac, which is appealing.
I think quite a few people may be starting to learn Swift now for VisionOS development. So this was an introduction to how installing Swift Playground on an old Mac can be fairly comfortable.