I wondering if an old MBP 2011 MD313 with spec i5/8GB/hd 3000/128gb ssd will be good enough for me to develop big games with Corona SDK… I’m planning to develop with Android Studio too…
Any advice? thx 
@azhar: my primary dev machine is a late 2011 MBP. It’s a 17" model with an i7, but for Corona development the i5 should do just fine. I don’t plan on retiring that machine for at least a couple of years (knock on wood). 8GB of RAM should be fine but that’s an easy and relatively cheap DIY upgrade should you want (I beefed mine up to 16GB but that doesn’t really impact Corona in any noticeable way). The only thing I’d wonder about is the HDD, especially if it’s a spinning platter (non-SSD) model, which was the stock configuration in 2011. A mechanical HDD may be noticeably slower after 5 years of regular use. But again, the 2011s are very easy to open up and swap out HDDs, so an upgrade to a nice beefy SSD will pay dividends. I replaced my stock 750GB non-SSD a few years ago with a 1TB SSD and it felt like getting a new computer for the cost of a hard drive!
wow, may I know the reason you upgrade to 16gb?
hmm… so, I think it’ll be okay right? the only reason why I want to develop in Mac is because Corona SDK Composer GUI that only available in Mac, and for the next 2 years I think they will not port it into windows :s… I’m thinking about productivity by using composer GUI so I could create games much faster…
I upgraded the RAM because I was just looking to max out the specs on the machine and I often have multiple apps open at once including Windows via Parallels, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere. I also just had a budget for it at the time. 8GB should do just fine for what you’re describing - if the machine was well-maintained, and the price is good, then I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for your needs. (Of course, I’m just a guy on the internet and don’t know the details on this specific machine, so: Buyer Beware.)
I’d also suggest you really try Composer GUI before you invest in a whole computer just for that. I personally don’t care for Composer GUI, but I’ve always prefered manual text input over WYSIWYG style tools. (I also prefer manual transmissions to automatic when driving, so it’s obviously a “thing” for me.) I’m not sure Composer GUI is worth buying a computer for. It’ll make some things easier, and some things potentially faster, but I’d think of it as a way to shave hours off your schedule, not days. And there’s a school of thought that says those extra hours are valuable in terms of becoming a better developer.
That said, with a Mac you can build for iOS and I personally prefer it as a dev environment - plus you can still install Windows on a Mac. If you’re serious about mobile development, you should incorporate iOS into your strategy. And that means you need a Mac.
Either way: good luck! 
I see… well, for me I’m planning to make Education Games which need (maybe) about 100+ unique scenes to explain many things… and of course I want to learn to develop for iOS market too :D… because in the worldwide app market, afaik iPhone have their own fanbase and big (if not giant) user… either way, since I’m still learning, I think I’ll be able to explore more about Mac and iOS
Thank you for your advise 
Jason has provided you some excellent advice. Thanks Jason. I wanted to add my own personal experience to the equation.
As long as your computer qualified to run the current version of macOS (currently 10.11 El Capitan.) and one version back (Yosemite), you should be able to run Corona SDK. In the fall Apple will release macOS Sierra at which point, we can’t guarentee that Corona will run on older OS’s. We try to protect it, but it’s Apple’s nature that something will force us to change our minimum.
Corona SDK itself doesn’t take up enormous amounts of resource. We are building to something that runs on a phone with much lower memory, CPU and throughput speeds. But you’re likely going to need Photoshop and Illustrator which can be memory hogs. You will need to run the latest version of Xcode which takes up several gigabytes of disk space through what we use Xcode for shouldn’t eat up too much in regards to resources.
Now I’m using a 2012 13" MacBook Pro. I too maxed the memory out at 16GB. Photohop etc, uses a lot of memory and I work with pretty high resolution photos (I’m also a photographer). I also tend to have a dozen to two dozen tabs open in a web browser at any given time. This of course eats up more memory.
My MBP shipped with a 512GB hard drive. I out-grew that a long time ago. I’ve replaced the boot drive with a 240 GB SSD drive and took our the DVD drive and moved the 512GB there. I’m still constantly running out of space, I’m going to have to take out the 512 and replace it with a 1GB drive (or larger).
Rob
I assume you mean 1 TB on the last line.
Yes, yes I did. T and G are pretty close on the keyboard. We will go with that excuse.
Rob
@azhar: my primary dev machine is a late 2011 MBP. It’s a 17" model with an i7, but for Corona development the i5 should do just fine. I don’t plan on retiring that machine for at least a couple of years (knock on wood). 8GB of RAM should be fine but that’s an easy and relatively cheap DIY upgrade should you want (I beefed mine up to 16GB but that doesn’t really impact Corona in any noticeable way). The only thing I’d wonder about is the HDD, especially if it’s a spinning platter (non-SSD) model, which was the stock configuration in 2011. A mechanical HDD may be noticeably slower after 5 years of regular use. But again, the 2011s are very easy to open up and swap out HDDs, so an upgrade to a nice beefy SSD will pay dividends. I replaced my stock 750GB non-SSD a few years ago with a 1TB SSD and it felt like getting a new computer for the cost of a hard drive!
wow, may I know the reason you upgrade to 16gb?
hmm… so, I think it’ll be okay right? the only reason why I want to develop in Mac is because Corona SDK Composer GUI that only available in Mac, and for the next 2 years I think they will not port it into windows :s… I’m thinking about productivity by using composer GUI so I could create games much faster…
I upgraded the RAM because I was just looking to max out the specs on the machine and I often have multiple apps open at once including Windows via Parallels, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere. I also just had a budget for it at the time. 8GB should do just fine for what you’re describing - if the machine was well-maintained, and the price is good, then I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for your needs. (Of course, I’m just a guy on the internet and don’t know the details on this specific machine, so: Buyer Beware.)
I’d also suggest you really try Composer GUI before you invest in a whole computer just for that. I personally don’t care for Composer GUI, but I’ve always prefered manual text input over WYSIWYG style tools. (I also prefer manual transmissions to automatic when driving, so it’s obviously a “thing” for me.) I’m not sure Composer GUI is worth buying a computer for. It’ll make some things easier, and some things potentially faster, but I’d think of it as a way to shave hours off your schedule, not days. And there’s a school of thought that says those extra hours are valuable in terms of becoming a better developer.
That said, with a Mac you can build for iOS and I personally prefer it as a dev environment - plus you can still install Windows on a Mac. If you’re serious about mobile development, you should incorporate iOS into your strategy. And that means you need a Mac.
Either way: good luck!
I see… well, for me I’m planning to make Education Games which need (maybe) about 100+ unique scenes to explain many things… and of course I want to learn to develop for iOS market too :D… because in the worldwide app market, afaik iPhone have their own fanbase and big (if not giant) user… either way, since I’m still learning, I think I’ll be able to explore more about Mac and iOS
Thank you for your advise
Jason has provided you some excellent advice. Thanks Jason. I wanted to add my own personal experience to the equation.
As long as your computer qualified to run the current version of macOS (currently 10.11 El Capitan.) and one version back (Yosemite), you should be able to run Corona SDK. In the fall Apple will release macOS Sierra at which point, we can’t guarentee that Corona will run on older OS’s. We try to protect it, but it’s Apple’s nature that something will force us to change our minimum.
Corona SDK itself doesn’t take up enormous amounts of resource. We are building to something that runs on a phone with much lower memory, CPU and throughput speeds. But you’re likely going to need Photoshop and Illustrator which can be memory hogs. You will need to run the latest version of Xcode which takes up several gigabytes of disk space through what we use Xcode for shouldn’t eat up too much in regards to resources.
Now I’m using a 2012 13" MacBook Pro. I too maxed the memory out at 16GB. Photohop etc, uses a lot of memory and I work with pretty high resolution photos (I’m also a photographer). I also tend to have a dozen to two dozen tabs open in a web browser at any given time. This of course eats up more memory.
My MBP shipped with a 512GB hard drive. I out-grew that a long time ago. I’ve replaced the boot drive with a 240 GB SSD drive and took our the DVD drive and moved the 512GB there. I’m still constantly running out of space, I’m going to have to take out the 512 and replace it with a 1GB drive (or larger).
Rob
I assume you mean 1 TB on the last line.
Yes, yes I did. T and G are pretty close on the keyboard. We will go with that excuse.
Rob