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I have an aluminium 13" MacBook with 2GB or RAM and 5400RPM 500GB hard drive. The main tasks I perform are developing iPhone and Mac apps in Xcode and websites in Coda.

I want to improve the performance so I am considering buying 4GB of RAM or a 500GB Seagate solid-state hybrid drive. What is likely to provide the biggest performance boost?

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Given just 2GB of RAM and the tasks you're doing, it sounds much more likely that you're RAM-constrained rather than disk I/O performance-constrained.

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I agree, you need more RAM. Why not get both? – churnd Jun 1 '10 at 16:48
You can check your free memory on Activity Monitor's System Memory tab. But, yeah, what they said. – JRobert Jun 1 '10 at 20:12
Look for Page Outs on Activity Monitor as a good indicator if you need more RAM. But with 2GB, you most likely do. hardwaresecrets.com/article/26 – Cawas Dec 6 '10 at 19:16
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