Ask HN: People who run two Macs – how do you use them?

3 pointsby thenextechtrade4 months ago1 comments

I’m curious how people practically use two Macs in their daily workflow.

My main machine is an M4 Mac (24GB RAM / 512GB). It’s extremely fast, but when I open a lot of browser tabs (especially Chrome + dev tools), I start hitting memory pressure.

I also still have my older M1 Mac (16GB / 256GB), which is mostly sitting idle.

Instead of selling it, I’m thinking there must be a smarter way to use both machines together.

Some ideas I’ve been thinking about:

• Turning the M1 into a “tab machine” (browser always open there)

• Running Docker containers / local services on the M1

• Using it as a small home server

• Running background jobs, scripts, scraping, etc.

• Using it as a remote build machine

I’m a developer, so I usually have a lot of tabs, terminals, and tools running at the same time.

For those of you who keep two Macs running — what’s your setup? What actually ended up being useful vs what sounded good in theory?

1 comments

schmookeeg4 months ago

I daily a M1 Max / 64GB / 2TB and have for some time.

My current company bought me an M4 Pro / 24GB / 512GB.

There is a significant amount of dust on it. I use it every once in awhile when I need to access my corporate Apple ID which is tied to the thing. I'll be really sad if they force me to use it on the daily. Luckily nobody seems to be checking usage.

I know it's not what you asked, but I think it's where you're headed -- an adequately specced Mac instead of two half-spec. :) I can't imagine splitting a workload between two physical machines again -- like when I needed a PC and the M1. It's a real PITA to juggle boxes.