Ask HN: What's your experience with working M1 and M2 Macs?
I have been planning to buy a Mac for my development side projects. Before I do this, I thought I would ask people here for their experience and suggestions.
99 comments
Some back story: I bought a top-of-the-line X1 Carbon ThinkPad for ~$3,000 3 years ago. Within 1 year of owning it: the USB-C charging port broke, the fans started whining, so I had to open/adjust the case, Windows Hello never worked (?), the fingerprint sensor was wonky, and the battery ended up lasting around 5 hours with a realistic workload. This was after owning just about every top PC laptop brand out there: Alienware, Razer, a nice ASUS I had when in college, etc.
I bought my M1 MBP around a year ago. It's now 4:30pm, and I've been using it since 10am, sitting at 50% battery without plugging in at all. Everything just works. I even installed Steam and can play some games on it. I hated the idea of owning a Mac and have fought tooth and nail until I finally bit the bullet. It's literally the best laptop I've ever owned and I am never going back.
My gaming rig is a different story, but for productivity on-the-go, there's no comparison.
I bought my M1 MBP around a year ago. It's now 4:30pm, and I've been using it since 10am, sitting at 50% battery without plugging in at all. Everything just works. I even installed Steam and can play some games on it. I hated the idea of owning a Mac and have fought tooth and nail until I finally bit the bullet. It's literally the best laptop I've ever owned and I am never going back.
My gaming rig is a different story, but for productivity on-the-go, there's no comparison.
I wish I could buy a new Mac and run Windows on it. But I really dislike macOS. I've tried to like it, but it just feels like a crippled OS compared to Windows. I hate the lack of support for true fractional scaling, the comically bad window management (Windows 7 was miles ahead of where macOS is today), the shitty text rendering, the lack of configurability, the half-assed attempt to bring the iOS security model (which is not itself bad) to macOS, etc. etc. etc. The dock used to be better than the taskbar, but the Windows taskbar has been strictly better since Windows 7 too.
Agree 100%, this was what kept me away from a Mac, and why I was happy to let go the old MBP. I've been at it for months now but still hate the scaling and window management. I believe there's some third party tools that handle this and it's time to look into them.
The build times for a M1 are so fast that it's still a requirement for me though. The battery life for a MBP is amazing - it's almost a whole work day even on full compiling. So it's not really a choice.
The build times for a M1 are so fast that it's still a requirement for me though. The battery life for a MBP is amazing - it's almost a whole work day even on full compiling. So it's not really a choice.
> I've been at it for months now but still hate the scaling and window management. I believe there's some third party tools that handle this and it's time to look into them.
Don't know about the scaling, but for window management I find the Rectangle app quite helpful.
Don't know about the scaling, but for window management I find the Rectangle app quite helpful.
Depends what you mean by “run Windows”. I run Win 11 on my M1 Pro MBP with great results. Even played a little Dark Souls last night.
I would like to have a MBP that just used Windows as an operating system, not in a VM.
Fair enough. This ain’t it then.
I am not sure what's wrong, but I've been underwhelmed with my 14" MBP's battery life.
I was super excited to get one for work solely because of all the buzz about battery life. But here I'm getting 5 hours or so. Firefox and Chrome are by far the biggest offenders, but I don't do anything special.
Just wanted to give another anecdote.
I was super excited to get one for work solely because of all the buzz about battery life. But here I'm getting 5 hours or so. Firefox and Chrome are by far the biggest offenders, but I don't do anything special.
Just wanted to give another anecdote.
Try with Safari and install an ad-blocker, both firefox and chrome keeps letting ads continue to animate (GPU) and use WebWorkers in the background, Safari basically freezes tabs that are not in use and don't drain the battery.
I try to use Safari as much as possible, but I need something that works on Windows as well.
Firefox with uBO [0] and Auto Tab Discard [1] is pretty good on the battery. I often go 10h without a charge on my M1 Air and usually there's still a bit to spare.
[0] https://ublockorigin.com/ [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
[0] https://ublockorigin.com/ [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
Thanks for the recommendations, but I have both and some more. I wish there were an easy way to drill down on what exactly is consuming power.
Have you looked into the about:performance page? It might give you clues.
I have, but nothing stood out. I even tried Firefox Profiler (which is pretty good btw, kudos to the team), and it looks like DOM processing and renderer both spend a lot of CPU. But alas I'm not a frontend developer and have no incentive to dive deeper :)
It could be specific websites. Google web apps are notoriously hostile to Firefox.
I leave Javascript off by default on uBO and only allow it selectively when I have something to gain on each website.
I leave Javascript off by default on uBO and only allow it selectively when I have something to gain on each website.
I doubt it’s the only issue, but I switched to Safari for most things years ago, back when I had an Intel Mac. It significantly extended my battery life.
Do you miss a touchscreen?
I use a surface laptop 4 as my mobile workstation, and I like it overall, but the battery life leaves a lot to be desired. I'm OS agnostic, so the M1s caught my attention, but I use the touchscreen so much I'm not sure how happy I'd be with it unavailable to my workflow.
I use a surface laptop 4 as my mobile workstation, and I like it overall, but the battery life leaves a lot to be desired. I'm OS agnostic, so the M1s caught my attention, but I use the touchscreen so much I'm not sure how happy I'd be with it unavailable to my workflow.
I’ve realized that the only reason I desired a touch screen on windows notebooks was because windows trackpads are so awful. Even on high end $3,000+ machines.
The Mac trackpads are so responsive that they feel every bit as good as having a touch screen.
The Mac trackpads are so responsive that they feel every bit as good as having a touch screen.
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I've switched to using an iPad pro for all of my productivity and media consumption needs. With stage manager and an external monitor, it's going to become a very capable workstation, as it already is for me.
I have an XPS with a touchscreen and I always forgot it’s there. UI elements are just too small for my finger
Yes there is comparison, but not with Lenovo, Lenovo is crap.
My M1 Air is the best computer I've ever owned. Handles everything I throw at it.
My M1 Pro (work computer) is such a leap from my old intel machine. It's wild to be running our services locally with Docker, install Xcode, and take a Zoom call without so much as hearing the fans. Battery lasts all day. Don't know if I'd fork over that much money myself, though.
My M1 Pro (work computer) is such a leap from my old intel machine. It's wild to be running our services locally with Docker, install Xcode, and take a Zoom call without so much as hearing the fans. Battery lasts all day. Don't know if I'd fork over that much money myself, though.
"It's wild to be running our services locally with Docker, install Xcode, and take a Zoom call"
Wow. My ears started playing a loud phantom fan noise just reading that. No way my 2019 mac can handle that.
Wow. My ears started playing a loud phantom fan noise just reading that. No way my 2019 mac can handle that.
Same. I got the M1 Air earlier this year. Was worried I was too late in the product cycle, but after using it, this thing will be a beast for years to come.
Once you experience a computer that is absolutely silent, it’s really hard to go back to a normal laptop. My windows notebook spins it’s fan constantly and it drives me crazy. I have to put the machine to sleep and unplug the charger just to shut the damn thing up when I’m not using it
Are you running Arm Docker images? My experience with x86_64 images on M1 Max has been quite poor.
x86_64 docker is possible, but quite bad, also will always crash on some images (e.g erlang 24 due to added JIT). Switched to github actions for building own images
How much RAM?
I have an M1 Air as well. It's the best laptop I've owned, but in hindsight I should have sprung for 16GB. 8GB isn't enough.
16 doesn't feel like enough either (on the M1Pro MBP, I feel like I should have gone for the 32...
I lived out of an 8gb M1 Air for a year or so - it was great, but I should’ve gone with 16gb. Now I’m on a 32gb M1 Pro and concur with you that this feels like a sweet spot. Docker, Parallels, multiple browser windows, Slack, Blender, Unreal Engine … all at the same time. You just don’t have to think about manually managing your memory pressure.
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Surprised at the lack of dissenting comments.
Some background: I’m a professional ML dev.
I would buy an M1 if given the choice. But be aware that you’ll need to devote at least two weekends to compiling your own dependencies. Tensorflow “just works”, but the source code on M1 is closed source(!). Pytorch is relatively ok to compile, but you’ll have to figure out how to build it as CPU only. Jax was painful (sorry to say), but they seem to have recently sorted out their build issues.
Then we get into the hardware roulette. My M1 air has a “pink screen of death” issue (Google it and you’ll find dozens of stories, with no resolution). So get ready for a small chance of randomly rebooting when you’re in the middle of dev work, which is always so-much-fun.
Even with these flaws, I’d still take it. Even LuaJIT seems to work on M1 now. But it’s not all roses like the rest of the comments are saying.
Also fork over the extra $800 for the upgraded ram and disk space.
Some background: I’m a professional ML dev.
I would buy an M1 if given the choice. But be aware that you’ll need to devote at least two weekends to compiling your own dependencies. Tensorflow “just works”, but the source code on M1 is closed source(!). Pytorch is relatively ok to compile, but you’ll have to figure out how to build it as CPU only. Jax was painful (sorry to say), but they seem to have recently sorted out their build issues.
Then we get into the hardware roulette. My M1 air has a “pink screen of death” issue (Google it and you’ll find dozens of stories, with no resolution). So get ready for a small chance of randomly rebooting when you’re in the middle of dev work, which is always so-much-fun.
Even with these flaws, I’d still take it. Even LuaJIT seems to work on M1 now. But it’s not all roses like the rest of the comments are saying.
Also fork over the extra $800 for the upgraded ram and disk space.
Try running only Mac Silicon apps and no Intel ones, see if that helps for the wake-up-reboot issue. I kept seeing "Bad CurrentVBLDelta for display 2 is zero. defaulting to 60Hz." in the logs only from Intel-based apps, which, after put to sleep fills the logs so much it can't handle it after waking up so it reboots/crashes. Closing the Intel apps solved this.
I used an m1 pro for work for about a month. I wound up returning it and getting issued a Linux laptop instead.
The laptop itself is absolutely amazing. The thousand paper cuts with things not properly supporting m1 was just too much to bear.
I think if the projects you're hoping to work on have first class support for Apple silicon you can't find a better machine for love or money. If they don't, then steer clear.
The laptop itself is absolutely amazing. The thousand paper cuts with things not properly supporting m1 was just too much to bear.
I think if the projects you're hoping to work on have first class support for Apple silicon you can't find a better machine for love or money. If they don't, then steer clear.
If you had one early on consider it again. The first 6 months was abysmal for me, but ever since https://github.com/lima-vm/lima has been locked down I have ways to compile everything and run any container I want. `nerdctl` has taken a tiny bit of effort to learn but it's been well worth it.
When I first got my M1, support was pretty rough. These days it's pretty tough to find something that's broken.
The biggest incompatibility to point out is VMs. UTM exists, but is more limited in its capabilities and isn't as fast as I'd like. I've switched to using docker for everything instead of the standard Vagrant/VirtualBox setup everyone else at my org uses.
The biggest incompatibility to point out is VMs. UTM exists, but is more limited in its capabilities and isn't as fast as I'd like. I've switched to using docker for everything instead of the standard Vagrant/VirtualBox setup everyone else at my org uses.
> The thousand paper cuts with things not properly supporting m1 was just too much to bear.
This was almost me in Nov 2020 - Firefox barely worked, Docker was a no-go, Homebrew choked on probably 50% of packages - but in 2022 I can't recall the last time I ran into a Apple Silicon-specific issue.
This was almost me in Nov 2020 - Firefox barely worked, Docker was a no-go, Homebrew choked on probably 50% of packages - but in 2022 I can't recall the last time I ran into a Apple Silicon-specific issue.
Once the Linux kernel supports M1 you'll just be able to use regular ARM distros on it.
https://asahilinux.org/
https://asahilinux.org/
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The M1 and M2 macs have excellent performance and battery life, but beware of the fact that they don't work with Virtualbox. Virtualbox combined with Vagrant is great for declaratively spinning up a quick vm without using any proprietary software.
Is there a reason you don't just use https://rancherdesktop.io/
Vagrant has a few advantages compared to Rancher (and Lima[1] which I believe Rancher uses under the hood).
Because of its popularity, there are so many open source Ruby provisioning scripts you can use as a reference when provisioning your own VMs. You can also package up a provisioned VM as what they call a "box" that can be shared with other developers. It also natively integrates with tools like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet which make it a lot easier to manage the provisioning process.
And finally, many of the books and tutorials I've read use Vagrant, so it's much easier to follow along if you have Vagrant installed. For example I was recently reading the book Ansible for Devops by Jeff Geerling, and Vagrant and Virtualbox were used pretty extensively throughout the book.
Also, if you decide to package VMs to use in production it's pretty easy to integrate with Packer, which is another Hashicorp product.
[1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima
Because of its popularity, there are so many open source Ruby provisioning scripts you can use as a reference when provisioning your own VMs. You can also package up a provisioned VM as what they call a "box" that can be shared with other developers. It also natively integrates with tools like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet which make it a lot easier to manage the provisioning process.
And finally, many of the books and tutorials I've read use Vagrant, so it's much easier to follow along if you have Vagrant installed. For example I was recently reading the book Ansible for Devops by Jeff Geerling, and Vagrant and Virtualbox were used pretty extensively throughout the book.
Also, if you decide to package VMs to use in production it's pretty easy to integrate with Packer, which is another Hashicorp product.
[1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima
Docker is extremely popular and so there are plenty of reference Dockerfiles. Books and tutorials on K8S, Packer, ECS, GKR, etc all use OCI images, so docker (or something similar) is useful to have on hand. Yes, packer supports vagrant too, but just go to their website and go to guides, and notice how many docker guides they have and how prominent they are compared to vagrant. I think it's not about the individual implementations but about the paradigms they work in
Let's say I have a bug in prod. I just adjust my code, or Dockerfile, or some declarative config (say cloudformation or k8s definitions) and push it, and the CD doesn't say "go to existing machines and update them", it says "spin up containers with this new build and configuration, divert traffic to them, and then remove the old containers when safe". For me, provisioning is not something I want to touch outside of setting rules for autoscaling and saying "start using this new build". So arguments about provisioning (for my usecases) don't help - they sound like adding more responsibility onto me that computers already handle for me.
I don't feel that this declarative and abstract model is necessarily ALWAYS better than the imperative model you get with ansible et al. And I can think of an example: if you just need to run 1 command everywhere, ansible (or chef or puppet) is much faster than pushing a commit and waiting for the build and deployment. Or maybe if you needed a custom kernel. But I've never had an instance where those things were valuable or valuable enough; in all my experiences, fine-grain provisioning and treating servers like pets instead of cattle has never been a better choice (especially given bursty traffic), so I'm trying to broaden my horizons and understand where it would be a better choice.
Let's say I have a bug in prod. I just adjust my code, or Dockerfile, or some declarative config (say cloudformation or k8s definitions) and push it, and the CD doesn't say "go to existing machines and update them", it says "spin up containers with this new build and configuration, divert traffic to them, and then remove the old containers when safe". For me, provisioning is not something I want to touch outside of setting rules for autoscaling and saying "start using this new build". So arguments about provisioning (for my usecases) don't help - they sound like adding more responsibility onto me that computers already handle for me.
I don't feel that this declarative and abstract model is necessarily ALWAYS better than the imperative model you get with ansible et al. And I can think of an example: if you just need to run 1 command everywhere, ansible (or chef or puppet) is much faster than pushing a commit and waiting for the build and deployment. Or maybe if you needed a custom kernel. But I've never had an instance where those things were valuable or valuable enough; in all my experiences, fine-grain provisioning and treating servers like pets instead of cattle has never been a better choice (especially given bursty traffic), so I'm trying to broaden my horizons and understand where it would be a better choice.
I definitely get where you're coming from, but I think developers tend to overestimate the complexity of managing servers, and underestimate the complexity of managing a Kubernetes cluster. The last time I looked into Kubernetes even the most minimal setups required 500MB of memory on each machine, and that's assuming you're using a lightweight implementation like k3s or k0s. If you're using a managed service like EKS or GKE you're going to require even more memory and cpu resources. Kubernetes is ostensibly supposed to help you autoscale, but you only end up needing to autoscale because of the memory and cpu that Kubernetes is itself consuming. Most webapps can scrape by with just a single vm. Hacker News itself runs on a single machine [1]. Also if you reserve a vm for long term usage most cloud providers will give you a pretty steep discount [2]. If you need the ability to burst during periods of high traffic, you can just use a burstable instance, which all of the three big cloud providers support (i.e. Azure, GCP, and AWS).
I used to think managing servers introduced unnecessary complexity until I tried it, and realized it's really not as difficult as I thought. With kernel live-patching and unattended upgrades, I never have to manually update anything. Blue-green deployment is as simple as rsyncing files to the server, starting the updated app on a different port, and then updating your reverse proxy's config to point to the new version of the app. Any decent reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx will support zero downtime config updates. You don't have to build containers, store them in a registry, or update any yaml manifests. Kubernetes manifests have gotten so complex that developers are inventing programming languages like Jsonett and Dhall to generate configuration files.
Also, the skills you learn from managing servers are incredibly portable. Some of the Unix skills that I've gained from playing around with EC2 instances have actually helped me manage my personal Mac (which is of course a member of the BSD family of Unix operating systems). When you learn Cloudformation those skills don't even translate to other cloud providers. The skills that you learn from managing a server are also incredibly stable and stand the test of time. Bash is older than Docker, the programming language (Golang) that Docker was written in, and likely many of the developers using it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041
[2] https://instances.vantage.sh/?cost_duration=monthly
I used to think managing servers introduced unnecessary complexity until I tried it, and realized it's really not as difficult as I thought. With kernel live-patching and unattended upgrades, I never have to manually update anything. Blue-green deployment is as simple as rsyncing files to the server, starting the updated app on a different port, and then updating your reverse proxy's config to point to the new version of the app. Any decent reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx will support zero downtime config updates. You don't have to build containers, store them in a registry, or update any yaml manifests. Kubernetes manifests have gotten so complex that developers are inventing programming languages like Jsonett and Dhall to generate configuration files.
Also, the skills you learn from managing servers are incredibly portable. Some of the Unix skills that I've gained from playing around with EC2 instances have actually helped me manage my personal Mac (which is of course a member of the BSD family of Unix operating systems). When you learn Cloudformation those skills don't even translate to other cloud providers. The skills that you learn from managing a server are also incredibly stable and stand the test of time. Bash is older than Docker, the programming language (Golang) that Docker was written in, and likely many of the developers using it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041
[2] https://instances.vantage.sh/?cost_duration=monthly
I got a mini for light dev work, it is unbelievable responsive and if it fits your limits 16GB Ram and ssd space (you can upgrade with external cheaper ssd) it is a very good machine.
Docker is still not easy with the new architecture.
Docker is still not easy with the new architecture.
I love my M1 for development, I have a work M1, and I like it so much I am getting M2 for person use.
I had 2 main issues at first, but they are both resolved. One, if you want to use arm native Python conda now supports arm which is great. The second issue was docker, but it turns out that docker has qemu built in. here is an example of how to use x86 docker images on a M1 Mac.
I had 2 main issues at first, but they are both resolved. One, if you want to use arm native Python conda now supports arm which is great. The second issue was docker, but it turns out that docker has qemu built in. here is an example of how to use x86 docker images on a M1 Mac.
docker run -it --platform linux/amd64 ubuntu bashI ditched docker for rancher desktop and haven't needed to go back yet for any reason, plus I have k3s natively now as well.
As usual, it depends on what you mean by my development side projects. You will need to be more explicit on your use case if you want to get helpful suggestions. I own an M1 MacBook Pro and I can do any programming projects I'm interested on it.
As a counterexample, I have a friend who wants to do embedded development and FPGA, for his use case a Mac is useless.
As a counterexample, I have a friend who wants to do embedded development and FPGA, for his use case a Mac is useless.
If you work with the Python math/science ecosystem (sklearn, numpy, tensorflow, pytorch) there are some teething issues, especially with legacy codebases stuck on older versions of TF (Rosetta doesn't support AVX). It's great for Java/C++ though.
Question: Would I be better off getting the improved M1 pro/max or getting the regular M2?
(Regular full stack software engineering, occasional graphics editing in Affinity Designer, audio work in Logic Pro, and video in Final Cut)
(Regular full stack software engineering, occasional graphics editing in Affinity Designer, audio work in Logic Pro, and video in Final Cut)
There's a few videos on this on youtube and countless blogs. Here's my general take.
I have a company assigned m1 macbook pro 13.3 inch. It's a machine to make sure that M1 mac stuff works and it was the only M1 series laptop out when I started so I've done all my testing on that machine.
Synopsis: It's great, great battery life, operating is slick, can't complain except there is only two usb-c ports and you need one for power.
Would I buy an M series mac for personal use? nope, I bought an M1 ipad, which is an amazing piece of hardware that will only get better with iPad OS 16.
Now enough about me, lets look at why your two choices are:
14" MBP M1 Max Pro OR Mac Book Air with an M2 in it.
Why are those your two choices? First the big boy in the mix ... if you want a massively capable development machine to do all of the development things and it still be a portable laptop then the 14" mbp M1 Max Pro is your choice. The 16 is too big and if you must have the beefier Ultra, you should probably just wait until the new Mac Pro comes out or look at the studio. The 16" MBP is a desktop workstation disguised as a laptop.
So if you're going to go all out with money, then stick with the M1 series, but get the 14" MBP.
If you want the best bang for your buck and don't need all that extra horsepower than the M2 Macbook Air is up for order and starts delivering in a week. It's ultra portable, functional, future-proofed, and better design than the M2 MBP which is your only other M2 option at this time.
I have a company assigned m1 macbook pro 13.3 inch. It's a machine to make sure that M1 mac stuff works and it was the only M1 series laptop out when I started so I've done all my testing on that machine.
Synopsis: It's great, great battery life, operating is slick, can't complain except there is only two usb-c ports and you need one for power.
Would I buy an M series mac for personal use? nope, I bought an M1 ipad, which is an amazing piece of hardware that will only get better with iPad OS 16.
Now enough about me, lets look at why your two choices are:
14" MBP M1 Max Pro OR Mac Book Air with an M2 in it.
Why are those your two choices? First the big boy in the mix ... if you want a massively capable development machine to do all of the development things and it still be a portable laptop then the 14" mbp M1 Max Pro is your choice. The 16 is too big and if you must have the beefier Ultra, you should probably just wait until the new Mac Pro comes out or look at the studio. The 16" MBP is a desktop workstation disguised as a laptop.
So if you're going to go all out with money, then stick with the M1 series, but get the 14" MBP.
If you want the best bang for your buck and don't need all that extra horsepower than the M2 Macbook Air is up for order and starts delivering in a week. It's ultra portable, functional, future-proofed, and better design than the M2 MBP which is your only other M2 option at this time.
M2 > M1* in single thread, but in anything multi-threaded, the M1 Pro is better for multi-core, and the multi-core advantages of the M1 Pro are greater than the single core advantages of the M2.
Here's a review comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfJq0Y4Oos
The fact that your video is in Final Cut might give advantages to the M2, but I think for your use cases if the M1 Max is in your budget I'd either get that or wait for the M2 Pro.
Here's a review comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfJq0Y4Oos
The fact that your video is in Final Cut might give advantages to the M2, but I think for your use cases if the M1 Max is in your budget I'd either get that or wait for the M2 Pro.
Just got an M1 Mac since I spilled water all over my 2019 16" macbook pro. I was a little worried going in but its super snappy. vs code, gimp port and the overall OS loads faster and is more responsive.
Most things work. Some things took forever to get working, and I have no idea how I got them working.
Overall 9/10. Everyone already agrees they’re fast af and very capable.
Overall 9/10. Everyone already agrees they’re fast af and very capable.
This is my experience completely - also minecraft runs pretty well
I use my M1 MBP for professional development, for which I have also been using my 2014 (5K) iMac.
The MBP is fine. Before it I had a top-of-the-line Intel MBP which was a detestable piece of shit because of its shameful keyboard. And of course Apple compounded the offense of the "butterfly" keyboard by depriving "pro" customers of an entire row of keys and replacing them with the embarrassing emoji bar. I HATED that computer, almost entirely because of the keyboard.
The newer (old-style) keyboard is merely OK, but it hasn't caused me to pound the shit out of the computer to the point where internal components started to protrude through the back cover. It still lacks a real Delete key, but that's just Apple being petulant babies.
The physical design does repeat an absurd blunder, though: The USB ports are, AGAIN, so needlessly close together that you can't use two adapters next to each other. WTF, Apple. WTF.
Performance-wise, I haven't stressed it too much but Rosetta seems to work admirably. The biggest issue is the unfeasibility of running Windows in Fusion on it, but I guess I'll just get a Windows computer at some point.
The MBP is fine. Before it I had a top-of-the-line Intel MBP which was a detestable piece of shit because of its shameful keyboard. And of course Apple compounded the offense of the "butterfly" keyboard by depriving "pro" customers of an entire row of keys and replacing them with the embarrassing emoji bar. I HATED that computer, almost entirely because of the keyboard.
The newer (old-style) keyboard is merely OK, but it hasn't caused me to pound the shit out of the computer to the point where internal components started to protrude through the back cover. It still lacks a real Delete key, but that's just Apple being petulant babies.
The physical design does repeat an absurd blunder, though: The USB ports are, AGAIN, so needlessly close together that you can't use two adapters next to each other. WTF, Apple. WTF.
Performance-wise, I haven't stressed it too much but Rosetta seems to work admirably. The biggest issue is the unfeasibility of running Windows in Fusion on it, but I guess I'll just get a Windows computer at some point.
> The USB ports are, AGAIN, so needlessly close together that you can't use two adapters next to each other.
What kind of adapters? I have usb-c -> usb-a adapters that fit side-by-side just fine.
What kind of adapters? I have usb-c -> usb-a adapters that fit side-by-side just fine.
The solid USB-C-to-A ones, for instance. I don't like those because they put too much stress on the jack, but I'm sure a lot of people use them.
"You're posting too fast. Please slow down"
THEN WHY IS THE REPLY BUTTON ENABLED, rude jerks? WTF?
"You're posting too fast. Please slow down"
THEN WHY IS THE REPLY BUTTON ENABLED, rude jerks? WTF?
You can get ones that fit. These for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-SAILLIN-Compatible-Thunderb...
I have the M1 studio.
It's much, much better than the 2017 MBP it replaced, which I quite frankly hated using. Build times are so much faster. The vast majority of stuff does just work, and most of the time I can forget I'm using an ARM device.
However, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. It stutters hard when you push it: If I build, say, a large iOS app, it might be 5 times faster than before, but I can't do much while it is building because everything else can almost freeze up.
Additionally, it's not a perfectly backwards compatible system. Just this afternoon I had to locally debug a rails app, and a few of the gems just wouldn't compile. I find myself frequently having problems where it turns out to be an M1 thing, and the workarounds obviously waste time.
Also, I didn't pay for the device and would never have spent what is twice as much for the same performance (not to mention poorly designed hardware, see my other rants), and had I not needed a mac for iOS development, I wouldn't have got one. I don't find the mac a better development environment these days with WSL.
It's much, much better than the 2017 MBP it replaced, which I quite frankly hated using. Build times are so much faster. The vast majority of stuff does just work, and most of the time I can forget I'm using an ARM device.
However, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. It stutters hard when you push it: If I build, say, a large iOS app, it might be 5 times faster than before, but I can't do much while it is building because everything else can almost freeze up.
Additionally, it's not a perfectly backwards compatible system. Just this afternoon I had to locally debug a rails app, and a few of the gems just wouldn't compile. I find myself frequently having problems where it turns out to be an M1 thing, and the workarounds obviously waste time.
Also, I didn't pay for the device and would never have spent what is twice as much for the same performance (not to mention poorly designed hardware, see my other rants), and had I not needed a mac for iOS development, I wouldn't have got one. I don't find the mac a better development environment these days with WSL.
It's fine. I still prefer my personal Linux setup compared to Mac OS which I use for my employer, but I haven't really had many M1 specific issues - though I first got my M1 Pro MBP earlier this year. I do see for some of the packages I use that aarch64 builds are surprisingly recent though, so I could see someone who used it 6 months before I did having a worse experience.
For work I have a 2019 16 inch MBP with an i9-9980hk which was the last high-end intel model they released.
My personal laptop is an M1 Pro MBP and it runs faster, quieter, cooler, and has over twice the battery life.
That said, for both machines I do a lot of c++ compiling and the difference would be far less noticeable if I wasn't regularly running the cpu at 100% for significant periods of time.
My personal laptop is an M1 Pro MBP and it runs faster, quieter, cooler, and has over twice the battery life.
That said, for both machines I do a lot of c++ compiling and the difference would be far less noticeable if I wasn't regularly running the cpu at 100% for significant periods of time.
They are incredible. M1 Air is the best computer I’ve ever owned (16gb) and my M1 14 (64gb) is the second best.
I can only imagine that the m2 air with 24gb will be even better. To me the extra weight of the 14 wasn’t worth the extra monitor hookup. The tiny power adapter and no fan airs are where it’s at.
I can only imagine that the m2 air with 24gb will be even better. To me the extra weight of the 14 wasn’t worth the extra monitor hookup. The tiny power adapter and no fan airs are where it’s at.
I’m really disappointed that the M2 Air doesn’t support two external displays. I don’t need the bulky expensive MacBook Pro. The M1 Air is already far more powerful than I need.
I really hope this isn’t artificial market segmentation by Apple to sell more Pros.
I really hope this isn’t artificial market segmentation by Apple to sell more Pros.
Yes I'm not buying an M2 Air for the same reason (even though I love the form factor). I've been looking into DisplayLink but I'm just not confident enough to rely on that.
The single external display limitation is a big downside to some of the M1/M2 machines.
The single external display limitation is a big downside to some of the M1/M2 machines.
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On a M1 Ultra MBP. It's been mostly great. Battery lasts way longer than my previous Intel MBP. The fan rarely comes on. It's much faster. It doesn't get too hot to touch like the Intel ones do.
Issues I've had, any node project that uses a native plugin has had issues. If you're lucky they've updated. If not, .... I haven't seen if there's a workaround that doesn't require the plugin to update. As an example, the canvas npm package uses a native plugin and tries to download from somedomain.org/foo/bar/<arch>/the-bin and since arch is now arm64 it just gets a 404. Note, that issue might have been fixed but I've run into similar issues on other projects with other dependencies.
I assume most of it will be worked out soon.
Issues I've had, any node project that uses a native plugin has had issues. If you're lucky they've updated. If not, .... I haven't seen if there's a workaround that doesn't require the plugin to update. As an example, the canvas npm package uses a native plugin and tries to download from somedomain.org/foo/bar/<arch>/the-bin and since arch is now arm64 it just gets a 404. Note, that issue might have been fixed but I've run into similar issues on other projects with other dependencies.
I assume most of it will be worked out soon.
The ultra isn't out for a laptop I think you got it confused with the Pro.
I have been using an M1 Max MacBook Pro since last year. It builds code as fast as a desktop workstation, runs data wrangling workflows around three times faster than my previous Coffee Lake i9 Laptop, offers a Full day battery life (I have to charge it only every other day and I easily spend 7-8 hours daily in front of it), and the display is the best I’ve ever worked it. Also macOS is a joy to work with, quick look and spotlight being productivity powerhouses. Interestingly enough, it’s also very capable of gaming while consuming a ridiculously small amount of power.
I think of your domain is web dev, data wrangling, backend development (or obviously Mac/iOS development), M-series are the best machines currently in the market.
I think of your domain is web dev, data wrangling, backend development (or obviously Mac/iOS development), M-series are the best machines currently in the market.
I use an M1 MacBook pro for work. I’ve had no problems in general. There are few wrinkles with python development. The main thing is about various data specific libraries getting ported over. Most of the problems are solved with a quick google though.
I replaced an AMD RyzenThreadripper 1950X with an entry level M1 Mini.
Main things: 1/4 the RAM so I just need to be mindful about what I keep open. That said, Apple’s memory management is amazing, so this isn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be. Use macports. Native binaries. I don’t use Chrome. I use Orion or Safari and those are great. For dev work, I do Bash, Ruby, and x86 ASM. I test the assembly stuff in UTM. Nothing I do is really heavy, except for compiling Linux for random hardware I have as a hobby pursuit.
The only thing I miss is prototyping setups of servers. I don’t have enough RAM or threads. This doesn’t bother me much tho, since cloud pricing has dropped since 2017.
Main things: 1/4 the RAM so I just need to be mindful about what I keep open. That said, Apple’s memory management is amazing, so this isn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be. Use macports. Native binaries. I don’t use Chrome. I use Orion or Safari and those are great. For dev work, I do Bash, Ruby, and x86 ASM. I test the assembly stuff in UTM. Nothing I do is really heavy, except for compiling Linux for random hardware I have as a hobby pursuit.
The only thing I miss is prototyping setups of servers. I don’t have enough RAM or threads. This doesn’t bother me much tho, since cloud pricing has dropped since 2017.
You're supposed to let someone else work the kinks out of v1, right?
But is the M2 v2 or is it another v1?
For example, I saw some mention of M2-specific thermal throttling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941326 (also mention of slow 256gb SSD?)
> Although after all this I'm still not sure why the M2 MBP exists. By the time it's useful it costs nearly as much as the MBP 14" for the same spec which is far superior. And if you want to cheap it out, the M1 MBA is probably a better deal because it's far cheaper and perfectly adequate.
But is the M2 v2 or is it another v1?
For example, I saw some mention of M2-specific thermal throttling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941326 (also mention of slow 256gb SSD?)
> Although after all this I'm still not sure why the M2 MBP exists. By the time it's useful it costs nearly as much as the MBP 14" for the same spec which is far superior. And if you want to cheap it out, the M1 MBA is probably a better deal because it's far cheaper and perfectly adequate.
As an M1 MacBook Pro owner, I'd say the experience is quite frankly superlative. Oodles of power and battery life. Sadly, the RAM isn't upgradeable. So try to get as much as RAM as you can afford. Should help with longevity.
After nearly slamming my mind-bogglingly slow, gimped, company owned Dell Precision 5530 against the wall today, I've decided I want to work for a company that values my time and developer experience and provides a M2 machine. Working with sub-par hardware is really starting to take its toll. I briefly tested out a M1 MBP and was incredibly impressed. I've been planning on replacing my personal 2018 MBP with one of these newer M2 (or better) machines when hacky solutions aren't required in order to drive multiple displays
The developers at my company basically staged a revolt because we were so sick of out windows notebooks (yes, I’m being dramatic for effect). We’re all immediately moving over to M1/M2.
> I've decided I want to work for a company that values my time and developer experience
That’s one of the reasons we’re switching. Being Windows-only absolutely hurts recruitment.
> I've decided I want to work for a company that values my time and developer experience
That’s one of the reasons we’re switching. Being Windows-only absolutely hurts recruitment.
Is it really the windows only policy the problem or the IT departments conformity policy? At least that is the problem in my case, you could be a developer or an accountant in my company and you still get issued the same hardware cause IT wants to keep supporting the same hardware making their lives easier.
Bought M1 Mac mini when it came out. The moment Mac Studio was announced ordered it, because living with 16gb of memory is... troublesome. Been happy ever since.
Bought my daugher M1 MacBook Air. She constantly uses it unplugged and sometimes it feels it never discharges. After getting MacBook Air, she completely stopped using her iPad. Every time I want to take it to upgrade to latest os -- it is discharged and she always says last time used a week ago.
So, we're happy with M1 Macs. Going to wait for M3 before upgrading any of the systems.
Bought my daugher M1 MacBook Air. She constantly uses it unplugged and sometimes it feels it never discharges. After getting MacBook Air, she completely stopped using her iPad. Every time I want to take it to upgrade to latest os -- it is discharged and she always says last time used a week ago.
So, we're happy with M1 Macs. Going to wait for M3 before upgrading any of the systems.
Love my M1 Mac now that I'm a front end dev. The node ecosystem is mostly compatible with it now, except some really old modules.
Back when I was backend, though, Docker and LEMP virtualization was nightmarish to use (late 2020). Maybe things have gotten better.
In general, if you need legacy support, I'd stay far away from the M1. Otherwise go for it, best laptop I've ever had by far! (the only machine that comes close is the ThinkPad x1 Carbon)
Back when I was backend, though, Docker and LEMP virtualization was nightmarish to use (late 2020). Maybe things have gotten better.
In general, if you need legacy support, I'd stay far away from the M1. Otherwise go for it, best laptop I've ever had by far! (the only machine that comes close is the ThinkPad x1 Carbon)
Phenomenal. The best computers I’ve ever used. My MacBook Air never has fan noise, never gets hot, and never thermal throttles. The battery lasts so long that I go days between charging it. The machine feels faster and more responsive than any Mac or PC I’ve ever used, including my $3000 i9 HP work laptop.
Assuming software comparability isn’t an issue, I don’t know how I could recommend any non-M1/M2 machines in earnest.
Assuming software comparability isn’t an issue, I don’t know how I could recommend any non-M1/M2 machines in earnest.
Big thumbs up. The ARM ecosystem is mature enough that 95% of what you want to do will just work, either natively or with Rosetta 2. If you need to do something very low level you might run into issues, but since many other developers are in the same boat any problem likely has some workaround.
Nothing can beat the price/performance of the M chips. There are some drawbacks, but overall it’s the best computer I’ve owned.
Nothing can beat the price/performance of the M chips. There are some drawbacks, but overall it’s the best computer I’ve owned.
I've had a M1 mac mini for about a year now. It's been a really great machine, dead silent (never heard the fan), super fast and responsive. No complaints really, software mostly seems to have caught up to the new architecture. I do most of my work in JS/TS, React, etc. Don't know if I'd buy a M1 mac mini right now though, feels like a M2 refresh is due soon.
Mac Studio M1 Max for me and M1 Pro MacBook Pro for the wife. These are by far the best computers we’ve ever owned. Everything happens so quickly and smoothly. Quiet. So quiet.
100% uptime except for software update restarts. Literally my only issue so far is some obscure software from the Census Bureau doesn’t work on the ARM Windows VM
100% uptime except for software update restarts. Literally my only issue so far is some obscure software from the Census Bureau doesn’t work on the ARM Windows VM
So far I love the M1 for day to day dev. The biggest issue I’ve had is support for older software that never was compiled for M1. For instance, I have a contract right now with a company that uses a very old version of Postgres + PostGIS that I literally can’t build on an M1.
Besides that, I love the M1 laptops, the battery life and performance to cost ratio
Besides that, I love the M1 laptops, the battery life and performance to cost ratio
Others have said all the basic plusses and minuses so I won't repeat them. The big things about my M1 Air have been the really good battery life, but on the other hand I hate the mac keyboard layout. It's a very good option if you prefer small and light laptop that doesn't run out of battery even in a heavy use.
Absolutely amazing. QEMU since version 7.0 has much better support for working on MacOS M1/M2, nowadays Podman (I prefer it over Docker) works fine as well. Sadly, GDB in Homebrew still wasn't ported to the ARM just yet, I have to use LLDB every time. Compared to Linux though, containerization is still problematic.
Not an Apple Silicon user myself, but I have had to maintain shell scripts and cross-platform applications _for_ these users. Aside from these following niche issues, I've heard nothing but good things about performance and battery life.
I myself use Linux (Ubuntu/Arch/NixOS) via Windows WSL2.
I would say that the developer experience on MacOS (with or without Apple Silicon) is "sufficient" for the vast majority of use cases, but there have been some pain points that I describe below as emblematic issues.
If you're developing applications that are intended to run on Linux servers or with specific hardware (CUDA/ML), perhaps MacOS is not the best tool for the job. In that niche, you're likely to be running a different OS, on a different architecture, and perhaps even relying on binary translation (Rosetta 2) to run the same applications as in your target environment. For these sort of "close to the metal" development roles, I recommend aligning your developer stack with your target.
For the vast majority of other development roles, from data engineering to frontend web, I admit to being a little envious of what folks say about their Apple Silicon devices.
Examples of issues I've seen recently with development on MacOS (with or without Apple Silicon). Keep in mind, these are edge cases these days and only listed as examples:
* Major impediments to using the Python gRPC library on Apple Silicon until very recently (https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/25082)
* Docker performance was dramatically worse than Linux & Windows until recently, with a recent update improving things for all Mac users, not just Apple Silicon (https://www.docker.com/blog/speed-boost-achievement-unlocked...)
* Performance of virtualized x86-64 applications work against many of the performance benefits of the M1/M2, this is especially prevalent with Docker containers that are built only for x86-64.
* Homebrew is an absolute must, do install script maintainers and colleagues a favor by installing the latest GNU userland (coreutils), as your Mac will come with GNU utilities circa 2007 (the last GPLv2 releases of GNU utilities)
I would say that the developer experience on MacOS (with or without Apple Silicon) is "sufficient" for the vast majority of use cases, but there have been some pain points that I describe below as emblematic issues.
If you're developing applications that are intended to run on Linux servers or with specific hardware (CUDA/ML), perhaps MacOS is not the best tool for the job. In that niche, you're likely to be running a different OS, on a different architecture, and perhaps even relying on binary translation (Rosetta 2) to run the same applications as in your target environment. For these sort of "close to the metal" development roles, I recommend aligning your developer stack with your target.
For the vast majority of other development roles, from data engineering to frontend web, I admit to being a little envious of what folks say about their Apple Silicon devices.
Examples of issues I've seen recently with development on MacOS (with or without Apple Silicon). Keep in mind, these are edge cases these days and only listed as examples:
* Major impediments to using the Python gRPC library on Apple Silicon until very recently (https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/25082)
* Docker performance was dramatically worse than Linux & Windows until recently, with a recent update improving things for all Mac users, not just Apple Silicon (https://www.docker.com/blog/speed-boost-achievement-unlocked...)
* Performance of virtualized x86-64 applications work against many of the performance benefits of the M1/M2, this is especially prevalent with Docker containers that are built only for x86-64.
* Homebrew is an absolute must, do install script maintainers and colleagues a favor by installing the latest GNU userland (coreutils), as your Mac will come with GNU utilities circa 2007 (the last GPLv2 releases of GNU utilities)
I have a M1 Macbook Pro. I’m sure it’s a great computer but as soon as I look at the screen a few moments my eyes hurt. I can work with my Macbook Air for hours with no problem. I read all the comments here and no one mentions a problem with the screen. There must be something wrong with mine.
Been using a 14” MBP for a few months now. Best machine I’ve ever owned. I don’t care that much about the CPU perf, but that’s been praised to death online. What amazes me is the SSD perf and battery life.
Some docker containers are still problematic, but most native software and dev tools work flawlessly.
Some docker containers are still problematic, but most native software and dev tools work flawlessly.
I'm especially interested to hear from longtime Linux users who started using MacOS for the first time.
The M1s are attractive, and can hopefully retire with proper Linux thanks to Asahi. But I'm worried that I'll come to hate it only past the return window.
The M1s are attractive, and can hopefully retire with proper Linux thanks to Asahi. But I'm worried that I'll come to hate it only past the return window.
I admit I made the transition a few years ago. I converted the remainder of my services into containers and haven't "run" linux as a workstation operating system since switching and it's been over a year since I had a linux VM running as well. I have found every tool I used in linux to be the same or better on mac products.
For personal use, my only workstation is a iPad Pro with a keyboard and mouse.
For personal use, my only workstation is a iPad Pro with a keyboard and mouse.
I have MBP 16 with M1 Pro for six months now. I’m yet to experience the sound of fans running, it’s incredible. Battery life is so great it’s not something I think about anymore aside from checking whether it’s charged.
I have an 16" M1 Max -- am a senior dev working on projects in react native, rust and unity. Honestly haven't had any problems.
I love it -- super fast and quiet and the keyboard and build quality are great.
I love it -- super fast and quiet and the keyboard and build quality are great.
Best computer I’ve owned. M1 is plenty for my typical workloads but I’m excited to get more perf everytime I may need to upgrade.
The first thing you notice when you use an M1 Air is that there's no fan noise.
Such a little thing makes a world of difference.
Such a little thing makes a world of difference.
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