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.
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.<p>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 <i>works</i>. 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 <i>never</i> going back.<p>My gaming rig is a different story, but for productivity on-the-go, there's no comparison.
My M1 Air is the best computer I've ever owned. Handles everything I throw at it.<p>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.
Surprised at the lack of dissenting comments.<p>Some background: I’m a professional ML dev.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Also fork over the extra $800 for the upgraded ram and disk space.
I used an m1 pro for work for about a month. I wound up returning it and getting issued a Linux laptop instead.<p>The laptop itself is absolutely amazing. The thousand paper cuts with things not properly supporting m1 was just too much to bear.<p>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 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.
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.<p>Docker is still not easy with the new architecture.
As usual, it depends on what you mean by <i>my development side projects</i>. 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.<p>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?<p>(Regular full stack software engineering, occasional graphics editing in Affinity Designer, audio work in Logic Pro, and video in Final Cut)
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.<p>Overall 9/10. Everyone already agrees they’re fast af and very capable.
I use my M1 MBP for professional development, for which I have also been using my 2014 (5K) iMac.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I have the M1 studio.<p>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.<p><i>However</i>, 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>My personal laptop is an M1 Pro MBP and it runs faster, quieter, cooler, and has over twice the battery life.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>I assume most of it will be worked out soon.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>But is the M2 v2 or is it another v1?<p>For example, I saw some mention of M2-specific thermal throttling: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941326" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941326</a> (also mention of slow 256gb SSD?)<p>> <i>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.</i>
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
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Back when I was backend, though, Docker and LEMP virtualization was nightmarish to use (late 2020). Maybe things have gotten better.<p>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 <i>feels</i> faster and more responsive than any Mac or PC I’ve ever used, including my $3000 i9 HP work laptop.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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, <i>and</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>examples</i>:<p>* Major impediments to using the Python gRPC library on Apple Silicon until very recently (<a href="https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/25082" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/25082</a>)<p>* Docker performance was dramatically worse than Linux & Windows until recently, with a recent update improving things for all Mac users, not just Apple Silicon (<a href="https://www.docker.com/blog/speed-boost-achievement-unlocked-on-docker-desktop-4-6-for-mac/" rel="nofollow">https://www.docker.com/blog/speed-boost-achievement-unlocked...</a>)<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>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.<p>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 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.<p>I love it -- super fast and quiet and the keyboard and build quality are great.