Developers/Musicians using M1+ Macs

[trickster is meaningless]

Hey all,

A lot of the focus around the M1 is on video/photo editing. However there aren't a huge number of reports on audio or software development. I'm going to refer to M1 here as the generation rather than the specific chip, so that'll encompass the Pro/Max/Ultra. My daily driver is a 2016 MBP, which is fine, but I'm looking at a Studio to replace my Mac mini as an always on server and "grunt power" machine.

Audio
I understand Logic is now a universal app, so can run natively on M1 and slowly third parties are releasing native/universal installers. For example, I see Kontakt Player from Native instruments became a native app recently. How are people finding the general ecosystem? Has anyone found any issues with hardware, like audio interfaces? I'm not really worries about benchmarks, but has the transition been stable? Or stable enough for you?

Software Development
So on a day to day basis, I work as a software dev but do a fair bit of DevOps too. I use JetBrains IDEs for Java, Python and a few other bits, these seem to have been ported (except some of the C# stuff, but I don't use that). On top of this, I use home-brew and docker quite a lot. I'm aware any x86 images will need to go through translation, which may be a big performance hit. How have people found this? I've seen some reports that docker is quite slow on M1, but it seems to be getting better with time. As far as VMs go, I'm expecting this to be a bit painful to start with. Virtual Box aren't making any noises about supporting non-x86 hosts, but UTM seems to be an option for native ARM VMs. I predominantly use Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, so windows isn't an issue. Has this been ok for people?

Any experiences, good or bad, are useful
Thanks in advance

 

[leman]

M1is currently the fastest - by far - architecture for software development, unless of course you have to do x86 or windows specific stuff. Compilers and tools just fly on these CPUs. The humongous caches and excellent beach prediction performance makes all the difference. I work with R, Python, C++, Rust and occasional Haskell and the performance is insane.

 

[5425642]

Hey all,

A lot of the focus around the M1 is on video/photo editing. However there aren't a huge number of reports on audio or software development. I'm going to refer to M1 here as the generation rather than the specific chip, so that'll encompass the Pro/Max/Ultra. My daily driver is a 2016 MBP, which is fine, but I'm looking at a Studio to replace my Mac mini as an always on server and "grunt power" machine.

Audio
I understand Logic is now a universal app, so can run natively on M1 and slowly third parties are releasing native/universal installers. For example, I see Kontakt Player from Native instruments became a native app recently. How are people finding the general ecosystem? Has anyone found any issues with hardware, like audio interfaces? I'm not really worries about benchmarks, but has the transition been stable? Or stable enough for you?

Software Development
So on a day to day basis, I work as a software dev but do a fair bit of DevOps too. I use JetBrains IDEs for Java, Python and a few other bits, these seem to have been ported (except some of the C# stuff, but I don't use that). On top of this, I use home-brew and docker quite a lot. I'm aware any x86 images will need to go through translation, which may be a big performance hit. How have people found this? I've seen some reports that docker is quite slow on M1, but it seems to be getting better with time. As far as VMs go, I'm expecting this to be a bit painful to start with. Virtual Box aren't making any noises about supporting non-x86 hosts, but UTM seems to be an option for native ARM VMs. I predominantly use Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, so windows isn't an issue. Has this been ok for people?

Any experiences, good or bad, are useful
Thanks in advance

I’m also DevOps / developer the m1 pro base was good but I did run out of ram so I upgrade it to the m1 pro base cpu with 32GB of ram

 

[trickster is meaningless]

I’m also DevOps / developer the m1 pro base was good but I did run out of ram so I upgrade it to the m1 pro base cpu with 32GB of ram

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I’d have probably snapped up an M1 mini if it had 32gb, but 16gb is what I have at present and is the main bottleneck. Have you noticed any performance drops with containers or is it generally ok?

 

[5425642]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I’d have probably snapped up an M1 mini if it had 32gb, but 16gb is what I have at present and is the main bottleneck. Have you noticed any performance drops with containers or is it generally ok?

I have not notice any performance drop, using docker. For every update Apple does it works better ofc. But I have not notice any major issues.

I'm using my Mbp for work etc. so it's a important peace of hardware for me

 

[trickster is meaningless]

That's good to know. Thank you. I imagine I'd see a huge performance increase from my machines anyway, purely down to age even through a translation/emulation layer. I better start saving for my new Studio ??

 

[5425642]

That's good to know. Thank you. I imagine I'd see a huge performance increase from my machines anyway, purely down to age even through a translation/emulation layer. I better start saving for my new Studio 😀😀

Just buy what you need now
That’s how I use to do, but what I need now and after 3-4 years I need to update and then I can buy the newest.
If you buy overkill now to future proof then it can last for 6-8 years sure but do you want to keep it so long?

Instead take that money and put it in savings until you need yo upgrade next time

 

[ADGrant]

Software Development
So on a day to day basis, I work as a software dev but do a fair bit of DevOps too. I use JetBrains IDEs for Java, Python and a few other bits, these seem to have been ported (except some of the C# stuff, but I don't use that). On top of this, I use home-brew and docker quite a lot. I'm aware any x86 images will need to go through translation, which may be a big performance hit. How have people found this? I've seen some reports that docker is quite slow on M1, but it seems to be getting better with time. As far as VMs go, I'm expecting this to be a bit painful to start with. Virtual Box aren't making any noises about supporting non-x86 hosts, but UTM seems to be an option for native ARM VMs. I predominantly use Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, so windows isn't an issue. Has this been ok for people?

If you use Ubuntu, you can run Ubuntu ARM VMs on M1 Macs using Multipass. This gives you configurations similar to Ubuntu instances on cloud providers like AWS. If you are deploying to ARM Linux on AWS this could be very useful.

I think you can run Ubuntu ARM desktop distros using Parallels but I am not sure. Parallels is quite expensive of course. I haven't heard of any plans to port Virtual Box or VM Ware Fusion to M1.

Docker supports native ARM images of course and runs Natively on the M1 Macs but the docker ecosystem is still very X86 centric. Its going to be a while before ARM makes big inroads I think.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Docker supports native ARM images of course and runs Natively on the M1 Macs but the docker ecosystem is still very X86 centric.

Has anyone tried nerdctl or Rancher Desktop?

 

[satcomer]

Also if you serious about able audio look mat web site Waves.com that has a good list for M1!

 

[trickster is meaningless]

If you use Ubuntu, you can run Ubuntu ARM VMs on M1 Macs using Multipass. This gives you configurations similar to Ubuntu instances on cloud providers like AWS. If you are deploying to ARM Linux on AWS this could be very useful.

I think you can run Ubuntu ARM desktop distros using Parallels but I am not sure. Parallels is quite expensive of course. I haven't heard of any plans to port Virtual Box or VM Ware Fusion to M1.

Docker supports native ARM images of course and runs Natively on the M1 Macs but the docker ecosystem is still very X86 centric. Its going to be a while before ARM makes big inroads I think.

Thanks, I think UTM seems to be a pretty good replacement for VMs for ARM compatible VMs. If I need x86, it looks like parallels is the only option. However, I'm not going to retire my 2012 Mac mini or 2016 MBP yet, so I have some options.

Just buy what you need now
That’s how I use to do, but what I need now and after 3-4 years I need to update and then I can buy the newest.
If you buy overkill now to future proof then it can last for 6-8 years sure but do you want to keep it so long?

Instead take that money and put it in savings until you need yo upgrade next time

I tend to be on an 8 year cycle for my machines, however the last Mac mini update coincided with moving, the the apple silicon announcement made me decide to hold out and play about with a Hackintosh. However that's waaay to power hungry to leave on 24/7, and ultimately was a fun experiment but I doubt I'll repeat it. I think I'm going to wait for reviews, although WWDC will be here before delivery by the looks of things. I certainly don't need an Ultra, but I suspect I'll go for the higher Max with 64GB and maybe 2TB, so its a £3.5k, which I don't have a problem with at all. That'll pay for itself in very little time.

 

[satcomer]

Another place for podcasters and some audio applications Rogue Amoeba.com with their Loopback and if you sound effects on podcast or video calls the try Farrgo because it acts like an old radio cart machine!

 

[ADGrant]

Thanks, I think UTM seems to be a pretty good replacement for VMs for ARM compatible VMs. If I need x86, it looks like parallels is the only option. However, I'm not going to retire my 2012 Mac mini or 2016 MBP yet, so I have some options.

Parallels does not support x86 VMs on Apple Silicon.

 

[slainbabyyc]

Here you go brother: https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1332599-m1-apple-silicon-experiences-audio.html

M1 is great for me. No complaints. Everything runs in Rosetta except Massive X