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m1 for light software development

I

internet john

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 13, 2020
3
1
Hey folks,

In the market for a new machine. What do you guys think of base M1 MBA for light software development? Mainly web and mobile dev but nothing too crazy.

Typical workflow would be xcode, vscode, spotify, slack, chrome open all at same time.

Also edit photo and video from time to time..(figma, photoshop, etc)
 
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internet john said:
Hey folks,

In the market for a new machine. What do you guys think of base M1 MBA for light software development? Mainly web and mobile dev but nothing too crazy.

Typical workflow would be xcode, vscode, spotify, slack, chrome open all at same time.

Also edit photo and video from time to time..(figma, photoshop, etc)
Click to expand...
As long as you're not relying on Docker to run x86 images, it should be fine.
 
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If you have any specific questions or concerns, ask them. Otherwise, people will keep telling you that it’ll be a good machine.
 
I would wait until your software officially supports ARM 100%, because any App or portion of an app which isn't optimized can take ten to twenty seconds to translate the first time it runs.
 
darngooddesign said:
I would wait until your software officially supports ARM 100%, because any App or portion of an app which isn't optimized can take ten to twenty seconds to translate the first time it runs.
Click to expand...
That’s not really an issue though is it. If it happened every time then it could get irritating, but not as a one time thing.
 
chabig said:
But just the first time, so no big deal in my opinion.
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Yeah but even after the first time you are still using something half baked because it’s not going to be fully optimized for arm until it has been specifically programmed.
 
If you can live with the RAM, it will be a great machine. It'll definitely have the best price/performance ratio.
Mostly, I'd be worried about working on huge projects or having many Chrome tabs open.

If your old machine had 8GB and you didn't have any problems, you'll be happy with 16GB.
If you're already using 16GB and plan to keep the new machine for many years, I'd consider waiting for a 32GB MBP.
 
...it’s not going to be fully optimized for arm until it has been specifically programmed.
Click to expand...
But who cares? It’s already running faster than the fastest Intel chip. Plus, developers are so far removed from the hardware that they aren’t optimizing anything for the chip.
 
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prism said:
Yeah but even after the first time you are still using something half baked because it’s not going to be fully optimized for arm until it has been specifically programmed.
Click to expand...
Check the front page of macrumors at the moment. Even running under Rosetta, the M1 machines are still faster than the previous generation intel chips.
 
chabig said:
But who cares? It’s already running faster than the fastest Intel chip. Plus, developers are so far removed from the hardware that they aren’t optimizing anything for the chip.
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Which begs the question as to why the developer would put in the resources of building it natively if the translated version already runs faster than on its native Intel environment,right?
 
thunng8 said:
Check the front page of macrumors at the moment. Even running under Rosetta, the M1 machines are still faster than the previous generation intel chips.
Click to expand...
Synthetic benchmarks vs. real life can be a world of a difference, we will see the true results very soon.
 
prism said:
Which begs the question as to why the developer would put in the resources of building it natively if the translated version already runs faster than on its native Intel environment,right?
Click to expand...
1. Because they are professional developers.
2. Rosetta might not be around forever
3. Competition
4. It’s not too hard to check a box and recompile
 
I'm still waiting for some other devs to review, but I'm sure it'll be more than adequate. I've used a 12" macbook as a daily driver (i5, fanless) and it was fine - build times in xcode were surely longer, but nothing too crazy. If you are only working on small apps, it was fine. The M1 leaves that little macbook in the dust. I currently use a 16" MBP but the M1 on paper is faster than that...

My only concern is that we don't really know the thermal characteristics of the chip yet (IE what happens when you max it out for 10 minutes.)

Basically - if you are planning on doing mac/ios/ipad dev then it is for sure fine. If you want to do anything else that requires x86 software, i'd probably wait and see.
 
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chabig said:
1. Because they are professional developers.
2. Rosetta might not be around forever
3. Competition
4. It’s not too hard to check a box and recompile
Click to expand...
#4 – rarely applies to any moderately complex software. I had a problem compiling OpenSSL for Apple Silicon on the Mac. Chrome (and by extension, Electron) hard-codes the VM page size to 4K which doesn't work well with Apple Silicon's 16K page size.
 
prism said:
Which begs the question as to why the developer would put in the resources of building it natively if the translated version already runs faster than on its native Intel environment, right?
Click to expand...

Because people will always choose a competing native version if it has the same features.
 
So from an iOS Dev perspective: buy one 100%. Or wait for the “pro” models if you want to spend a bit more for more power/ports. If you use docker - hold off a little bit. But for Xcode, don’t buy anything intel...

I just picked one up yesterday, my maxed out i7 Mac mini took 4:21 on a full app archive, the Air? 3:02. Fans were blazing on the mini, the air was slightly warm...
 
As much as I can easily afford to get one, I am holding off. I have a 16" (work issued), a 15" Pro (2016 model), and the last 12". I want an Air to replace the 12" but I do mostly Docker/Kubernetes. I need to be able to run containers and right now, that isn't in the card. I can do it with a raspberry PI, usb connected to an iPad but prefer to do everything native ARM64 on a real laptop. So if Docker sorts it out by February, I"ll spring for one but the shiny gadget syndrome is definitely luring me in.
 
I have a 16gb Air on order... most of what I currently work with should work: ReasonML (OCaml/Js), NodeJs, etc. I expect Java & Scala will be working fine soon enough -- there's already the Azul JDK.

I currently don't use docker on my MBP and just install MySql/Redis on the machine. I was thinking of possibly using Docker on my desktop for other services and just pushing builds to that when I need a full environment.

I used to use an 8gb MB 12 for Scala and even ran Kubernetes on that little thing. So I am expecting the Air to breeze through tasks.
 
In terms of performance, an M1 MacBook Air with 16 GB RAM is more than enough for development. My MBA has double the CPU performance of my work-issued 2015 15" MacBook Pro that I use for development. I simultaneously run 2-3 VMs plus many browser tabs and chat software and an IDE on my Intel-based work MBP with 16 GB RAM without issue.

What is a bit lacking right now is the ecosystem for some types of task. For instance, we don't yet have official support for the gcc and the gfortran compiler, which is a dependency for many math-related packages using BLAS (such as numpy), though Iain Sandoe is working on it (https://github.com/iains/gcc-darwin-arm64). We're also waiting for Docker and Parallels/VMWare if you need to run Linux. A native version of homebrew is not yet available. For embedded development, common cross-compiling toolchains would need to be run under Rosetta or recompiled from source, since native ARM64 binaries for Mac aren't yet provided for most.

Six months from now, the ecosystem for ARM Macs should be much better, but the hardware is great and ready now. If you're not dependent on software that isn't ready or are able and willing to run them under Rosetta, get the MacBook Air.
 
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