Is anyone using the M1 MacBook Air for XCode? If so, what has your experience been like and would you recommend it to a intermediate programmer? (It's time to jump from my mid 2012 MBP and I'm not sure where to land.)
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XCode on the M1 MBA
- Thread starter Sir_Macs_A_Lot
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So far, no problem running Xcode on my M1 MBA (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD). I've been using the Playground and now am beginning to develop apps for IOS and MacOS.
Does your MBA get warm or hot while compiling code or running the simulators?
Not that I've noticed. Next time I'll run Sensei before and then while I'm running Xcode to get actual temperatures. Probably this weekend as I'm away from my MBA right now.
The Xcode projects that I'm currently working on tend to be pretty small and build in less than a minute but even then I can see a spike to 70° C pretty quickly. I can imagine if you are working on a substantial project you will reach max temperature of around 95° C often and will see some throttling. But it would take building something the size of Safari or Chrome to actually heat up the M1 MacBook Air case to any degree and even then, the throttling will keep it to safe temperatures.
The M1 MBA has a fast SSD which makes it particularly good for doing software development. I don't think you would be disappointed with an M1 Air for Xcode.