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Ask HN: With Apple going ARM, what will happen with MacBook as a developer tool?

7 points by cupofjoakim ↗ HN
The Macbook Pro is, in my experience at least, the standard equipment for developers, especially those working on web development. Now that Apple has decided to leave x86 behind in favor of ARM - what can we expect as developers?

Will developers leave apple behind due to the shaky transition period? Will Microsoft push harder for Windows RT (the one with ARM-support) or will linux or a windows laptop with WSL 2 become the new standard? Does it even matter with the rise of on-cloud developing tools like VS Code Remote Development?

16 comments

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FBISurveillance
It will be fine.

There will be likely a shaky-ish transition period but we'll get there and my _personal_ expectation is that it will be better at the end.

I remember struggling with 16 GB RAM limit due to lack of LPDDR4 support on Intels until very recently, poor thermals, and other issues.

I look forward to better battery life and inevitably a more mainstream ARM adoption.

jki275
For web dev, it shouldn't matter.

For embedded? We're going to be done unless there's a rock solid emulation layer available to us, because if I can't run Linux VMs to build embedded stuff I can't use it.

[dead] idoncarfb
It's ok. Macs are useless outside of webdev/gfx anyway.
jki275
I use one every day for embedded development. They're perfectly usable for C/C++/Rust, etc.
[dead] idoncarfb
Sure you are, buddy :)
jki275
Ah you're somebody's troll account.
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rl1987
What is your development environment like?
jki275
Depends on exactly what I'm doing -- mostly XCode to write C or C++ and then one of a variety of cross-compilers either native on the Mac or in a Linux VM if there's not one available that runs native on OSX.

I also use Netbeans and Eclipse depending on what tools I need. Eclipse for Rust and FreeRTOS (just easier that way), and then VSCode sometimes but it's often just such a pain to setup. Subethaedit or BBedit (Textwrangler RIP... :( ) for a lot of stuff as well.

kevinherron
The only real concern I have is I rely on a handful of Windows applications that I run in a VM and I doubt they'll ever be ported or run on Windows ARM. If a solution for virtualizing x86 guests with reasonable performance doesn't emerge I'll have to switch to Linux on a Thinkpad or desktop.

Fortunately I have a 16" MBP which has been great and will buy me until at least the end of the 2 year transition period to see how things shake out.

taf2
Considering amazon servers are also heading the direction of arm with the gravtron I think this could be the future of development. Also because most development no longer really depends on cpu architecture (safe to say the majority of developers are not concerned with assembly level programming) I think it’s an exciting shift maybe similar to the change from 32 bit to 64?