Ask HN: M1 MacBook Pro/Air users, how is it going?
Was thinking about buying my next machine, and was quite impressed with all the positive feedback I got from my friends regarding its excellent CPU and hardware. However, I wanted to jump in here and get some insights from those of you that have been using it.
1 - How is the performance? Does it get noisy/hot like my work machine (2019 i9 16" Pro) ?
2 - How is the development experience? Are you missing some critical tools on this platform that you need on a day-to-day basis?
3 - How is Docker performance/compatibility? I work a lot with Docker for backends/servers and Docker for Mac has always been pretty bad, but wanted to see if it improves with M1!
4 - How much RAM is good for heavy development work? I use Adobe Creative Cloud a lot, do video editing here and there, and also a lot of Mobile development (React Native). Would 16GB be okay, or do I need more? (Would like to future-proof for the next 4-5 years). My work Mac with i7 32GB always gets insanely hot and noisy with most basic loads.
Thanks again and will really appreciate your insight!
84 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] thread1. Definitely don't go for the 8GB model for whatever you do (except for light web browsing), always go for the 16GB (or if you're heavily reliant on Docker, do heavy development and Adobe, as you said, go for 32GB). I have the 8GB model and Docker is painfully slow, the computer itself gets slow and it's overall very annoying.
2. On the topic of Docker: it has gotten much better over the time – at first, Docker was indeed painfully slow (I'm developing a Rails+React CMS, big pages took about a minute to load, now it's down to 5–10 seconds). I have read that running Docker through Parallels (if you're on M1) is much faster, but haven't got round to testing it.
3. The Air doesn't get noisy as it's fanless, however there have been occasions where it has become hot, but it doesn't happen very often.
Overall I think that if I had the choice, I'd go for the 14 inch Macbook Pro M1 Max. I have read that M2 Macbook Pro is kinda pointless, because as it might have a bit faster of a chip, the updated 14 inch Macbook has a new design, an HDMI port, an SD card slot etc.
I have a Windows laptop currently for Adobe though. It still runs fine, and since 32GB seems to push me back by another 500 bucks or so, I am still contemplating whether to go any higher than 16GB. Would the 16 gigs be okay for Mobile development? I frequently go over or get in the red zone for my 16GB Windows laptop with Android Studio, and Node along with some debugging tools.
Overall been extremely pleased with it, after coming from a 16" i9 model that ran at close to 100 degrees almost always.
Docker performs pretty well (or not noticeable difference from my 16" i9). Usually hover around 40-50C for my usual workload, and sometimes will get up to 60-70C during a heavy compile (but fans are still whisper quiet).
I personally like a smaller form factor since I occasionally travel, but don't know that it really makes _that_ much of a difference to me and probably comes down to personal preference more than anything else
1. never noise or hot 2. dev is great, there are still some AI packages in python that are not fully accelerated but most everything works well 3. use arm based containers if you can 4. ram is perfect, I have 16gb, this is fastest machine I've ever owned
Definitely recommend 16GB though. I have heard that the 8GB Air can be more problematic under these workloads.
I do web development but I see zero problem with JetBrains, browser, text editor, Photoshop and some other apps.
My ONLY regret about getting an M1 Air was not being able to hold out for the M2 to get that sweet, sweet magsafe charger. Outside of that, I +100 everything @stoeckley said.
Between my gaming laptop’s 11th gen i7 (desktop cpu) with 16 virtual cores and my M1 Pro (16GB) from March this year, the M1 is silent and cool, while the gaming laptop splurts and hisses, and needs to be connected to power always. The performance is incredible, and the drawback is practically none.
1. It's great. I'm not sure I've ever heard the fans spin up. I've had very occasional glitches with sound when switching workspaces.
2. The only thing that's been a blocker for me is trying to run an old Terraform release and the lack of some arm64 docker images (in which case I have to target amd64).
3. See #2. In addition, I did experience some poor performance when mounting volumes from my local filesystem, but that has been _vastly_ improved since they added "VirtioFS accelerated directory sharing". Now it's great.
4. I only have 16GB of RAM. My workloads are typically not that heavy, but I have edited a couple of videos in DaVinci Resolve and didn't have any issues. Sounds like it would make sense for you to go for 32GB though.
Also have a personal M1 Air 8 GiB. Quite nice. Though it does have an issue where it suddenly slows down. Restarting brings it back. I don't like having to do that but it's the fastest smoothest thing I've used in ages otherwise.
Everything is noticeably laggier. I'm not sure about the actual performance of long running computations, in any case there isn't enough of a performance difference there for me to casually notice. However, the whole OS UI just locks (you get the spinning pinwheel) multiple times per hour, and in many different programs. My wife likes to tease me that it is just be the corporate lock down software. Anyways, it is frequent enough to really be a, "Oh, here we go again," experience.
Development experience. Mostly fine, I'm an IntelliJ user, and some unknown plugins cause lockup so we all just disable everything we aren't actively using. Docker compatibility seems unaffected. I guess this is because it was always a vm layer? We are no longer able to use some specific VM software but that didn't affect me in particular.
We got the 32GB models. I have no complaints, this is what I run on my personal computer; mostly, just to have breathing room. For react native 16GB might be enough, I haven't done any react native so cannot say for sure; large scale java workloads are memory hogs. It is nice to have that breathing room though.
The system is quieter, but I found the previous macs to be anomalously noisy (compared with my fan cooled personal computer) for comparable (CPU) work loads. Now I would say it is back to that level of quiet. People say the battery runs longer but I am not the sort of developer that spends a lot of time in meeting rooms with my PC.
So, if you want a laptop, seems passable but I don't find it all that impressive myself. My personal preferences would lead me elsewhere (I have a cheap laptop for mobile activity and an extremely powerful desktop).
Do you mean laggier than the Intel Macs? Do you just mean virtualization is laggier (would make sense with x86 emulation workloads), or that the whole macOS is laggier? Seems bizarre that an M1 could be laggier than Intel. Maybe it really is corporate lockdown software ruining it?
(For context: ex-Apple fan here, but switched to Windows 4 years ago after an especially unreliable MBP. My Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is vastly more reliable than the Mac, but I still miss pre-Catalina Mac OS.)
I also use IntelliJ and find the latest 2022.2.1 release to be positively snappy
With regards to java, out of curiosity I went and reran some JMH benchmarks we have and saw a ~15% decrease in ops/sec. So much of this could be related to the JVM not being well optimized for this particular architecture. That is something I would expect and will resolve itself in time as more engineering gets devoted to this architecture.
All of my experience with the mac has always been incongruent with what other people casually would say. For me, it is just been another run of the mill OS; after all my experience, I very much prefer windows at home and linux for work, but none of them are perfect for me. So, it didn't surprise me that my experience was so different from what I had been hearing. I typically just expect that the things that I hear when I am not trying to scratch beneath the surface are more or less marketing.
1 - On the whole it feels significantly faster than any laptop I've owned. Super quite even when the fans kick in (which they very rarely do). Only time the temperature noticeably rises is when running all cores 100% many minutes at a time (long compiles inside docker container, heavy number crunching etc.). On balance it is easily the best laptop I have ever owned, and this is coming from someone who really doesn't much like MacOS.
2 - 98% great. There are a few things that I have to compile and install by hand (rather than install via pip/npm etc) and there are a couple of libraries that I have completely failed to get to work. Also there is one closed source X86 program that I use that keeps crashing under rosetta. But nothing show stopping.
3 - Docker works fine, but not perfectly, if you run ARM containers. If you're running X86 containers performance is terrible. I'm currently developing in an ARM container and deploying on x86 (using the same docker file) and that has caused a couple of weird bugs (a certain thing crashes on my ARM container, but works fine on the X86 container for example). But 95+% of the time it causes zero problems.
4 - Depends entirely on what you are doing. I have 32 GB of RAM and day to day it is never a problem.
My old Intel MBP would have a drained battery after 90 minutes doing the same CPU intensive stuff I'm doing for >5 hours on my 16" M1 Max.
The hardware is absolutely bonkers. It's unlike anything else. I wish I could say the same for the current state of Mac OS.
He does crazy amounts of track layering in Logic, as he's new to this and isn't familiar with all the effects or pro workflows, so he stays in analog and just stacks tracks for chorus and delay.
I mention this as an example of first-party creative app with a RAM intensive usage pattern... and the M1 MacBook Pro doesn't seem to notice. It just works.
I got a MacBook Air for myself. Definitely the better machine for me.
My weird usage patterns: systems work, virtual machines, backups and software builds.
I run MS Windows 11 Pro VM via Parallels, and it works fine. Note that's the ARM version. Also Ubuntu or any other Linux. I've been using UTM, a QEMU GUI app, as well, as a native ARM virtual machine for macOS. Also I ran into something that could only run on old x86 Windows, the UTM emulator worked great for that.
Huge downloads for system software updates - 12GB is pretty crazy. That said, I've re-flashed my MacBook Air a couple of times, using Apple Configurator 2 on the MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt cable. No problem. You don't need to do this! But even that extreme of flashing the whole system back to factory setup, it works.
I purchased some expensive (for me) extras from OWC: their Thunderbolt 4 dock and external SSD. The speed of this thing! I was able to get a complete disk image off my son's laptop between studio time and him running off to college, a rush job that wouldn't have been possible to do like that otherwise. I'd prefer a more rational approach to data management, but creative work in the field, sometimes you just grab and go, or you don't get the shot.
I use the Thunderbolt dock for my desk setup, with some cheap used Dell 27" 4K monitors. Works ok, not sure how I feel about screen mirroring or multiple monitors. But it works.
1. Amazing, even the Air compared to 2019 i9. No fan == no noise.
2. Generally awesome.
3. I've given up on getting Docker to work efficiently on macOS many years ago and I don't think that's gotten a lot better. I just run Docker-related things on a remote Linux server (using SSH & VS Code Remote) and move on with the rest of my life. With modern internet connectivity from everywhere (including 5G) it feels like I'm working locally anyway, all without killing my battery.
4. With Docker and parts of my dev environment running remotely I didn't feel constrained by the 16GB MacBook Air but it did swap slightly (a couple of GB). No swap used on my 24GB MBA M2 and definitely none on my 64GB MacBook Pro. If you're going to be running a lot of iOS Simulators I'd probably spec at least the 32 GB MBP.
None of the MacBooks are going to be noisy or hot with almost anything you throw at them. I don't think I've heard the fan on my MBP once.
Fanless, so it's completely quiet, but also not heating. Everything just feels really fast on it and the battery life is amazing.
Edit: One major downside is that you cannot connect 2 external monitors to it.
With the 16" Pro Max, I can work flat-out, outdoors in the heat, no problem whatsoever. The thermals and performance on this thing are amazing.
One thing that I didn't see mentioned yet is that for Podman to work there is some fiddling required. At least when installed through Homebrew in a non-standard directory (my homebrew dir is under my user home), qemu just wasn't able to start the container VM and I had to find a way to install Podman with an older qemu version (pre-7.x) for it to work at all which involved downloading the homebrew formula and stabbing it with a fork
1. Performance is great, i neve hear the fans even in summer. The only exception is our testing suite that uses all cores for 10 minutes. If i run that the whole day in summer then after a few hours i might hear the fan very quietly (recently i was working on the testing setup itself).
2. Everything works by now
3. Docker performance is worse than intel. The CPU is way better than intel. In the end it works way better for me than with the previous 16" i7 with 32GB RAM (2019 model)
4. If you dont use VMs (or many docker containers) 16GB is fine. It will never get loud, no matter what you do.
1. I haven't heard any noise at all. My pro has been tucked behind my monitors during the last couple of months though. It's pretty warm where I live and it's not running hot. I had a few instances of lockups (VSCode most often) with my basic M1 Air. But the pro has taken everything I throw at it.
2. When I first got the air there were a few tools that had compatibility issues. All of those are ironed out now. Most apps I use these days have official M1 support.
3. I use lima, nerdctl these days and haven't any issues in running containers. I haven't had any issues with container performance either.
4. I'm planning to use this machine for quite a few years as well and I got the 64GB. In hindsight 32 GB could have been sufficient.
Summary: Go for it. If you are flush with cash, go for the 64GB M1 Max but 32GB is plenty.
The Air has no fans and will throttle cpu extensively under medium - heavy usage. You will feel this and it is quite frustrating.
I also recommend you get at least 16GB RAM. I own a 2019 Mac Pro and my M1 16" MBP blows it out of this universe on every metric.
Docker runs fine, but you will need to add --Platform flag on some images to set the build platform as it will attempt to build for ARM if available. Other than that, it shouldn't require anything different.
1 - Subjectively it feels so much more responsive and faster than the iMac. Everything that runs single-threaded is measurably as fast if not faster, especially in the webdev world. Building massive C/C++ projects that are properly multithreaded do build faster on the iMac. The Air has no vents, so it’s completely silent and only gets somewhat warm if I played a few hours of WoW on it.
2 - Proper virtualization is still lacking on M1/M2. Haven’t done any Android development on the Air yet, but the iOS simulator works great.
3 - Haven’t had any major issues with Docker compared to the Intel-based Mac
4 - Can’t hurt to max out RAM, but surprisingly I haven’t really experienced any significant slowing down due to swapping on the 8GB Air vs the 64GB iMac, which seems crazy, but there you go.
Overall, the Air is now my daily driver and the Intel iMac is sitting idle. Most likely will end up selling the iMac soon.
10 to 11 months in the screen of my MacBook Air M1 died. It was working before going to sleep, had a protective case cover and when the wife woke up, the screen was showing garbage. I saw several pictures online of the exact same issue. As I had not one but two older MacBook Air, from 2013 and 2014 IIRC, that never had any issue I didn't even think about buying an additional warranty.
Paid the M1 1000 EUR, Apple is asking 680 EUR to fix the screen. To add insult to injury they're asking 50 EUR to ship the broken M1 back.
I'm done with Apple. Wife, who runs her SME using Google stuff (G Suite / workspace / whatever), now replaced her aging MacBook Air with a 300 EUR Chromebook and she's perfectly happy (obviously wouldn't work for a software dev but it's just to point out that a company can lose customers). There was no way she'd buy a new M1 after that "we'll fix your broken screen for 68% of the MSRP" episode.
If you're serious about buying a piece of equipment as brittle as the M1 laptop, make sure to buy the best Apple warranty you can and make sure to have a plan B for when it'll fail.
The M1 was a nice machine when it worked. It's brittle. Many people have the exact same problem as we did. So, yeah, give even more money to Apple by buying the best warranty you can because for all the marvel that the M1 is, it's very certainly not as sturdy as my LG Gram (my LG Gram is lighter and has 24 GB of RAM but it's not as powerful as the M1 and it doesn't have a retina display so there's that).