Short background: I use my laptop 95% for development, mostly web, including docker. My current Macbook Pro 15 2011 died two years ago and I resurrected it with Ubuntu. The reason it died was probably Docker, it was running at 105% every day for multiple months, and performance was still very bad. After switching to Ubuntu I could not believe how snappy everything was again, not only Docker.
With Macbooks before M1 it would have been easier, because you could run everything plus you had the best OS, but those have other problems (Keyboard etc). Now I somehow cannot justify spending so much for being completely closed in the Apple system and getting worse performance doing dev stuff.
I think the M1 is superior when it comes to video, graphics etc. what seems to be the core target group of buyers for Apple. But for development I think the best times are over. Working as a freelance dev on my last jobs actually most were running Linux.
Only problem is getting a setup that runs with current hardware, and then I just found out that you can actually order a Lenovo X1 Carbon with Ubuntu preinstalled, it just has a long wait time (> 6 weeks).
What probably annoyed me most with the new Macbooks, is that not only is everything soldered, but they take 460€ tops for getting 32GB Ram - even by Apple standards this is ridiculous. For Lenovo it was 50Euro to get 32GB :))
So what do you think? Is anyone getting a M1 Pro for doing dev stuff? Or maybe using a normal M1, maybe even a Macbook Air and using it with Docker (Postgres, Redis etc)? That would be another option I am thinking about...
Curious on your opinion and experiences!
I ordered a Thinkpad in July with a ship date of 10-14 days. The ship date has basically slipped to March of next year. I check the ship date every week or so and it bounces around a lot, telling me they have no idea when it will actually ship. I can't even imagine what will happen if they ship me a defective laptop and I have to get it replaced.
I'm 95% at the point where I'm going to cancel the order and switch to either a Framework laptop or a Macbook Pro.
This doesn't help answer your question, but if you need the laptop soon, The X1 Carbon may not be the answer.
I also have a 13" MacBook pro M1.
I use the MacBook, because it has a much better battery life, it doesn't get warm, and it's not extremely slow on battery power. The i7 needs to be connected to power to be not annoyingly slow, but then it will cook my legs and genitals.
The ThinkPad has a touchscreen, which is a huge plus for me, but I am not sure the user experience will be great on a full GNU/Linux distribution.
They are both very good laptops, but the MacBook is much better if you can manage Mac os.
It's still a much better experience and you can still do your development on it just fine and deploy/test with Linux.
I say this as a person who uses the excellent pop!_os as my primary OS at home. It's great, but I miss the general quality and productivity of macOS. (I have an M1 MacBook as well, but am forcing myself to use desktop Linux for an extended period.)
https://www.4alltech.com/2020/06/the-asus-rog-zephyrus-duo-1...
I am looking forward to a next iteration with some better specs, but they are pretty good as it stands. (not getting in the way of work)
I myself is using a Macbook Pro 2017 for developing data (some ETL and lots of queries). I don't think it beats the original Carbon X1 I used (but not with Linux, with Windows) but I can't complain since it's a company laptop. I have one serious issue with the Carbon though is that the battery got bloated just after 18 months of usage.
The X1 is light and fast. I run Fedora, and work often in containers. I have the likes of Podman, VS Code, IntelliJ and Atom running and many Firefox tabs open, all without any problems.
Other good points are the 2xUSB ports, HDMI, and good battery life.
The main downside is the 256GB HDD, which fills up far too quickly, so I end up having to do a bit of housekeeping quite often. But as a dev machine, I can recommend it.
It has also replaceable ram
Another thing - Docker only natively runs on linux, on Win and macOS it launches a linux VM which eats resources and will never be as fast, obviously. Kinda ironic too when you consider the whole idea behind Docker.
I am thinking about setting up a desktop with Ubuntu and cheap laptop for meeting and other BS.