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!
Definitely recommend 16GB though. I have heard that the 8GB Air can be more problematic under these workloads.
Docker on macOS is meh. I still need to build x86 executables, so I've had to fight with cross-compilation inside Docker (I can't wait for the ARM server market to mature, since I'd rather not use any x86 any more).
I've got 32GB, and memory hasn't been a problem. M1 has never been hot and noisy. I haven't even heard the fan spin, and I'm regularly compiling Rust.
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.
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 - 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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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. 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.
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
It's the first computer ever in my career that seems to be hugely overpowered for anything I do. Builds that took over 5 minutes on my previous i7 MBP are now well under a minute. No matter what I do, the fan doesn't turn on, battery hasn't run out even once unless I've forgotten to charge it overnight.
I could easily do everything I need with a M2 Air or a M1 Pro.
The M1-powered Macs will have a crazy long lifespan before they run out of power, especially outside of hardcore software development.
1 - How is the performance? Does it get noisy/hot like my work machine (2019 i9 16" Pro) ?
> I have never wanted for more, it's almost always idling. I can spin up a local kube cluster and run a few things if needs be, still no performance issues.
> I only use VSCode with python, golang, docker, some random extensions etc. I've never noticed anything missing.
> It's been flawless for me, with admittedly fairly limited use.
> I cannot at all attest to this, as I don't do anything like video work, which is far more intensive than the light development I do. I'd probably suggest 16gb+ of ram though, as I am under the impression that the M chip laptops rely on using the swapfile a lot.2. This is my first non linux laptop in around a decade, and it took a lot of getting used to. Different shortcut keys to get around, move text about, and a different command-line experience. Homebrew has been good to resolve a lot of that, but I mostly embraced the differences and just went with it. A lot of the MacOS design decisions are very ergonomic and it's worth giving them a shot.
3. Docker has been fine for me, although the architecture on the m1 means things I took for granted on a full x86 dev/target stack can be more complicated or slower.
4. I have the 16GB model and have been very impressed with it's memory usage, and haven't suffered at all. I have not done any video editing, but have done work with Blender and some large-ish textures, without trouble. Plus the usual oodles of tabs, many apps, etc.
Extra thoughts: I bought this laptop because in 2021 three other new laptops broke for me. Two had USB-C charging or power circuitry issues, and one had an NVME (or SSD or whatever) storage failure, all within 1-3 months of purchase. This machine has been solid.
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.
1. 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.
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).
I've had an M1 Air for over a year and use it for development. It's the quietest and fastest machine I've had (and I've had i7s and Ryzen 7 Pros). I never need to worry about the battery life as it goes on and on. Despite only having 8GB I've never hit memory issues even doing C# development on it. Oh, and it never even gets warm.
And yet I've decided to sell it, and am now using a second-hand HP ProBook with an i5 processor. Slower, hotter, and only half a dozen hours of battery life.
But it's a trade-off for what I value the most, and for me that's one thing for two reasons: the keyboard.
Firstly, even on this ProBook the keyboard has better feel and a much better layout. Whilst the M1 Air keyboard beats the last few years of Intel machines it is a poor second on the keyboard to a fair number of otherwise average alternatives. Even such basics as having Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys and a hash symbol, and keys that actually travel.
And secondly how keyboard-friendly the OS is. Whilst this may seem controversial, in my admittedly personal opinion with decades of experience using both platforms macOS is not a patch on Windows 11 (or 10) when it comes to keyboard use. The macOS UI feels like a toy and requires constant use of the mouse/touchpad.
So yeah. Great machine. Far superior hardware in the main. Just for me the keyboard hardware and the keyboard usage is a Windows win (and Mint as it happens) and on balance that's important enough (again for me) to switch back.
YMMV of course.
Edit to add: Great performance. Great for development (other than the keyboard). Docker is usable. And the 8GB M1 seems to behave as I'd expect a 16GB Windows laptop to, so Apple have some very good memory management/paging.
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.
- 4 ubuntu VMs via vagrant
- docker desktop
- 2 Jetbrains IDEs
- chrome with tons of tabs
- safari with a few tabs (youtube included)
- iterm
- VLC or apple music playing some mp3s
- a couple of PDFs
I don't hear any fan noise.
Perhaps it's good to point out: I remove/disable many apple stuff because I don't need it. This includes: Siri, Spotlight (I exclude the whole drive), Bluetooth, widgets, automatic updates, login items.
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.
1. More quiet and less hot than any previous intel macs I have used
2. Nothing missing, there was some discussion in earlier project where some fork/similar of Kubernetes wouldn't work
3. see previous, should be ok; running atm Docker. but i would google your frameworks and see if compatibility issues
4. I would go for 32gb/1tb if it is an option, otherwise 16gb is ok - I haven't felt the need for more (running parallels, some vms, docker, ide, chrome,firefox,safari, chat progrems (discord,slack,other), etc)
Still, nothing compares even remotely to my windows PC at home (32gb ram, m2ssd, i9) - it is so responsive that any mac feels sluggish and slow; but I think this could be because windows prioritises UI processes? Everything feels instant compared to mac (x ms delay opening anything etc)
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.
I see that no one mention a similar complaints in comments.
Can you share your Displays settings?
I have
automatically adjust brightness, checked
True Tone, checked
Presets: Apple XDR Display (P3-1600 nits)
Refresh Rate: 48 Hertz
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.
I run it all day every day - Zoom calls, VDI, web browsing, YouTube, etc etc
I can take it off the charger before I start for the day, run it all day with WiFi and Bluetooth running (doing all of the above activities), and I've still got charge available (20-40%, depending on the exact mix of tasks) 10 hours later
In running up on a year and a half ... I've yet to hear the fan once - even sitting in full sun in the car (while someone else drives)
I only wish I could've gotten the M1 iPad Pro so I didn't have to hotspot my phone to use it away from reliable internet :)
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.
I have a test program that pegs all 10 cpus at 100%. It cannot get the machine to heat up or get the fans to be audible; apparently to do that you have to also engage the GPU or other components of the chip.
I got it with 32GB of memory that that has turned out to be overkill. For my use 16GB would have been sufficient. I would only need more if I were running a VM.
I'm one of those users (16GB RAM model), and desktop performance is phenomenal (no noise, superb dev experience, Docker Desktop is flawless and fast (as is K3s), Adobe CC is faster than on my i9 MBP). The only downside is that the battery performance is terrible (as soon as I unplug it, the machine turns off ;-).
I have a personal 2019 16" Intel i9 MBP, and a work issued 16" M1 MBP, and the difference between them is just astonishing. The M1 MBP is faster, even running Rosetta apps, I've never heard its fan come on, I can compile projects with it sitting on my lap and it just gets warm, and through all this the battery life is significantly better.
- It has pretty much ruined other PCs for me - it runs rings around my work provided Dell XPS / I7/ 32gb - and it has completely replaced my tablet (the instant on feature / battery life and size rendering the tablet obsolete)
- I wish I'd got the 512gb model
- I only use docker for postgres but I've had no problems
- I usually run Webstorm, Figma, countless Chrome tabs Spotify hooked up to a Samsung Ultrawide 5120 x 1440 and it doesn't skip a bit.
And 16gb is too low if you were to ask me, in general and for the work you are doing. Remember it also has to be enough for four years from now.
That said, I don’t have any regrets with mine, for what i need it’s a fantastic machine.
Never heard the fan noise on this, good screen, excellent speakers, no issues with performance.
Daily software: VS Code, Docker for Mac, iTerm, Spotify, MS Teams, Safari with tons of tabs.
Performance wise really happy with it; works well
1. Performance is great! Doesn't get noisy or hot. Way better than Intel models.
2. Development is flawless. Nothing is missing. Homebrew works just like before, but installs into a different parent folder for arm (I think). Never hit a case where I couldn't do something because it wasn't supported on M1 or anything like that.
3. The biggest (only?) downside of the M1 architecture is that it isn't an improvement for x86 virtualization because it's not x86 under the hood. So if you run Windows in Parallels, you are going to be running the Arm build of Windows. There's no bootcamp to run Windows natively anymore. Docker performance is going to suffer if you are required to run x86-based Docker images all day. The effective Docker performance probably will be similar to what you get with your x86 mac (i.e. not great) but with less heat/fan noise.
If you are in a position where you can run arm-based virtual machines, then you will probably have a great experience. But that's definitely not most people.
4. I'd go for 32GB RAM, especially if you are doing virtualization stuff. I'd bump this up before pretty much any other spec except maybe disk space.
tl;dr - The M1 transition has been amazingly flawless except for the corner case of running virtual x86 instances all day.
I've had MBAs, MBPs, iMacs and the only working Apple computer I possess is a pre-Cook design: MBA 2012.
Everything from Cook era went to shit or was shitty from day one. I've had iMac which caught dirt under the screen, went for repairs (was accepted as iMac with dirt under a screen with no additional issues) and Apple refused to repair it saying that it came with broken screen (and they gave me my iMac with replacement disk and screen cracked from how they apparently opened it). I literally had papers saying that the computer is accepted for repairs with no visible damage and papers stating that they refuse to repair it due to cracked screen. After they have replaced a Seagate disk under some replacement program.
I've had MBP 2017 which went for repairs shortly after being bought due to barely usable keyboard. They replaced the whole case and keyboard for the same unusable trash. It's a mobile computer you can't write on which nobody wants to buy. It used to be easy to re-sell Apple laptops.
Jony Ive and Tim Cook cured me of any fanboyism I might have had from the Jobs era.
I'm happy for all the satisfied users of current Apple's computers and I can only wish you that the "upgrade" won't be shitty and your current hardware won't became the next "2012 MBP" or "2015 MBP".