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Comment by seaghost | Hacker News Reader

I’m in the market for new machine. Does the MacBook Air M1 with 16GB ram is enough for dev machine, no gaming, nothing fancy?

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I've moved all of my side project dev to a M1-based mini with 16GB. It's still lacking docker+virtualisation support, which is a bit of a headache, but I'm confident that'll be resolved soon. Other than that, everything I need either has been ported or runs great in Rosetta. I'm blown away by how responsive it is. I often have three JetBrains IDEs, XCode, java, and a node server for the React frontend all running at once, and it just flys. Not only do things build in what feels like half the time, I have yet to notice a heavy build slow down everything else, which happens all the time on my Intel MacBook Pro.

Edit to add one downside I forgot to mention: It's been a long time since I used a non-portable mac. One annoyance of the mini is that I feel like I'm being asked for my password every 6 seconds, which is much less of an annoyance on a portable because you have the touch sensor.

I'm not a fan of watches especially when typing, but Apple watch can help you with authentication.

In terms of raw power it should be able to handle most tasks and more efficiently as well; however in terms of “development” it has a few drawbacks with the whole virtualization aspect. So depends on what kinda dev you doing I guess

At the current job I don't need virtualization but might need it in future at which point most apps will be optimized and fixed I guess.

Check if your dev environment is supported - but if it is Apple looks really really good.

Why go for Air tho ? Pro looks like a better device (better screen, better battery, same dimensions) and it's marginally more expensive.

I use my computer mostly in the desktop mode with external screen, so I don't really care about screen quality, but I need certain mobility and I don't want mini.

I see no point choosing M1 Pro over M1 Air as a dev machine. $300 extra buys you mostly the TouchBar.

Air has a better form factor (no sharp edge under wrists). Better keyboard (real top row). Both have essentially the same specs. Battery life on both is an overkill. Active cooling makes relatively small difference and kicks in only in long workloads (longer than a reasonable build should take).

I use laptop keyboard 5% of the time, but I use the laptop screen as a secondary monitor constantly.

I can't judge the battery - but it's for sure going to stay useful for longer as capacity degrades.

As far as I can tell the Air and Pro get basically the same performance for the first 10 minutes. After that the Air will throttle. There is no task I would do that will max out the CPU for 10+ minutes so I don't see any reason to spend the extra for a slightly brighter (but otherwise the same) screen and two more hours of battery life (18 vs 20).

Well as I can tell from fan noise levels on my current MBP - running a device simulator or a VM along with a IDE is sustained load for sure.

You may want to check the Activity Monitor to make sure the CPU is actually at 100% when you're doing that. Apparently it's quite easy to get the fans going on the Intel Macs even on lighter loads compared to the new M1 ones.

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