I'm using an m1 macbook air right now and it's the first compelling mac laptop for me since 2015. It's absolutely amazing. But for any workload that uses docker, my linux desktop is streets ahead.
There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook (which is last year's model) since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year which will most certainly be more performant and optimised than the last generation.
One of the several reasons why I stayed away from the first generation of Apple Silicon Macs, and still the software ecosystem is still unoptimised for it.
From [0] (From Preview)
Known issues:
Webview doesn't work
No sound
No device skins
Video codecs not working
32 bit ARM apps won't work
Graphical glitches in some Vulkan apps
Popup on startup about not being able to find the ADB path (ADB will still notice the emulator if you have it installed though)
When building, it may be faster to start then cancel the Python triggered build and then reissue ninja -C objs install/strip versus letting the Python triggered build finish.
Once again, Another thing the M1 Macbook early adopter hype-squad omitted as they are still suffering from a sunken cost while I get a second or third generation Apple Silicon Macbook which will be much more optimised and by then the ecosystem will be better supported out of the box.
Now, explain yourself.
[0] https://androidstudio.googleblog.com/2020/12/android-emulato...
It's rough around the edges and whether or not your use case is successful is definitely very specific, but for my personal hobby projects (ECU reverse engineering), it's been an excellent tool. Ghidra worked out-of-the-box in Rosetta and natively with a few simple build system tweaks, tricore-qemu was trivial to build, Mono is working, VSCode is nicer than ever, and CrossOver Wine (in Rosetta) even works great for running Windows-only toolchains. The battery life and performance-to-price ratio on the Air have been amazing. And, some things like GMP are _ridiculously_ fast - a brute-force RNG -> RSA attack I developed is actually faster on the M1 MacBook Air than on my not-that-old Ryzen desktop.
I agree that the hype is tiring, and yes, some things like Android development don't work correctly yet - but not everyone is an Android developer, and dismissing the first-gen Apple Silicon products in a blanket way goes against the experience of many people. Thus, downvotes.
I've been hearing something similar when I got a PS4 in summer 2019. PS5 is still barely available, and I've had almost 2 years of gaming fun. To be fair, the PS4 didn't have as many rough edges back then. But "no point" is a generalization that isn't true for many people.
I only apply this rule to Apple as they seem to think that people upgrade their Macs like they upgrade their iPhones which is every year.
A tool that exists is far more useful than a tool that does not exist.
Or as they used to say in the olden days: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
A tool that already works (Intel Mac) is far more useful and much better than buying a tool that exists and doesn't work with your existing setup or requires more tweaks and more hacks for it to work. (M1 Mac).
Or as they used to say in the olden days: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(In the case for Apple which release new product generations every year, always skip the first generation)
Apple is known to frequently update their Macbook line up every year so I am in no hurry to upgrade my Intel Macbook, until they eventually 'start' the process of removing Intel support which by then a third or forth generation Apple Silicon Mac will be available.
Plenty of time to wait and use what already works, rather than jumping on early tech and then finding out that the software support is still WIP or in preview state.
(Yep you need ARM Docker images when running on ARM of course)
I guess to some extent that might be generally useful, what with things like AWS's Graviton ARM processors, but I expect it'll take a while.
[1]Especially now that public docker hub is ip rate limited to uselessness.