Hacker News Reader

Whats stopping you from using a macbook air? they are incredibly small for the power they pack. Plus you get a descent keyboard to boot.

To add some context. Had to take my fully specced out 2018 MBP 15" to get the battery replaced. Basicly, I had to go a week without my daily driver and I didn't have a backup. So I picked up a macbook air since they have a 14 day no questions asked return policy. I expected this thing to do some light work. I didn't expect it to actually keep up with my entire workload but it did and without getting particularly warm either. This tiny 1k laptop with 8 gb of ram was ding the job of a 3.5k fully specced mbp with 32 gigs of ram.

can't wait to see what they do with the m1x but I think the macbook air will handle everything you need + allow you to devlop locally.

My M1 Air is fantastic with thus far only one exception - recent frequent OS out of memory notices, but no apparent single cause. I imagine it's a software problem that will be soon resolved (and it's the first such memory problem I've ever encountered on any Mac in 10+ years).

With 16GB, I normally have open: RubyMine, DataGrip (two heavy JetBrains products), a terminal with two tabs, one having tmux and multiple local subshells and one with a remote connection to a server which has tmux (love tmux!), PostgreSQL, MailCatcher, any number of custom app servers (some ruby, some Node), Firefox with far too many open tabs, Spotify, and a handful of other apps.

I'm just about to find out how this thing handles 4k video processing as I got some new video toys to travel with. Maybe I'll end up needing the extra cores of an M1 Pro Max, but hopefully not.

> My M1 Air is fantastic with thus far only one exception - recent frequent OS out of memory notices, but no apparent single cause.

Mmm. That's disconcerting, as I just bought my fiancee an M1 Air with 8gb. (Getting her to spend more than strictly necessary on a laptop would be worse than pulling teeth.) Hopefully that's not an issue with her computing needs, which should be fairly minimal ... Word, Excel, BlueJeans for teleconferencing, Chrome.

For the record, 8GB was unusable for me as someone who habitually leaves tabs open.

I use IDEs that are heavier duty than the average user, but those didn't even seem to be the issue, once I had more than about a couple dozen or so tabs open the machine would start grinding to a halt. Sometimes so badly that even closing applications was difficult.

I upgraded to a 16GB and have zero issues now. It seems browser tabs just don't play to the strengths of the M1's memory setup

Something changed which brought these errors on... I suspect it was an OS update. My usage habits did not change, and for the first few months I had none of these errors.

Do you use a Photos album as screensaver or desktop background?

Nope, blank screen screensaver for me.

FWIW, it hasn't happened to me in days now. Normally I never reboot, and I usually have a lot of services and dev stuff running in the background that I forget about. Since my last reboot, days ago, I haven't had the problem. Maybe it's because I also haven't been working :D, so the background pressure is low.

I also started getting these recently on two different Macbooks, and I think they were being caused by the screensaver loading a large number of photos up front rather than just when they're needed.

I had configured the 'sliding panels' or whatever it's called to use a whole album of about 1000 photos, and noticed that I was getting these weird OOM notices, and when I checked in activity monitor, there didn't seem to be any memory overuse. But I realised it was happening when I was waking my computer from sleep.

I reduced it to 100 photos and now I don't see the warnings any more, so my guess is that the screensaver was trying to read all 1000 or so photos into memory at once, which was causing the issues.

If you have a photo screensaver, worth checking (possibly also the desktop background).

I've been getting these a ton recently, on both a 2018 15" Intel MBP w/ 32g memory and an M1 Air w/ 16g.

I suspect its just a recent MacOS bug that will get sorted out, and not an actual OOM issue. Chrome can use a lot, but I've never gotten close to using 16 gigs in my workflows, let alone 32.

I'm guessing that's the kind of laptop the person you're replying to is using. That's what I used when I first went on motorcycle rides with a laptop. I put a leather case from TwelveSouth around it, and it rode in the saddlebags of a Harley Sportster for thousands of miles without a problem.

I'm getting a MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro next, since I really want the ability to drive more than 1 external monitor. But if the Air could do that, I'd be all over it now even with the original M1.

> can't wait to see what they do with the m1x but I think the macbook air will handle everything you need + allow you to devlop locally.

No need to wait, they're available starting this week!

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-pro-max-everythin...

Seems like you didn’t realize this, but the new MacBook pros are available as of this week, and they aren’t called M1X. They’re as exciting as you imagined

It's a lot of money for shaving an inch or two off that big rectangle. I already have my Macbook Pro.

I was really hoping Starlink would work for people like you. (Yes, I get it wouldn't help trains/buses, unless the bus provided Starlink Wifi.)

Starlink is currently region locked but the regions are very large. What I did was pick my favourite camping areas around Sydney and put the Australia Post down as my service address. This means when Dishy ships I’ll have internet in mint places that are completely empty during weekdays.

> but thin client development only works with a fast, stable Internet connection.

One needs a stable connection (Edge network connectivity is all I need), fast is not needed. If there’s high packet loss I switch over to using mosh+ssh and elinks.

I wonder if you could throw a Raspberry Pi together to act as a server for your thin client in those situations?

Yes, this is a thing. There are some good tutorial videos out there, and it looks pretty great. However, it's more overhead and more individual things to keep up with, whereas an M1 Air can do more for the same overall volume of equipment space.

But why?

How about a tablet with something like a regular Linux distro and a small wireless keyboard?

I tried a Surface and I hated it. I already have the Macbook, so I don't feel like spending money on a downgrade.

> I thought of using just a tablet to replace my laptop and my paper notebook, but thin client development only works with a fast, stable Internet connection.

I bought a Chromebook Duet at Best Buy for $259. Works very well for software development without internet (runs Debian out of the box). I can plug it into an external monitor and add a keyboard and mouse when they're available. Otherwise the case comes with a keyboard, so I can program at any time.

+1, an ipad is useless if you don't have an internet connection.

Tbh. Software development in 2021 without internet (regardless of iPad or other device) is almost impossible which is why I invested heavily into my internet connectivity - https://ghuntley.com/internet

Have you heard of Dash? Makes it easy to download and search doc sets, as well as subsets of Stack Overflow.

Guessing you might’ve, given how much effort it looks like you’ve put into this, but if not, it’s worth a look. Integrates really well with Alfred.

It's not that hard for the sort of development I do. Most of it is to support the content-based website I run.

Some people report happily working with a Raspberry Pi as their development machine, with an iPad as the "head".

I've done this from my Android phone. Just for short sessions though, it would get tiring after a while.

So the use I put mine to when out and about without wifi are a figment of my imagination.

Perhaps Librem 5 can help you, which is a smartphone running desktop Linux. It even works with an external screen and keyboard if necessary.

Not out yet, but in a few months the PinePhone Pro will offer a faster experience for less money. They even have a small keyboard that makes it like a tiny phone laptop.

RAM is still twice faster in Librem 5: https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-pro-annouced/15004/4.

There's non-Apple tablets that could work, iirc Apple is the only one that doesn't allow running code or sideloading apps that can do so. And there's plenty of more portable laptops; a Macbook Air isn't that much bigger than an ipad with a keyboard.

How does running side loaded code fix the wireless connection problem discussed in the post you're replying to?

There are local / offline code editors on iOS that will sync via Git next time you're online, and Git itself is pretty tolerant of bad connections. As is blink terminal client, over mosh.

He means a tablet that is open enough to run code or sideload apps can run a full development environment on its own and not have to be continuously connected.

These scenarios are different for standalone app devs versus system or enterprise devs.

For enterprise or systems devs, the negatives of attempting to host a complex system environment on your laptop outweigh the challenges of marginal network coverage (except when there is no network coverage).

Because of those negatives, even dedicated full time dev machines on gigabit connectivity are moving towards CodeEnvy style local (and portable) workspace for edit, with remote deploy/run/debug models. That's basically thin client / thick client debate coming around again.

Vast majority of enterprise/system devs are not so remote as to have to run a simulated cloud environment (e.g. minikube) locally, and I've found almost zero rural areas in the US that can't do a mosh session over the iPad Pro's cellular chip.