Ask HN: M1 MacBook Pro/Air users, how is it going? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: M1 MacBook Pro/Air users, how is it going?

Hi all,

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!

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I've got the M1 Air with 16GB RAM and honestly, not being a fanboy or anything, it's the best computer I've ever owned. The battery lasts for days for me, it's very lightweight, zero noise (no fan on this model), not too warm, and has not yet struggled with any of the tasks I've thrown at it (I regularly keep open simultaneously Xcode, Slack, multiple browser tabs, PDF viewing, terminal scripts, etc). I also do some Logic Pro music projects, nothing really heavy, but it handles all the VSTs and stuff fine too.

Definitely recommend 16GB though. I have heard that the 8GB Air can be more problematic under these workloads.

Same for me. This thing is so awesome. I really hope it stays like that for a few years and doesn't slow down with future updates. The only thing missing for me: Multiple Monitor support.

I at least use a 27" monitor with it fine, so dual-monitor works. But I guess if you need more than that, it might not be a good fit.

To add to this: I run a 32' 4k screen as my sole, external monitor. My M1 air runs it like a champ. I dislike the limit of 1 external monitor, but it does perform well regardless.

Thank you! I'm in the same boat, does your machine work hard and make noise when connected to that 4k monitor?

The MacBook Air makes no noise at all because it has no fan.

Second that. Definitely get the 16GB air version. The 8GB has problems when running more programs.

I have an 8GB M1. It never gets hot but sometimes becomes unusable just using WebEx (and my inSync backup kicking off in the background).

It's funny that people even forget that their CPU is not x86 and not notice a thing and it's a good thing.

I do web development but I see zero problem with JetBrains, browser, text editor, Photoshop and some other apps.

I was going to post my own reply to this topic, but @stoeckley said literally all the things I was going to.

My ONLY regret about getting an M1 Air was not being able to hold out for the M2 to get that sweet, sweet magsafe charger. Outside of that, I +100 everything @stoeckley said.

My daily test and benchmark suites are very cpu-heavy.

Between my gaming laptop’s 11th gen i7 (desktop cpu) with 16 virtual cores and my M1 Pro (16GB) from March this year, the M1 is silent and cool, while the gaming laptop splurts and hisses, and needs to be connected to power always. The performance is incredible, and the drawback is practically none.

Same here, the build quality is incredible, best machine I owned. PyCharm hammers the battery quite a lot that being said.

I've got 15" i9, and a 14" M1 Pro. M1 runs circles around the i9, without even spinning the fans. It's unbelievable how cool and quiet it is without compromising performance. It makes all Intel MacBooks look like obsolete junk.

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.

As for 1, I live in a country where the summers are hot and humid, and even indoors with modest air conditioning running, the 2019 i9 16" would overheat and throttle pretty much right away with my basic dev workflow. I had stupid rigs with fans pointing at the machine just to get my work done.

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.

Have been running a 14" M1 Pro w/ the 10 core processor and 32gb of ram since the beginning of the year (I use a lot of tabs and docker containers, so wanted to get the extra ram).

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

I agree with every single word written in this comment :)

Have an M1 Pro 14" MBP

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.

Just to give another opinion to restore some balance in the force...

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).

Just curious why would they want to charge you such an obscene amount if it's within 10-11 months? Surely that's still warranty, without requiring AppleCare?

I've owned every major release of MacBook Pro and recently the Apple Silicon Airs. Currently own a MacBook Pro Max 14" 64GB running in clamshell mode as a glorified desktop and a MacBook Air M2 24GB.

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.

I've found Virtiofs and Docker to get it to the point where I don't really notice the filesystem slowdown. YMMV

For context, I purchased the entry-level 8GB M1 Air last year as a portable secondary Mac for my 27” 10-core i9, 64GB iMac. Mainly used for web and some embedded development.

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.

Best machine I've ever owned, I no longer touch my 16" MacBook Pro

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

Love it. Bought the 13" M1 MacBook Pro last year, ended up giving it to my son who has become a songwriter/producer monster during COVID lockdown times...

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.

I have a 16" 2021 Macbook Pro M1.

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.

I have the cheapest M1 Air model for personal use and it's been great. Although I wouldn't have gotten it if my old XPS 13 (Intel i5 gen 8 I think) didn't have such a bad touchpad and a bad feeling keyboard compared to this.

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

Work provided me with a 16" M1 Max with all the bells and whistles.

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.

I daily a base M1 Air, the $899 one.

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.

2 - How is the development experience? Are you missing some critical tools on this platform that you need on a day-to-day basis?

  > I only use VSCode with python, golang, docker, some random extensions etc. I've never noticed anything missing.

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!

  > 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.

1. Excellent. I'm on an air, and it's quiet and cool, but performance is great. Given the good performance, the battery life is quite amazing.

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.

I've yet to hear the fans in mine, 9 months in. I can actually use it on my lap without scalding my legs. Battery life is so good that I rarely bring my charger along with me anymore.

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.

I have been using a Macbook Air M1 for the past year for development and here are a few of my tips:

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.

HDMI ?! Now that's news.

I have a Windows laptop currently for Adobe though. It still runs fine, and since 32GB seems to push me back by another 500 bucks or so, I am still contemplating whether to go any higher than 16GB. Would the 16 gigs be okay for Mobile development? I frequently go over or get in the red zone for my 16GB Windows laptop with Android Studio, and Node along with some debugging tools.

I don't really like Macs that much, so you can take what I say with that grain of salt if you already have a preference.

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).

> Everything is noticeably laggier.

Do you mean laggier than the Intel Macs? Do you just mean virtualization is laggier (would make sense with x86 emulation workloads), or that the whole macOS is laggier? Seems bizarre that an M1 could be laggier than Intel. Maybe it really is corporate lockdown software ruining it?

(For context: ex-Apple fan here, but switched to Windows 4 years ago after an especially unreliable MBP. My Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is vastly more reliable than the Mac, but I still miss pre-Catalina Mac OS.)

That sounds like there's something seriously wrong with your machine or network (either that or the 'corporate lockdown' joke isn't a joke...) I've found my M1 MBP much more responsive (especially under heavy load) than my Intel MBPs.

I also use IntelliJ and find the latest 2022.2.1 release to be positively snappy

Our monorepo is also enormous in regards to IntelliJ. I don't know why all the other UI elements lock up though, indeed I think the corporate lockdown problems are historically also what made the experience miserable on many windows machines that otherwise looked good on paper. Now that macs are showing up more in the corporate world, the red tape is catching up.

How weird that your experience is so incongruent with everyone else’s reports. Do you think you got a dud machine, or do you think you’re running software that others aren’t, or otherwise using your machine differently than everyone else? There’s got to be a reason for your experience to be so different!

Well certainly we have tracked down some issues (in the IDE) to being binary incompatibilities in plugins. So some of it was just downstream (of Apple) software not being ready. The machine isn't a dud as everyone on my team has a similar experience (although frontend developers don't seem as unhappy).

With regards to java, out of curiosity I went and reran some JMH benchmarks we have and saw a ~15% decrease in ops/sec. So much of this could be related to the JVM not being well optimized for this particular architecture. That is something I would expect and will resolve itself in time as more engineering gets devoted to this architecture.

All of my experience with the mac has always been incongruent with what other people casually would say. For me, it is just been another run of the mill OS; after all my experience, I very much prefer windows at home and linux for work, but none of them are perfect for me. So, it didn't surprise me that my experience was so different from what I had been hearing. I typically just expect that the things that I hear when I am not trying to scratch beneath the surface are more or less marketing.

Slightly contrary opinion.

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.

I have a Macbook Air. I hate MacOS so when I have my desktop setup I'm not using the Macbook often, but I must admit that this is one very impressive piece of hardware !

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.

Macbook pro M1 with 32GB of ram. Pretty damn good. I usually have running:

- 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.

I have an M1 Max with 64 GiB. Fast as fuck. Sometimes run trade sims on it rather than on our job cluster.

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.

Web developer (React ecosystem) Macbook Pro M1 PRO, 16gb/1tb (I wanted to buy 32gb/1000tb but it was either or)

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)

I got M1 Air first and then upgraded to a pro Max (64 GB).

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 have a 14” M1 Pro. I cannot look at the screen of this machine more than a few minutes before my eyes starts to give alarms. I have no problem with my Macbook Air.

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

For work i have a M1 Pro 32GB RAM 16". Also i own a M1 Macbook Pro 13" 16GB for personal use.

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've been running a first-gen 16GB M1 MBP since April 2021

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 :)

I highly recommend spending a couple hundred extra bucks and getting the macbook pro instead of the Air.

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 an 16" M1 Pro Macbook Pro. I use it for C# development using the Rider IDE. Other than the clunky name, I am very happy with it.

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.

Since battery life is not specifically asked here, perhaps it'd be a good idea to widen the scope and ask these same questions to M1 Mac Mini users as well.

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 ;-).

Similar situation here; I try not to unplug mine :)

That being said the heat output is so low my mini lives in a drawer and serves to host time machine, a Jupiter notebook server, media server and a couple parallels VMs.

The fact that it just as easily serves up a display on my tv, iPad, Chromebook etc is extremely nice. It's been reliable enough to act like an appliance & fast enough that I never worry what else is running.

Any M1 is better for basically anything than any Intel. I have a top of the line Intel mac from work, but it’s slow and loud compared to the basic 16gb M1 Air I have.

> How is the performance? Does it get noisy/hot like my work machine (2019 i9 16" Pro) ?

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.

I have M1 Air with 16 gigs of RAM. This is my 3rd Air in row. I had even one with the crapy butterfly keyboard. But this M1 is beast from another realm. For my daily development I have to use PC with 11gen Intel i5. But sometimes I pull work to this Air aswell. Always suprised how much faster the compilation step is. Basically instant for this project. Presing Enter and bum code compiled. On PC i have to wait several seconds, up to 10.

MBA 16gb / 256ssd

- 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.

1. runs circles around i9 that was 4x its price, not getting hot or noisy 2. used to have some problems with gems/pip a year ago, but since then it is fixed, only like 2 Apps I used day to day are still under rosetta, other 100% native 3. n/a 4. I was thinking 16 would be not enough for iOS development, but it beats the i9 with 32gb ram easy, not really getting hot or noisy

I brought the air and it sounds like it’s not for you. I love it and don’t find that it gets hot, but it sounds like you need a work horse not an ultra book.

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.

16-inch Macbook Pro with M1 Pro, 32GB RAM. Absolutely insane the power of this machine. The other day I saw a 1.5 hour movie on Safari, went from 100% to 95% battery.

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.

I have the MBP 14” M1 Pro and typically you can’t hear the fan or it gets hot but during the recent heatwave here in Europe the MacBook got really hot and couldn’t comfortably use it while sitting on the couch. So it can get pretty hot but not as bad as the Intel 2019 MBP 16”.

Performance wise really happy with it; works well

I have the 2019 16" i9 mbp, and it's an absolute nightmare. I've been incredibly disappointed with Apple's handling of this machine. I want to get to the new Apple silicon, but gonna wait for the next release.

My personal machine is an MB Pro 16" with 32 GB with the M1 Pro, I swear I never ever heard it spin its fans. My work machine in contrast is an MB pro 16" with an i9 processor from 2019. The fans almost never ever stop.

I have an M1 Air and it's easily the best computer of any kind I've ever owned. The battery life is unmatched by anything else on the market. It's light, cool, and incredibly fast.

Well, they certainly aren’t going to be noisy since they’re fanless.

So all M1 Macs don't have any fans ? This is crazy .

Only the Air's do not have fans, the Pro ones do, as far as I know.

Thanks! good to know!

Macbook Pro with M1 (is it M1pro I don't remember), but anyway, all of them have fans. I have yet to hear mine though, completely different from my previous intel MPB where fans were spinning on 80% almost constantly.

That is such a refresh. I have used the highest-spec i9/i7 Macbooks at work with 32GB of RAM and they would always, always get incredibly noisy and hot for even the basic things. One of them couldn't live for more than two years because of that.

It’s almost frustrating. I got used to using my Intel MBP as a portable hot plate to snort cocaine from, but with the new M1 MBP it takes like 15 minutes of running Cinebench for the back to heat up sufficiently.

Love it. No noise. Great performance (air runs 3 android emulators in parallel), amazing battery life and only sometimes warm (bright screen, video conferences).

I've had multiple M1 Macbook Pros and many x86 (and PowerPC) Macs before that.

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 love my 14". The only real issue I encountered is that there is no HDMI 2.1 support.

Half of the apps I need to work with doesn't work or require to use an older version so not great.

Could you share which apps please?

I haven't bought M1 nor M2. My last Apple computer was a 2017 MBP and I'm not risking it anymore.

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".

> 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".

This is such a cynical take I don't know if I should laugh or be concerned that you were affected this badly that you never want to consider a mac again.

I've owned a 2010 MBP and then switched to a windows laptop because the apple laptop market didn't seem to offer any discernible advantage and it was much more expensive. Was a barely satisfied windows/linux laptop user until I bought the M1 Air. My god, that laptop is incredible. I bought it after the glowing reviews, and its not failed. The battery life is incredible, it's light and it runs circles around much more beefier windows laptops. It seems like magic. For the price point, last year the M1 was such a no brainer. It's a pity you've forever written off anything they do.

Imagine living somewhere where Apple hardware is considered luxurious goods due to enormous gap between earnings and its price. Quality of the hardware is the same but Apple's support is way worse than in the US or even many EU states.

Most people can either afford used stuff or pay Apple with their _savings_ for new and shiny. And then their hardware gets broken during authorized repairs or the new hardware has quality of Chinese toys.

When it happens not once or twice but with majority of your Macs, you think over your choices and considering Mac purchase a risk is not that far off.

I actually don't have to imagine this. I don't live in a "western" or affluent society.

> Most people can either afford used stuff or pay Apple with their _savings_ for new and shiny.

While this has been historically true, more recently this is not true. Of course you can't but a brand new $500 Apple laptop, but for < $1000 you'd be hard pressed to find a better laptop than the M1 Air. The closest comparison is the Dell XPS and it's much more expensive, less performant, and has way more issues. Also one of the biggest reasons people buy apple laptops is because most of them easily last 4+ years. All mine have, and so have many of my coworkers and friends. I'd be lucky if my windows laptop crosses the 4 year threshold without an issue.

> the new hardware has quality of Chinese toys.

I'm assuming you're being hyperbolic here, but it kinda makes your whole response sound ridiculous. Even the biggest Apple critics generally agree hardware quality is much better than most western manufacturers. Have you ever used a Chuwi laptop?

> When it happens not once or twice but with majority of your Macs

I guess you've been extremely unlucky. Some people get shocked by lightning multiple times. I wonder if they stop going outside.

> I'd be lucky if my windows laptop crosses the 4 year threshold without an issue.

Just one of my Apple laptops stayed fully functional after 4 years and it was the single non-"Pro" laptop: MacBook Air 2012, bought in a rush (so store-spec'd with 4GB RAM). And after 10 years it's still the most useful Apple laptop I possess and RAM size is its biggest issue.

I found that not expecting more than 2 years of lifetime from a laptop (any laptop) is the most reasonable and healthy approach for me nowadays. And I respect that you may have other view on the matter.

> Of course you can't but a brand new $500 Apple laptop, but for < $1000 you'd be hard pressed to find a better laptop than the M1 Air.

We may have different approach to what's "better". Specs? You're probably right regarding some (and majority thereof) usecases. Usability? Different thing. I expect my computer not to break and I expect my operating system not to change things that work over night. Not a case with Cook's Apple's hardware nor software in my experience.

> > the new hardware has quality of Chinese toys.

> I'm assuming you're being hyperbolic here but it kinda makes your whole response sound ridiculous

I'm talking about the utter trash made by Ivy&Cook in 2017, called MacBook Pro. This was the purchase which made want to stay away from Apple's computers and this feeling is strong 5 years later (see? Cook is influential after all).

Until Linux is reasonably stable and useful (I'm not even waiting for "fully functional") on M1/M2, I'll stay away from these to avoid ads and other marvels coming to the garbage called macOS which replaced OS X.

I don't despise Apple as a whole. Just the current state of Apple under the leadership of unimaginative pencil pusher Tim Cook.

> Some people get shocked by lightning multiple times. I wonder if they stop going outside.

To borrow from your wonderfully colorful reference, I still go outside - just stopped standing with my hands up in the open field during lightning.

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