Under that configuration I've found 32GB to be just within the limit of usability. 16GB are just not enough. Also, for some virtualized Docker workflows, there is that known issue of slow File interaction through the Mac/virtualized file system, which makes working with say Magento, Drupal or simlar software REALLY slow.
As a comparison, I've also got a 2011 intel MacBookPro with 16GB RAM. That one is running Linux Mint. Docker performance is almost transparent, and the system runs pretty snappy for development.
With that said, the air is nice. It’s just not worth it to save 160 grams for my use case.
How do these sound to you?
I honestly don't know how Active Directory got so popular when it sucks so much on anything that is not Windows.
I honestly don't know how Final Cut Pro got so popular when it sucks so much on anything that is not OS X.
The population that uses Active Directory lives almost exclusively on Windows.
The population that uses FCP lives almost exclusively on MacOS (OSX is dead, long live OSX)
The population that uses Docker does not live exclusively on Linux. In fact, a minority of developers works on Linux laptops, even when they target it for deployment. It's a larger minority than in other sectors, but it's definitely a minority, not even a relative majority. The population of (web) developers is possibly the most evenly-distributed of all, in terms of OS.
If someone was trying to run FCP on an OS X VM on a linux box, what would you tell them?
It's not the fault of docker or linux containers that people insist on trying to use the technology on another unsupported operating system.
Obviously, it's the fault of people - as I said in the comment above: I'm surprised it got so popular among people, considering how much it sucks on the platforms lots of them use.
The whole idea of using Docker for dev boxes is to eliminate the cross platform dependency issues and make it easier for everyone, without maintaining wikis for each OS version. We don't use Docker at work because of the non-Linux performance issues.
Running the docker daemon in a linux VM on your OS X system and then complaining about performance is silly.
I will say that a lot of the software I run in Docker has an aarch64 bundle... there are a few things that don't. There's now a beta version of Docker Desktop that includes Rosetta support, which should dramatically help for x86_64 images. I also have found that the FS I/O is not great, but getting better.
(prior job was using M1 Max, current is windows+wsl)
The new 14" model is only slightly bigger than the 13" (.4"x.4" bigger and .5lb heavier) and supports up to 96GB of RAM so may be a reasonable consolation if those size and weight compromises are tolerable for you. Additionally, you'd get a better screen, keyboard, more ports, better wifi and bluetooth, and more CPU & GPU capacity. Of course cost will also go up quite a bit.
It would also help if the virtualization story on Macs improved so that you wouldn't need to have all that RAM just to compensate.
More details here to avoid spamming this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34374176