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Comment by xtracto | Hacker News Reader

For me MacBookPro with M2 chips would be perfect if the 13in model allowed 64GB RAM. My workflow requires me to run Docker (intel images) heavily with several containers. Having a virtualization layer is pretty resource consuming. Usually the Docker + containers I use take around 5GB RAM alone.

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.

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> For me MacBookPro with M2 chips would be perfect if the 13in model allowed 64GB RAM

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.

There is no M2-series MacBook Pro with a 32GB RAM limit. There is the legacy 13in version with regular M2 which has a 24GB limit (which IMO makes no sense at all - basically everyone would be better with the M2 air over the model). And there is the 14in model with M2 Pro/Max which has both 64GB and 96GB RAM options.

My personal laptop is an M1 Air (16gb)... for anything dev, I use VS Code + Remoting extensions and just work "on" my personal desktop (local or over vpn/wireguard). It means I can't really do much without an internet connection, but that's often the case anyway.

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)

What software are you using that doesn't have ARM versions available? I think it goes without saying that a machine with an ARM processor is not going to be ideal if you're frequently working with x86-specific software.

I've needed some scientific software that still doesn't have ARM64 libraries available, so thus are stuck on x86. RStudio, for example, has a lot of dependencies and only recently starting offering experimental support for aarch64 on Linux.

Really don't understand why Apple still selling 13" MBP, as MBP 14 is much better, and you can get it with up to 96GB of memory now. I would assume they keep 13" just for people who still likes TouchBar.

I bought a 13” M2 for work (freelance dev) last week. It’s a weight and size thing for me. The 14” (I’ve had one before) seems to just cross the threshold for what I can comfortably carry when I’m out and about.

Why did you choose that over the MacBook Air?

My impression is that the air can’t “gun it” for as long because of heat. Sometimes I run intensive stuff and I’d prefer the machine to turn the fans on rather than throttle the processor.

With that said, the air is nice. It’s just not worth it to save 160 grams for my use case.

Chances are Docker would be a dog on that 2011 too, if you were on MacOS. I honestly don't know how Docker got so popular when it sucks so much on anything that is not Linux.

> I honestly don't know how Docker got so popular when it sucks so much on anything that is not Linux.

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.

They sound silly.

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 an Active directory domain controller on a windows VM on a mac mini, what would you tell them?

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.

> It's not the fault of docker or linux containers that people insist

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.

Docker is something that should be cross platform far more than those examples.

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.

Apple is free to port the docker daemon to run natively on OS X.

Running the docker daemon in a linux VM on your OS X system and then complaining about performance is silly.

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