Ask HN: Anyone Using MacBook Air M2 24GB for Developement? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone Using MacBook Air M2 24GB for Developement?

25 pointsgls2ro81 comments

I am planning to change my Macbook as it is old and Intel-based.

Current problems: - Cannot do Video calls with share screen - live coding - because it gets throttled - Cannot use both laptop display and external monitor - because it gets throttled

I have an external fan that I use to be able to do serious work. The current laptop has 64GB of RAM, but I don't think RAM is the issue.

I am considering buying a MacBook Air 15 with 24GB because I want to carry something light as I have back pain.

So my question is: - If you are using MacBook Air M2 for development, what are you running on, and did you encounter any issues?

I am concerned about it being fanless and, thus, probably going easy to throttle.

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Upgraded from a maxed out 2015 Macbook Pro 15" to a Macbook Air M1 with 16GB of RAM. The new silent laptop is literally twice as fast in every metric.

Air: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-2022

https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-15-inch-retin...

Working in IntelliJ on a few Java projects (40k LOC) and a few Docker containers, works great. I've never seen it throttle outside of video games and when it does throttle it's by 5-10% so not much but then I'm just building web apps.

If your projects are bigger or if you have a front end open in say VSCode or WebStorm at the same time and more than quite a few Docker containers then I'd recommend the Pro - basically any Macbook with a fan.

The ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 2 is lighter (960 grams), and I now often use one for developing when traveling that I had originally intended for giving external presentations (when not traveling, logging in to our 2 TB RAM group server is more fun).

I would say the MacBook Air M2 is superior to the X1 Nano in most categories, except (1) weight (it's lighter than my iPad, which since I got the Nano leave at home) and (2) keyboard quality (which is very important to me for working longer periods).

Macs cases and screens look more sturdy but when dropped seem to break more easily than the Lenovo cases and screens, despite the latter being made from plastic (sadly, this is reporting from personal experience, sample size N=3).

I have an X1 Nano too, because I want to run Linux and it is less hassle than Asahi Linux (currently, I wouldn't be surprised if that changes).

Agree on the portability, it's great, but Lenovo still only offer 16GB RAM, the CPU is a low power Intel one, which are improving but 10nm (X1 Nano Gen 3?) vs 5nm means the M2 has a huge advantage... One good point is you can replace the SSD though.

Dare I say it, you're comparing apples to oranges here.

> I am concerned about it being fanless and, thus, probably going easy to throttle.

I recently made the switch from a laptop with a modern Intel chip to an M1 and can tell you the difference is night and day. It can compile LLVM in half the time and you won’t even notice that the laptop is busy.

As alternative, from a review I read that new AMD chips are also pretty steady. Also no throttling in laptops.

My theory is that Intel has optimized for short benchmarks at all costs.

I have an M1 with fan but have only heard it once. Most of the time it’s off. In reviews online the air also doesn’t quickly throttle.

Yes, a 24GB M2 MacBook Air should be able to do this just fine, but your 64GB Intel MacBook should not be having any issues doing these things either. What happens when you say "it gets throttled"?

My 2018 15" MacBook Pro is only a 16GB model and would have no issues performing these tasks. I would suggest removing the bottom panel of your MacBook and cleaning the exhaust vents. Being an Intel model, it is at least 3 years old, and dust can certainly buildup in that time.

If that does not fix the problem, something else is wrong. Yes, the intel MacBooks run hot, but even today they should be able to perform well, especially with 64GB of RAM.

I use M2 Air with 24GB RAM for Backend and frontend development using TypeScript and React. Also have a Redis and PgSQL running under docker compose. A couple of browsers running with 20-30 tabs open. Teams and a couple of office programs running too. Didn't face any issues.

Many people in our company use M1 or M2 Air with 16GB RAM for iOS, Android or Flutter development. No one mentioned any productivity issues as such.

Flutter development was actually what made me upgrade to 32 GB of RAM, but I think that's the fault of the Dart LSP implementation I was using. Each Vim tab would create a new LSP session that used ~200MB of RAM. And I like having all my tabs open for easily jumping between files (Vim tabs + tmux).

Moving from an aging intel macbook to a modern m2 is a night and day difference, the passive cooling won’t limit you for most dev tasks you throw at it.

As for your throttling, I experienced massive throttling issues on a 2018 macbook pro 15”. Started out of the blue, and was so bad that I couldn’t even do 15 minutes of video meetings before audio and video lag and break ups set in. Lived with it for weeks, until I tried resetting the SMC - which worked like magic! Machine returned to its former glory. Worth a shot in your case as well.

Other things to try if the machine is aging, is to open it up, clean all the dust, and reapply thermal paste. It might be all clogged up depending on where you’ve used it. Aging thick thermal paste can be pretty bad as well.

> I couldn’t even do 15 minutes of video meetings before audio and video lag and breakups set in

I experienced precisely the same issue. Will try resetting the SMC - and see how it works. I cleaned a while back the dust, but will do it again.

I'm using a 24GB M2 Air running a development environment in Docker, and no problems here. Running several containers, MySQL, elastic search, redis. It feels really fast compared to a 2020 i7 6-core with 32 GB. It doesn't get hot. It's silent. Running the environment cuts battery life, though I still get around 8 hours on a full charge.

Don’t you use the laptop while charging? I only disconnect the charging cable when I need to head somewhere quickly

That'll wear out the battery quickly.

> That'll wear out the battery quickly. Why does this happen? If it's about overcharging, is it impossible to stop charging once the battery is full?

A high cell voltage will ruin lithium ion cells over time.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...

I thought that was fine for MacBooks because it will only charge to 80% and won’t increase the battery cycles?

I also disconnect the charging cable during the night because that stresses the battery.

My M1 and M2 Macbooks will happily charge to 100%. How to make them to stop at 80%?

I've seen checkbox somewhere in settings, checked by default. If checked and OS decides that device is connected constantly, it limits change to ~80%

Look up: “Aldente”. Not tested. discovered yesterday for my future laptop as soon as they become affordable

In alternativeto.net you can find FOSS alternatives for Aldente

No, battery life is measured in change cycles. If you don’t discharge the battery, it doesn’t age as much as if you do discharge and then recharge the battery. At least that’s the case for batteries with reasonable charging controllers like those found in $500+ gadgets.

That's what I'm saying, keeping the charger connected reduces the amount of battery cycles therefore keeping the battery health for longer compared to charging and discharging multiple times.

BUT, you have to disconnect the charger when not using the laptop, for example when you're going to sleep.

Not all charge cycles are equivalent. By limiting charge to just 80%, your battery will last many times longer versus to letting it charge up to 100%.

That's also the reason why EV manufacturers set charge limits to similar numbers.

I often sit on the couch or bed while working.

I think you should specify development of what exactly? Videos? Backend Software? Front end? Firmware? Mobile Apps? Games? 3D assets?

I doubt there isn't already enough information and options online and via HN search about M2 Mac's used for development.

I just assume web development unless stated otherwise. As an embedded engineer I understand where you’re coming from, but for a lot of people here web is the only thing they know.

Mostly backend development in Ruby (most of the time Rails), some frontend for my side projects.

I use Docker with multiple containers running almost all the time. Local PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I use from time to time Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.

I mostly use now VScode, sometimes Rubymine.

Video calls: Mostly Zoom, some Google Meet, rarely something else.

I do all these on a 24GB M2 Air, have no problem

I did all of that on an M1 MacBook Air and now on a M2 without any problems whatsoever. Only caveat the Airs have is that you can't attach more than one external screen without some workarounds[1]. If you don't rely on that the machine should be more than capable of what you're looking for!

1: https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-two-o...

I do Rails development (in a docker compose environment) on my MacBook pro with 8 GB of ram without any issues!

Yes. I usually change laptops once every say 6-7 years. This is why four years ago I decided to buy a maxed-out 16" MacBook Pro with 64GB so that it should keep me for at least 8 years or more.

But it seems not to be the case.

I don't see how more ram would extend the lifetime? Isn't there other factors that matter more?

>I don't see how more ram would extend the lifetime? Isn't there other factors that matter more?

Because RAM is the hard cap (if you ignore SWAP) while here's infinite number of CPU cycles. With a slow CPU things will just take a bit longer, but with not enough RAM then that's it, it's game over for your workloads (again if you ignore SWAP which I don't want to rely on, especially on a system where SSD is soldered).

What do you do that eats up 20+ GB ram?

Does it matter why someone else does with their ram?

Maybe I run 20VMs at once or 200 Chrome tabs or 3 electron instances.

You buy as little as you need let others buy how much they need.

I am asking out of curiosity, not to be judgemental.

I am using the Pro version, "MacBook Pro M2 24GB 13-inch 2022". Backend and frontend mostly, several docker containers running constantly, several chrome and firefox instances with about 10s of tabs opened, DB tools (pgAdmin etc). All of this works great, battery life ~5 hours when doing heavy work, fans very very rarerly turning on, maybe few times over the last 10 months I was using it.

One issue I experience is that "Virtual Machine Service for Docker" is consistently sitting at 6gb ram. I am running in "linux/amd64" mode as I had some compatibility issues.

Another issue is that for some reason WebStorm sometimes works much worse than on linux which I used before the mac. As if WebStorm completely turns off some features (highlight, typechecking...) from time to time.

>I am running in "linux/amd64" mode as I had some compatibility issues.

we were having the same issue at work, and one of the solutions was move as many images to arm64 as possible.

so, things like postgresql, rabbitmq, redis are quite safe. it made development a lot faster and it was using a lot less memory.

the other thing was doing work on making sure our microservices were also arm64 compatible, which was not that hard given we mainly use python.

I personally use a 16" 2023 M2 Max MBP maxed out and it is honestly god like.

However a good friend of mine uses the latest M2 powered Air with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD (the 24GB upgrade so a stretch too far for him) and I have to say it is a damn good machine and I could use it without much trouble. It doesn't throttle nearly as much as you would think for a fanless unit. Obviously it isn't as fast and he does hit swap when under a heavy workload whereas I am yet to hit swap but I also have 64GB vs his 16GB.

So to answer your question. Yes I think the Air is an excellent development machine for 'up-to and maybe a little over' a "heavy-medium" development workload. If you're doing a lot on the machine then you will hit its limits for sure but if you're just running Xcode and a simulator or two, etc. or PyCharm and docker, etc. you will be just fine.

If you're doing anything GPU heavy it isn't a great option but other than that I highly recommend it.

However I suggest you look at the total price once you add in 24GB RAM and more SSD storage (at least 1TB imho) vs the 14" MacBook Pro. There isn't a huge difference between them yet the 14" Pro is basically as good as my 16" for most things. Especially if you can find a good returned unit on sale cheap via the Apple Refurb store. The machines are as good as new, same warranty, etc. Well worth checking out.

I'm hoping the next generation Macbook Airs will have 16GB RAM by default, I just can't get myself to spend EUR230 to get the 16GB upgrade.

16GB base would be nice but given Apple wanting to keep the entry price as low as possible I can't see it happening for a few more years. On the plus side I do find the 8GB unified memory design makes an 8GB Apple Silicon system "feel" like a 16GB Intel/AMD system in terms of memory use. It isn't identical and you can notice the difference at times but an 8GB Windows/Intel laptop such as a Dell XPS side by side with an 8GB MacBook Air and the Air feels a far better machine over all when using it normally.

I have a maxed out 13 inch M2 air, it’s a great device.

I run docker, usually with local supabase, affinity designer, framer, many many open tabs on chrome, usually two open vscode projects with some js builder and tests running, TablePlus, gitkraken, slack and some other smaller apps. On top of that I do video calls with zoom.

No issue. It’s fast. Ram does get full, but don’t notice it. It gets warm but not hot, unless you really push it.

Not having fans is really amazing.

I have the 15" M2 with 24GB. It's fantastic. I'm mostly doing web dev, and was thinking I'd use GitHub Codespaces if local Docker didn't work out (either because of performance or because of arm vs intel issues), but turns out that Docker runs very well on the M2. So well in fact that it's pretty nice to do dev work locally again (I used to do my work on the dreaded 2016 MBP, butterfly keys and all).

So I can recommend the M2. The things I miss are more than 2 USB ports and to a little extent an HDR screen (the screen is good, but it's not as good as, say, an iPhone Pro or the MacBook Pro). I also haven't tried using it with more than one monitor, and I've heard that's not possible. I'm also not a fan of magsafe and would have much rather been given a USB-C cable to charge. I hope the new EU legislation kills magsafe but I doubt it (hot take, I know).

If you're looking at the 16" MBP, then you should probably go to an Apple Store and just try lifting it up first. It's super heavy. I wouldn't want to carry that thing around.

You can use usbc to charge, as well as MagSafe.

I know, so why produce all that MagSafe e-waste?

It's not waste to the vast majority of us.

The current one is 16" MBP and based on my experience with carrying it around I don't want such a big laptop anymore.

This is why I was thinking about Air. Really having a light laptop to carry does a big difference.

Can you detail your full specs of your current machine? you should be able to handle those tasks. Do you have a dedicated graphics card? SSD?

Have you checked activity monitor to see what the biggest culprit is?

[I now have M1 max, 64gb 14 inch - and don't have any issues. But previously I had Intel i7 mac, 13inch, 16gb ram - no dedicated graphics card and I never had issues with development, i upgraded for video editing]

Full specs:

2.3 GHz 8-core Intel i9

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB

64 GB 2667 MHZ DDR4

1 TB HDD

16 Inch Monitor

Currently running macOS Sonoma

That is a very capable machine and should not be having issues. I suggest trying some of the tips others have suggested here before purchasing a new machine.

1. Remove the bottom panel and clean the fans. Here is a guide to remove the lower panel. Then take a look at the small gap between the fans and the heatsink fins. I suspect there is dust clogging the heatsink fins.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Lower+...

2. Reset the SMC. Follow the steps here. You would use the steps for "Laptop Computer with T2 Chip" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

Thank you! Will redo the cleaning steps. I did not used the guide so maybe I missed something.

I did not yet reset the SMC! Hope this will work well!

It’s a very capable machine (I’m still on the M1, powering an ultrawide screen and a variety of intensive apps).

If you care about new models coming out soon, you can check https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

(There’s a chance the M3 is about to be released)

Oh maybe I will wait a bit more to see what's happening until the end of the year

Not a direct answer to your question, but I recently upgraded from a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro to an M1 MacBook Pro which I got a good deal on - 2k for a 16 inch w the max chip, 64gb ram, and a 1tb hdd.

I looked at the new air, drooled over it really, but when I found this deal I couldn’t justify spending about the same to get a fraction of the power.

When I bought the last intel mbp, i actually initially bought an m1, but at the time it was too tough to set things up. This was mid 2021. This time around it was a lot easier, though my stack might be a tad simpler these days.

Only 2 weeks in but I’m really loving this thing so far. Might be worth checking for some deals on m1 models if you can find them, I think there are still some new models circulating, though from what I saw of the airs it was mostly 8gb ram.

I've used an M1 Air with 16GB for over a year and had absolutely no issues whatsoever. I've never hit any noticeable throttling limit. It simply does not need active cooling, ever, IME. It's a wonderful machine.

I use M2 with 24GB and in a nutshell, it's fantastic machine.

I do backend and frontend, most of my dev time is spent in terminal and browser. Before buying it, I was worried about being fanless and was considering the Pro. I'm so happy I went with the Air. It's light, the battery lasts all day with no problem: when I go for an all day out of office work, I simple don't even think about bringing the charger with me. And if I really need to charge it (didn't happen yet), USB-C works.

Docker is always on, occasional ffmpeg transcoding, some Rust compiling... the machine does not care.

Yes. That is the exact computer I use for work.

The only issue is that I have to sometimes fiddle about with some Docker images that don’t like ARM. Rosetta takes care of most of them, but there’s a few that are bothersome. Other than that, it’s basically perfect. That said, I’m doing web development. Nothing like 3D graphics or machine learning.

However, at this point I’d wait for M3. They should be coming in a few months. Guessing early next year.

I use my M2 Air 16GB for app development. Runs Webstorm, xcode simulator, node servers pretty smoothly. llama.cpp also runs fast enough. It runs some games okay (like KSP).

I have a dock & external monitor to switch between my Air and M1 MBP and I don't notice a difference in performance when doing the same tasks that I normally do, but games run smoother.

What kind of dock are you using?

I was looking for a solution to switch between two machines (one personal and one from work) while having one single monitor so that I don't need to change the monitor cable between them (monitor is LG Ultrafine 4K)

I use a CalDigit TS4 dock. I love only plugging in a single cable to get everything at my work station. My old company bought it for me.

I used an M1 Air with 16 GBs without issue for everything from Unity3D to multiple IntelliJ products without issue

I did eventually move to an M1 Max MBP with 64 GB of RAM, but that was mostly from severely underestimating the uselessness (for my purposes) of locally hosted LLMs: as you said, 24 GBs is plenty for most usecases

What's your dev stack?

I have the M1 Air 16GB, and if I'm bimbling around in NodeJS and VSCode it runs fine, but if I need to do mobile work, the Xcode UI previews and Jetbrains IDEs cause it to run warm and throttle.

It's not slowing me down, but it does make it a bit uncomfortable to use on my lap.

I don't do mobile work.

I mostly use either VScode or Rubymine while working with Ruby (mainly using Rails) while running multiple docker containers (some setups required multiple projects to run in the same time)

If I don't do video calls or screen sharing the actual development works fine - with an external fan under the laptop. But in general it gets warm even if I don't do video calls.

Same machine with 16GB of Ram. Everything is great. No issues at all. Best dev machine ever.

Had M1 Max 64gb then moved to Air M2 24gb when switching a job. I do Java development mostly with IntelliJ and work with containers a bit. It's super fast. For most things it's faster than the old M1 Max for most things I tried.

I have a 16" 32 GB Macbook M2 and I generally feel 32 GB is too little for development tasks.

M2 chip itself is very, very fast and requires little power (and thus is cool), so I don't think performance or cooling will be an issue.

YMMV.

yep it's the perfect choice for dev in 2023. performance is off the charts and almost makes me quetion why the pro exists (yeah its probably for heavier workloads like video editing). if you're worried about fanless you can install some thermal pads for cheap https://9to5mac.com/2022/08/11/m2-air-thermal-pad-mod/ but you likely will not need to.

Back pain is the important topic here. Regular cycling will help a lot.

I had, 13" version. Wonderful machine.

The only downside, if you drown it in the rain, you'd need ti replace it.

I'm back to 16" 2019 intel with 64gb of ram, and it's very noticeably worse.

Meta: there's a typo in the last word of the title (an extra 'e' in "development"), might be worth fixing for posterity. Thanks.

Yes. It's fantastic—the best portable dev machine on the market. My only complaint is the bezel, but it's ignorable.

What you are going to notice is the jump from Intel to Apple Silicon. It's like living in another world.

I'm using a Macbook Air M2 mit 24GB for freelance SRE some and lightweight software engineering work as well. I'm also playing around with local LLMs, Stable Diffusion, some virtual machines, Kubernetes/k3s, docker-compose and I sometimes build go software. Haven't had it struggle even once, battery easily lasts all day and some more. It's the best laptop I ever owned.

I am thinking about getting an M2 with 32GB RAM.

On a side note for back pain - have you tried acupuncture?

> have you tried acupuncture?

Did not try that.

Currently, I am doing it twice per year kinetotherapy, and in the last 6 months, I lost around 10 kg - making the pain a bit more supportable. I even have days without feeling any pain at all.

It's rather overpowered for anything but games and video production.

I use one with 16 GB and it's fine, 0 issues whatsoever.

Is this much RAM really necessary or am I just turning old?

IME even the 8GB M1 MBP can handle "average" dev workloads in the web space, but you still have to be wary with going overboard with browsers & IDEs.

I'd much prefer 16GB, but the Apple Tax on that is insane.

Yeah, I would pick 16 GB ram if I had a larger budget but anything over than that feels excessive?

I have a MBP M2 8GB and do both Rails and Flutter development running multiple containers, still I have barely reached the full usage of my ram.

What would people need 20+ GB ram for? LLMs?

Interesting you don't reach full usage - I'm deep in swap most of the time. But, I don't have any performance issues until something has a memory leak or I've got too many IDE windows open.

I think a lot of us techies have also become too used to just having as many programs open at once as possible, and that of course can be quite demanding in terms of resources when you have a lot of day-to-day as well as work tools open.

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