When building Tensorflow from source (because you have to, to get it working even with Rosetta 2) was frustratingly slow, and the whole computer became unusable. After more than an hour of waiting, I stopped the bazel build process. Which reminds me, I'm going trigger the build now and go for a walk...
Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
71–80 of 135 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#72I got mine this week, I'm surprised it doesn't even blow hot air while building node from source. However, I am greatly disappointed in the fact that I cannot use both usb-c for displays, only one of them. I did not know of this limitation until I discovered things were not working as expected. Everything is super responsive, it's far better than the 2014 mac mini (4GB of ram) with 2020 SSD. Rosetta 2 seems to work w…
I’m so frustrated by what apple has done with externals in the last few iterations, especially displays. I am an outlier in that I use three external displays, and my current MacBook can just barely support it if I make sure to spread my devices over separate usb-c dongles. If I try to put keyboard, mouse, power, and monitor on a single advertised as supporting multiple USB and power and HDMI, the keyboard and especi…
Have you looked at the larger Thunderbolt hubs, rather than one of the cheaper and more ubiquitous USB-C dongles?
I use a 15" MacBook Pro and a Caldigit TS3+ – more expensive, but I have a single cable supplying power, a bunch of USB ports, Ethernet, audio, an SD reader and 2x4k monitors. It pretty much feels like magic and has been completely flawless. It won't run three screens though – I do sometimes use a third myself, but that needs an additional direct HDMI -> USB-C cable.
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#73Also M1 owners, I would also like to know how much 8/16 GB memory has affected your workflow/productivity assuming you previously had at least 32GB RAM? e.g. Those who never closed their apps before, kept several browsers with several dozen tabs, Note taking apps, IDE, VM etc. all the time. Is lighting fast opening of apps on M1 = Never having to close the apps in any machine with large RAM?
My perspective: Going from a 2019 15" MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory to an 8GB M1 13" MacBook Pro You don't start to feel the 8GB until you: * have a lot of tabs open in Safari (like ~30+) * have heavy web apps (GMail & Outlook, I'm looking at you) * run a virtual machine (Only so much you can give a Parallels instance w/ 8GB) * run some known performance & memory hogs (Slack, Teams, etc.) * vpn seems to slow things…
That bluetooth lag was annoying me on my first day, but since then I haven't noticed it: either it was fixed or I got used to it. The cursor is quite responsive for me.
Maybe you should try install "Logitech Options", because I did that immediately on the first day, which might have fixed it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#74Depends on what you need to develop. The M1 is great if you do web development with NodeJS style tools or Apple App Store development but don't need to run an x86 Windows VM to see exactly how Windows browsers render your site: Windows browsers which run on 90%+ of this planet's desktops, important corporate customer desktops in particular.
The M1 is not so great if:
- You want to develop real-time raytracing. The M1 using the Metal API does 3.6 FPS (20.1 million rays per second) while the RTX 2070 does 135.5 FPS (757 megarays/sec) on one benchmark: https://www.willusher.io/graphics/2020/12/20/rt-dive-m1
- You need reliable ECC memory and/or a corruption resistant filesystem like ZFS/BTRFS/ReFS. (You can get ECC on serious Thinkpads (X1/P15/P17), Dells, and HPs designed for science and engineering, and also RTX graphics, Cuda machine learning, etc., and run both Windows and Linux.)
- You need hi-performance x86 Linux VMs to compile and test your production back-end code locally on your device.
- You need a multidisk RAID drive configuration (available in laptops above mentioned) which allows you to keep working if one disk fails.
- You need to be able to quickly and inexpensively field-service/replace a failed disk drive, bad memory stick, broken screen, or damaged keyboard.
- You need to be able to quickly swap an old battery for a fresh one. (I replaced the battery in my MacBook Pro when it swelled up and almost cracked the trackpad glass; I had to use acetone nail polish remover to release the adhesive Apple uses to glue the battery into the case. Apple uses glue for everything these days and opposes right-to-repair legislation.)
- You need to be able to use portable graphics APIs such as Vulkan.
- You need to run industry standard CAD/CAM applications performantly and cost effectively.
- You want to develop VR applications.
- You want to run an 8K display. If you see a 280dpi Dell 8K next to a ~220dpi Apple 5K/6K you see there is no comparison. The Apple "retina" renders font edges softer than print.
- You need a device your device vendor allows you to configure to not phone home to said device vendor's servers. If you buy Windows Enterprise or Red Hat Enterprise or Ubuntu this level of privacy is officially supported. Apple aggressively markets itself as pro-privacy but does not offer this: your M1 will be sending quite a few packets to Apple-owned IP ranges.
- You need a device you can constructively criticize on internet forums when it doesn't work well for doing anything other than desktop-and-mobile Webkit webdev and Apple App Store development. If you ever need to share your frustration with your M1 on Reddit or HN you risk instant downvoting.
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#75When building Tensorflow from source (because you have to, to get it working even with Rosetta 2) was frustratingly slow, and the whole computer became unusable. After more than an hour of waiting, I stopped the bazel build process. Which reminds me, I'm going trigger the build now and go for a walk...
Is Bazel native or running under Rosetta2 ?
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#76Mac Mini, 16GB RAM.
Managed to compile FreePascal and Lazarus for M1 (aarch64); was fairly straight forward.
I’ve been playing / prototyping with FPC/Lazarus over the holidays so it’s nice to run without Rosetta.
Compiles are super fast, but of course fpc/Lazarus is pretty quick already. ;-)
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#77I love it, but I find I don't really use it. My 16" MBP has a bigger screen, 4 usb ports so I can charge, two-factor auth, external microphone and external webcam at the same time. The downside is that it's much louder under load, but that is apparently worth it for me. Also the 16" was much more expensive, but and it has much shorter time on battery - but I already paid for it and I'm usually close to a power plug a…
I sold my top of the line 16” MBP and replaced it while making a “profit” with a $900 M1 mini, since I am working solely from home. The mini is faster in almost all tasks.
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on this?: > I do all of my development remotely via ssh and local forwards I do a little with SSH tunnels, but not much. Do you mean you have it set up so that on your Mac you can go to localhost:8080 (or whatever) in your browser and it will actually go to the remote machine?
Yes, just set up a localforward in your .ssh/config like this: Host dev HostName User ForwardAgent yes AddKeysToAgent yes IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_m1_air LocalForward 8443 localhost:8443 LocalForward 8080 localhost:8080 LocalForward 8065 localhost:8065 LocalForward 3000 localhost:3000 ... Those line's effectively mean forward my local port 8443 to the remote host's 8443. The local port + remote port (and even the remot…
Just one more step missing for a fully remote docker setup: have you ever tried combining this with a sshfs mount so you can also develop an app running in a remote container?
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
My perspective: Going from a 2019 15" MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory to an 8GB M1 13" MacBook Pro You don't start to feel the 8GB until you: * have a lot of tabs open in Safari (like ~30+) * have heavy web apps (GMail & Outlook, I'm looking at you) * run a virtual machine (Only so much you can give a Parallels instance w/ 8GB) * run some known performance & memory hogs (Slack, Teams, etc.) * vpn seems to slow things…
That bluetooth lag was annoying me on my first day, but since then I haven't noticed it: either it was fixed or I got used to it. The cursor is quite responsive for me. Maybe you should try install "Logitech Options", because I did that immediately on the first day, which might have fixed it.
I have noticed bluetooth lag apparent with first party keyboard, mouse, trackpad on an M1 Mini.
But that was also happening in different ways on my non-M1 MBP.
Re: Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, just set up a localforward in your .ssh/config like this: Host dev HostName User ForwardAgent yes AddKeysToAgent yes IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_m1_air LocalForward 8443 localhost:8443 LocalForward 8080 localhost:8080 LocalForward 8065 localhost:8065 LocalForward 3000 localhost:3000 ... Those line's effectively mean forward my local port 8443 to the remote host's 8443. The local port + remote port (and even the remot…
Just one more step missing for a fully remote docker setup: have you ever tried combining this with a sshfs mount so you can also develop an app running in a remote container?
Maybe I'll try that