Still, hanging on to x86 on a Mac seems like a lost cause and I wonder if I should just change my approach. Docker support is probably months away (looking at their roadmap no dev has even started) and when it arrives it's almost certain to be limited to ARM linux images.
JDK macos/aarch64 port is still in dev and so is VS Code. Now (I guess always?), it's clear that Apple Silicon is not going to be a comfortable dev environment, at lest not for some and not for a while.
I was ready to order the model that came out in May (with 32GB RAM) but then the rumour about ARM hit the internets so I kept waiting. I've been holding off on upgrading my MBP13 for a few years now because Apple was painfully slow to refresh it.
There are Hollywood studios already planning to replace their high-end, pro Macs with M1 Mac minis because they'll be faster than what they have. In a couple of months, once the dust has settled and developers have gotten their hands on shipping hardware, people's understanding of what performance is possible on consumer-level hardware will be changed for good. It's day 1 of Big Sur being available and customers haven't gotten their M1 Macs yet, though they'll have them in a few days.
But those developers that are on top of their game released universal versions of their apps that take full advantage of the M1 SoC and all of its benefits: unified memory, 8 CPU and GPU cores, Neural Engine, etc. Of course not all of the pieces are in place that takes a while. The benchmarks that are starting to come out are just nuts, favoring the M1. Now $699 M1-based Mac mini is way faster than any Intel box in that price range and many that cost much more. I have had jobs where running Docker/ Kubernetes was important, but I've had a fair number where it wasn't as well.īut x86 and Intel are losing badly in the highest growth part of the market: mobile/smart phones. I don't know how many other developers really need x86 and how many don't. There are definitely a few places where you notice the difference, but there are definitely places where I can use an extra 50% battery life and a faster CPU as well. When I was primarily running a Python/ Django shop, it was a similar deal-so long as I was able to get Python running I was good. Our web server is Node on Linux and my dev system is MacOS (no Docker or Linux VM) so I'm already cross platform. many of us are already crossing platforms. Of course you need to serve up your site and that piece is usually running on x86. Assuming for a moment here that Google Chrome and Firefox are both going to be ported to ARM, I don't really see why I care about x86 linux except. So long as we have a good running version of node.js and a browser to test with, we are golden.
Second, a lot of us are writing software for the web which means primarily writing software that runs in the browser. And at least for the iOS developers, running on ARM instead of x86 is a significant advantage. That right there is a pretty big chunk of developers.
Or at least not entirely relevant/ interesting.įirst, you have thousands of developers writing code for iOS/ Android & Chromebooks. I still can't believe they didn't incorporate containers into the OS before switching platforms to keep developers around but that's a totally different rant. these aren't just some config bugs either they're going to be a fucking mess of irritating, show-stopping, moving targets with a negative ROI. bugs which only exist on a platform I do not intend to deploy my code to. Now it is harder for me to do primary development on a Mac because I must fix MacOS or live with MacOS only bugs. In fact, I've never gotten paid to write software for Macs, because no production systems use Macs. Truly, I get paid to write software that runs on Linux not on Macs. They've not been the best stewards of their software and developer communities as of late, and they're pushing a totally proprietary architecture onto them expecting them to foot the bill (hours spent fixing/debugging) to make their platform usable. Like, I'm super stoked for the M1, but also just totally fucking irritated about the toolchain changes and MacOS in general.
That is to say, make sure your terminal is the system terminal or built for ARM- otherwise when you install things using package managers they'll be the x86 variant. I got bitten by this by using iTerm (building it from source was fine though) and not realizing it was the x86 variant. I was pretty much forced to write code on an x86 machine and schlep it over via ssh to then run it.Īlso, be real careful you don't accidentally build for x86 when installing libraries or it all goes to shit. development was still VERY rough last time I checked. Just a heads up I haven't tried using my DTK in a while but.