Buying a new Mac for dev projects

[Bodhitree]

I‘m currently in a bit of a pickle. I am anticipating doing some serious work in dev environments like XCode and Visual Studio for Mac, and probably Unity 3D, and the admittedly quite ancient Macs I have won’t cut it, long build times in particular would be an issue. As I see things, I have four options for an upgrade.

1) Buy a 24” M1 iMac. It’s colourful, the screen is large enough to code on, the question is can it handle big projects?
2) Buy a 27” Intel iMac. The screen is larger, but it runs hot and will I still be able to use it in 7-10 years?
3) Wait for the 30” Apple Silicon iMac. If this mythical beast ever shows up, it will run fast and have a large screen.
4) Buy an M1 Mac Mini and a new screen. It’s tricky sourcing a screen of the same quality as an iMac.

I tend to hold onto my Macs for a long time, so it matters to me to be able to get good software support. The kind of codebases I envisage working on will probably be a mixture of gaming and web projects but they could get quite large.

I know there never is an ideal time to buy, but I still have some flexibility, I could wait a little while. What do you guys think of my options, and what are people‘s experiences using M1 Macs for development?

 

[leman]

If you anticipate doing really demanding work, I'd wait for the larger Mac. M1 is no slouch, but it's still a home/average user product.

Of course, you can also buy the 24" iMac, test it out with largest possible projects you can imagine, and return if if it does not fulfill your expectations.

 

[LuisN]

I‘m currently in a bit of a pickle. I am anticipating doing some serious work in dev environments like XCode and Visual Studio for Mac, and probably Unity 3D, and the admittedly quite ancient Macs I have won’t cut it, long build times in particular would be an issue. As I see things, I have four options for an upgrade.

1) Buy a 24” M1 iMac. It’s colourful, the screen is large enough to code on, the question is can it handle big projects?
2) Buy a 27” Intel iMac. The screen is larger, but it runs hot and will I still be able to use it in 7-10 years?
3) Wait for the 30” Apple Silicon iMac. If this mythical beast ever shows up, it will run fast and have a large screen.
4) Buy an M1 Mac Mini and a new screen. It’s tricky sourcing a screen of the same quality as an iMac.

I tend to hold onto my Macs for a long time, so it matters to me to be able to get good software support. The kind of codebases I envisage working on will probably be a mixture of gaming and web projects but they could get quite large.

I know there never is an ideal time to buy, but I still have some flexibility, I could wait a little while. What do you guys think of my options, and what are people‘s experiences using M1 Macs for development?

Check here: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderZiskind/videos That's a programmer oriented channel full of comparisons between PCs, Macbookpro 16" and MacBook Air M1. You may even ask him to test your specific case

 

[Bodhitree]

If you anticipate doing really demanding work, I'd wait for the larger Mac. M1 is no slouch, but it's still a home/average user product.

Of course, you can also buy the 24" iMac, test it out with largest possible projects you can imagine, and return if if it does not fulfill your expectations.

That is not such a bad idea...

 

[Bodhitree]

Check here: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderZiskind/videos That's a programmer oriented channel full of comparisons between PCs, Macbookpro 16" and MacBook Air M1. You may even ask him to test your specific case

I watched his comparison of a Lenovo $1800 laptop with an Intel 11th gen Core i7 compared to an M1 MacBook Air, and considering that the Air was running Unity under Rosetta2 it was pretty close. But it doesn‘t really answer my question about larger projects. Its a good channel though, thank you for the suggestion, I will have a look through the rest of the content.

 

[LuisN]

I watched his comparison of a Lenovo $1800 laptop with an Intel 11th gen Core i7 compared to an M1 MacBook Air, and considering that the Air was running Unity under Rosetta2 it was pretty close. But it doesn‘t really answer my question about larger projects. Its a good channel though, thank you for the suggestion, I will have a look through the rest of the content.

Check this one:

"Building Webkit". I'm sure he'll be more than happy to test anything you ask him

 

[kazmac]

I’d wait for the larger iMac.

 

[DaveP]

Myself, I'd go the route of the mini. It's easier to upgrade portions of the system. However, you mentioned that your screen needs are pretty demanding. So it may not make sense, but I would definitely consider it if the monitor(s) can be worked out.

No experience developing on the M1, but the fastest Intel Mini with eGPU and extra thunderbolt SSDs works very well for my needs of Xcode, virtual machines, Pixelmator Pro, etc. I'm hoping Apple releases a stand alone (mini/pro/whatever) around the $2K price point. We'll see, but I like the flexibility of my current setup after over a decade of high end iMacs replaced every 3-4 years.

 

[Bodhitree]

"Building Webkit". I'm sure he'll be more than happy to test anything you ask him

Thanks. Webkit is roughly 4.25 million lines of code and about 70% C++ so it’s in the right sort of ballpark for the kinds of projects I’m thinking of. The M1 builds a full release build in roughly 23 minutes, and does a rebuild with no changes in about 45 seconds. That’s actually not too bad, I don’t think I will be working on projects larger than that.

Which doesn’t actually make the choice any easier. The M1 probably could do the job, but I expect the higher core count socs to be able to do it in half the time, and that does make a difference to the workflow. Ho hum.

Compared to the projects I was working on 10 years ago, I recall working on a project with about 1 million lines of C++ code and at the time that used to do a full rebuild in about 40 minutes. That was a significant pain point, touching anything which went into the precompiled header would trigger a full rebuild and you could go make coffee and chat with a colleague.

 

[bobcomer]

Since you want a portable for occasional work yet desktop performance, I wouldn't go for either the mini or the air. I'd get the M1 MBP. It's already got active cooling, so no voiding your warrantee like you'd do on the Air, not to mention with that mod you couldn't use it on your lap.

 

[Internaut]

When you say Visual Studio, you mean full Visual Studio and not Visual Studio Code? I don't think full Visual Studio has yet been ported to M1 (but presumably works under Rosetta).

At the moment, I think 16Gb, not M1, might be your limiting factor for massive projects (but I say that coming from a place where the laptop's are expected to run a good 3-4 virtual machines at any given time).

 

[Bodhitree]

Since you want a portable for occasional work yet desktop performance, I wouldn't go for either the mini or the air. I'd get the M1 MBP. It's already got active cooling, so no voiding your warrantee like you'd do on the Air, not to mention with that mod you couldn't use it on your lap.

Portability would be very nice, and it comes at a minimal cost in performance and cash. Its a fifth option to consider, now that we know that the basic iMacs don’t come with an upgraded processor. It does mean sourcing a good screen though.

I am tempted just to hold onto my large pile of euros and wait to see what the 30” iMac brings.

 

[leman]

Check this one:

"Building Webkit". I'm sure he'll be more than happy to test anything you ask him

The methodology of these tests is... well, not very good. The git cloning test is completely pointless because he can't control the server connection and has no idea how traffic is prioritized — proper way would be to clone from a local folder instead. Also, it sounds to me like he is not aware of the existence of "time" command (which would be a much better way of timing these things rather than trying to press enter on three machines simultaneously...)

But most importantly, his WebKit build does not do the same thing on all platforms. He is building the x86 version on the Intel machine and ARM version on the M1 machine. So we don't know whether M1 is faster here because it's faster, or because it's somehow easier to do codegen for ARM. You'd really want to cross-compile these things so that they target the same platform.

 

[Bodhitree]

This article hits the key point on what has been troubling me...

Apple's M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model - ExtremeTech

Apple is positioning its M1 quite differently from any CPU Intel or AMD has released. The long-term impact on the PC market could be significant.

www.extremetech.com

 

[jdb8167]

This article hits the key point on what has been troubling me...

Apple's M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model - ExtremeTech

Apple is positioning its M1 quite differently from any CPU Intel or AMD has released. The long-term impact on the PC market could be significant.

www.extremetech.com

I think that article is a little over the top. Apple has limited fabrication right now. They (TSMC) needs to make 100’s of millions of SoCs just for iPhones. Adding in 10’s of millions more for the various M1 products takes up a significant portion of the rest. It isn’t surprising that Apple has coordinated their releases to not require another different Mac SoC at the same time.

Once Apple has all the tiers set and being fabricated then they can continue with a regular cadence but right now they are starting from scratch. I would expect to see higher tier SoCs move down to lower end Macs over time. That frees up fabrication space for newer processes for new iPhones and higher end SoCs. In 2 years time it is likely that Apples chip development will look a lot more like what Intel and AMD are doing except that Apple doesn’t need to limit product features on different tiers for sales & marketing reasons.

 

[Bodhitree]

I’m not so sure. There are a lot of benefits to be had from keeping the number of different socs to a minimum, economies of scale not least. I think there will be two higher end socs, one for the big iMac and 16” MBP, and one for the Mac Pro, but that is about it.

Certainly the whole idea of sticking one processor into a tablet, a laptop, a small form factor desktop and a normal desktop is new. It speaks to Apple’s confidence that the M1 is fast enough for many people’s needs, and sufficiently low-power to fit all those scenarios.

 

[jdb8167]

I’m not so sure. There are a lot of benefits to be had from keeping the number of different socs to a minimum, economies of scale not least. I think there will be two higher end socs, one for the big iMac and 16” MBP, and one for the Mac Pro, but that is about it.

Certainly the whole idea of sticking one processor into a tablet, a laptop, a small form factor desktop and a normal desktop is new. It speaks to Apple’s confidence that the M1 is fast enough for many people’s needs, and sufficiently low-power to fit all those scenarios.

I suspect that we will get one additional tier over time. Ultra-mobile, mobile, mid-tier desktop, workstation. Right now they are constrained by fab space but that will not be a problem in a couple of years.

 

[leman]

Having one shared SoC for all consumer machines makes a lot of sense from business perspective. You achieve economy of scale and have ample opportunity to bin the chips you produce to a matching product. To be honest, the traditional CPU market is not that much different - Intel also produces a very small variety of chips, but they bin them by speed and sell them on different price levels, while Apple bins for power consumption while targeting same peak performance levels. I expect them to keep the “one SoC” model in the future, but this SoC will probably become more capable and also more flexible in its configuration.

Regarding higher end Macs, I am slowly starting to think that we won’t see an SoC. Instead it will probably be a system on a package, with CPU/GPU/cache residing on different chips. And it will support more configurations.

 

[cvtem]

If it wasn’t for unity I’d say M1 16gb mini

but the M1 GPU is very weak.
Unless your doing the most basic dev or tutorials you wil feel it.

so if I was you i would hold out another 6 months.
If you need something now, buy second hand, don’t waste your money on a new intel machine.