macbook or windows 11 for me at my dev job. No linux support. The choice is so fucking easy imo. Real unix ie not a vm? native Nix package management support? Yeah, macos is the easy winner for me. There is nothing on windows thats better than macos for dev work imo. I hate windows env vars.
There’s literally nothing on the market that even remotely compares to M series chips right now in terms of performance and battery life. Macbooks are great machines in terms of hardware, and while macos has been enshittifying, it’s still a unix that works fine for dev work. So plenty of experienced devs use macs. You can also put Asahi Linux on them, which works fairly well at this point. The only thing that it can’t do is hibernate. Of course, app selection with it is more limited, but still works as a daily driver.
Saying M series is far behind is a wild take when you look at the actual numbers. Check out the benchmarks. The M4 Max isn’t just keeping up. but literally beating the flagship desktop chips in single-core performance.
Check the latest Tom’s Hardware coverage on the base M5. The M5 is actively humiliating flagship desktop silicon in single-thread performance. In a recent CPU-Z benchmark, a virtualized M5—running through a translation layer on Windows 11, mind you, and still scored roughly 1,600 points. Compare that to AMD’s upcoming gaming king, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which sits around 867.
That’s a roughly 84% gap in favor of a mobile chip running in a VM. While a base 10-core M5 obviously won’t beat a 16-core/32-thread desktop monster in raw multi-core totals, the fact that it’s gapping the fastest x86 cores in existence by nearly double in single-core IPC, while sipping tablet-tier power, is genuinely absurd. The mobile-grade architecture argument actually works against your point here.
only if you are a first world dev that can shell out (good) used car money for an overpriced laptop. i bet you could get that in that overall performance ballpark for much cheaper.
Sure, they are expensive, I’m simply pointing out that it is a genuinely good architecture. And you really can’t get the same performance with CISC. I’m personally hoping we’ll start seeing RISCV based machines that are built in a similar way.
you do if you use eg a jetbrains IDE and your codebase is all dockerized and requires 34 separate containers to be running and also the company makes you install a “security” software that constantly scans every fucking file on the machine…
this except for the macbook. experienced computer people know better.
think a dirt cheap used latitude or a thinkpad. or a black box desktop.
macbook or windows 11 for me at my dev job. No linux support. The choice is so fucking easy imo. Real unix ie not a vm? native Nix package management support? Yeah, macos is the easy winner for me. There is nothing on windows thats better than macos for dev work imo. I hate windows env vars.
There’s literally nothing on the market that even remotely compares to M series chips right now in terms of performance and battery life. Macbooks are great machines in terms of hardware, and while macos has been enshittifying, it’s still a unix that works fine for dev work. So plenty of experienced devs use macs. You can also put Asahi Linux on them, which works fairly well at this point. The only thing that it can’t do is hibernate. Of course, app selection with it is more limited, but still works as a daily driver.
Battery life? Yes, because it’s (mobile-grade) ARM. Performance? They are far behind high-end Ryzen or Ultra.
Saying M series is far behind is a wild take when you look at the actual numbers. Check out the benchmarks. The M4 Max isn’t just keeping up. but literally beating the flagship desktop chips in single-core performance.
Check the latest Tom’s Hardware coverage on the base M5. The M5 is actively humiliating flagship desktop silicon in single-thread performance. In a recent CPU-Z benchmark, a virtualized M5—running through a translation layer on Windows 11, mind you, and still scored roughly 1,600 points. Compare that to AMD’s upcoming gaming king, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which sits around 867.
That’s a roughly 84% gap in favor of a mobile chip running in a VM. While a base 10-core M5 obviously won’t beat a 16-core/32-thread desktop monster in raw multi-core totals, the fact that it’s gapping the fastest x86 cores in existence by nearly double in single-core IPC, while sipping tablet-tier power, is genuinely absurd. The mobile-grade architecture argument actually works against your point here.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/virtualized-windows-11-test-shows-apples-m5-destroying-intel-and-amds-best-in-single-core-benchmark-chinese-enthusiast-pits-ryzen-9-9950x3d-and-core-i9-14900ks-against-apples-latest-soc
Incidentally, a good rundown of why RISC and SoC architecture is so performant https://archive.ph/Nmgp3
But you’re using a Mac and my conscience won’t allow that!
only if you are a first world dev that can shell out (good) used car money for an overpriced laptop. i bet you could get that in that overall performance ballpark for much cheaper.
Sure, they are expensive, I’m simply pointing out that it is a genuinely good architecture. And you really can’t get the same performance with CISC. I’m personally hoping we’ll start seeing RISCV based machines that are built in a similar way.
Where?
You don’t need the fastest computer in order to open word documents or write clean code.
you do if you use eg a jetbrains IDE and your codebase is all dockerized and requires 34 separate containers to be running and also the company makes you install a “security” software that constantly scans every fucking file on the machine…
Also don’t forget having to run electron apps like Slack that a lot of companies use.
oh yeah. and zoom eats up an entire god damned core minimum. jumps to two entire cores occasionally.
modern software is absolutely incredible for all the wrong reasons