Most developer tools aren't ready yet for M1 Macs, but next gen Mx Macs should be fully capable main development machines when Apple launches them next year
The excitement around Apple's new M1 chip is everywhere. I bought a MacBook Air 16GB M1 to see how viable it is as main development machine …
steipete's blogPeter Steinberger
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's fanless $999 M1 MacBook Air landed with claims of up to 3.5x better CPU performance, and AnandTech's deep dive on the Mac mini confirmed the silicon itself is outstandingly good — beating Intel's chips and matching AMD's Zen 3. The hardware case for the transition was made within a week of launch.
The open question was software, and this post is a developer's answer: after running an M1 Air as a main development machine, the verdict is that most tooling isn't ready yet, but the next-generation Mx Macs should be fully capable. That matches the gap Forbes flagged days earlier around incompatibility and stability issues with apps like Matlab, Parallels, and Docker.
First-order effects
Developers buying M1 Macs today hit a tooling wall — virtualization, containers, and technical computing apps like Docker, Parallels, and Matlab are the specific blockers named in the related coverage — so many will keep an Intel machine alongside the new one.
Apple gets real-world validation of the chip's performance from early adopters like this blogger, but also a public record of which ports matter most to its core developer audience.
Second-order effects
Tool vendors behind the blocking apps face pressure to ship native ARM builds quickly, since every month of delay costs them mindshare with developers adopting the new Macs.
If the Mx generation closes the capability gap, the M1's rough edges become a footnote and the upgrade cycle shifts toward pro machines — consistent with reports of higher-core M1X MacBook Pros in the pipeline (Gurman reported 8 high-performance cores plus 16 or 32 graphics cores).
Third-order effects
If each Mx generation erases the previous one's software caveats, the Mac completes its transition from Intel dependency to a self-contained ARM platform where hardware leads and third-party tooling follows on Apple's schedule.
Developers' first-machine choice is the leading indicator for the broader PC market: once the dev stack runs natively on Apple silicon, the ecosystem pressure to support it spreads to every vendor serving that audience.
The trend: Apple's silicon transition is following a hardware-first pattern where each chip generation outpaces the software ecosystem, with developer readiness — not raw performance — setting the adoption timeline.
Comprehensive review of the current state of M1 Macs for development by @steipete. Xcode, Docker, virtualization, Android Studio, Gradle, Homebrew & more. https://steipete.com/...
I did some tests on two very similar (64GB/same SSD model, Vision D mobos) “Golden” Hackintosh builds with a 3900x vs 10850k. Basically they are close enough that I don't think you could tell the difference in actual use. So if you are doing one, just go with Intel. https://twitt…
@charlesarthur In hindsight it's kind of amazing that it has taken until now for chip designers to optimize CPUs in ways specific to making JavaScript faster. JavaScript is not going anywhere, and it is a huge bottleneck for a lot of software a lot of people run all day.
@gruber @charlesarthur He's an expert troll, but I do enjoy this tweet - optimizations make M1 Macs “seem” faster, by running JavaScript faster. That's not a use of the word “seem” I was aware of. https://twitter.com/...
Once again, Apple has executed excellently & admirably with their latest silicon efforts. I'm thoroughly impressed with the combination of clever solutions in M1, culminating in a momentous lead. The Mac has re-entered my purchase consideration set for the first time in years. ht…
Snapdragon 875 has a 4mb L3, M1 has a 12MB!!! L2. It's not “magic”, Apple just wins by using a ton more die. Apples cost savings from vertical integration are spent on silicon, which results in a product that is really hard to beat. https://twitter.com/...
Very interesting thread on various choices Apple made for the M1 processor It also shows how important it is for Apple to control the full stack, from the language (Swift), down to the silicon (contains instructions to optimize the reference counting memory mechanism Swift uses) …
@charlesarthur Of course I didn't mean any negative connotations by “cheat”. I mean only that there's convention wisdom about what you shouldn't do, and Apple did it anyway. :)
E.g instructions optimized for JavaScript. In the 80s there were processors optimized for Lisp and Smalltalk, but these were behind in other areas because this of low volume. M1 also gets other things right . https://twitter.com/...
Great thread on Apple's M1. As the thread says, none of this is black magic, just “all the various things have been executed really well, leading to a combined result that is a great leap forward.” https://twitter.com/...
@ErrataRob @charlesarthur As a software dev, I'm wasn't sure how to process “cheating”. It either works it it doesn't. And in this case, it seems to work fine. But us software guys are, well, soft. I'm interested though, if you have a moment, what's the ‘conventional wisdom’ that…
@stuartd @charlesarthur The standard way of designing a CPU is for general purpose use. Apple didn't do that — they designed it for their own code and nobody else's. In retrospect, this is obvious of course.
Apple's M1 processor has a number of tricks. The most clever one for the x86 transition is certainly the ability to emulate its memory ordering modes. https://twitter.com/...
Okay. I had been skeptical about M1 Macs. These explanations remove my skepticism entirely. These are *good* tricks, but they are also *achievable* tricks. Also, it's not that M1s are massively fast and efficient. They are massively fast *or* efficient. https://twitter.com/...
@ErrataRob This is the first Mac since the PowerPC era that's definitely worth the money... I might get one and I don't even like OS X. Well done, Apple...
This is by far the best info I've seen on the new Apple M1 CPU. Many points should be valid for the A-line CPUs, too. Explicit optimization for JavaScript explains the iPhone's fantastic performance, as does iOS' reference counting vs. Android's garbage collection. https://twitte…
This thread seems to 1) imply Apple “cheated” by getting x86 code on ARM to run better than Microsoft managed. Why not say “made a better choice”? 2) imply that optimising Javascript (there's a lot of it on the web) is underhand. No, it's smart. 3) suggest DTKs are sneaky. Huh? h…