Ask HN: Will the dev tools that don't work on M1 chips be fixed next year?

24 points by allthemcodes 5 years ago | 26 comments

I'd like to buy a new 16" Macbook Pro but don't know if its safer to buy the current model or wait for next year's model with the M1 (or M2 or whatever it will be called) chip.

It seems like there's a number of things that don't yet work or are buggy on the M1 MBP's: https://medium.com/better-programming/apple-silicon-the-dev-tools-that-work-and-dont-work-yet-5288452b9b4a

Just wondering if most of those things will be fixed next year.

vr46 5 years ago |

I bought an MBP 16 in January, pretty fully loaded with the max chip, max ram and max gpu at the time, and I cannot recommend you buy this machine or even a newer version of it right now. It’s great, but real battery life is abysmal, it runs very hot, although this has been massively improved by switching from FF to Safari, and I usually have Turbo Booster Pro restricting the cpu to base speed. And, not much uses the GPU. iTerm can, big deal, and Snap Camera does, big deal, but DaVinci Resolve free doesn’t, and neither does Capture Pro or ffmpeg, so it’s all a bit pointless right now. Find a compromise Intel machine for now.

P.S. also: lots of fans.

r2b2 5 years ago | |

To add another point sample –

I work mostly in Chrome, iTerm, Sublime, and Pixelmator on a 2019 16" MBP and haven't had any issues. I was hoping to wait for the larger-screen Apple silicon MBP, but my old laptop didn't hold out. There's been so much negative sentiment around the Touch Bar MBPs that I was bummed to buy one. However, after using it for a few months I'd say that feeling was completely misguided. It's been great.

grwthckrmstr 5 years ago | |

Hey! Until right now, I never thought to disable turbo boost to make my MBP 16 run cooler or have better battery life. Now that you said it, using Turbo Booster Pro seems a no-brainer for 99% of my daily usage. Thank you!

My question is - is there a similar app that lets me disable the AMD GPU? Again 99% of my work does not require the discrete GPU's power. Disabling it should help run the laptop cooler and enable longer battery life.

retroman2 5 years ago | | |

This is a pretty popular GPU switching program for Macs with discrete GPUs: https://github.com/CodySchrank/gSwitch

vr46 5 years ago | | |

Sadly not! There used to be, gfxcardstatus on older macs could force integrated but the only choice now is to force discrete.

vimy 5 years ago | |

If you plug the powercable in the usb-c on the right the laptop gets less hot so the fans make less noise.

indemnity 5 years ago | |

I have the same i9, and I run it 24/7 with two 4K monitors attached, so dGPU always on.

Fans are always going, and with the crapware installed by IT, CPU averages 70C to 90C

Throttles a lot, not a great developer experience.

Hope the successor Mx chip can drive two monitors without taking off, and still compile as well.

eden_hazard 5 years ago | |

I've one too and shelled out almost 3k for it. Now I really regret it cause everyone's saying the Air's are better than the old pros. Mine also runs hot all the time from basic use but it helps that I use external keyboard and trackpad for it.

raihansaputra 5 years ago | |

If OP doesn’t need the max spec chip for the MBP 16, I recommend the i7 spec instead of the i9. I’m using one right now for work and it’s not running as hot as the i9.

exged 5 years ago |

I'd expect most things to work and have native versions by next year, with the notable exceptions of virtualization software and package managers like Homebrew.

Virtualization software likely will never be fixed if you expect an x86 guests to work. The hardware obviously cannot natively virtualize x86, nor can Rosetta cannot emulate privileged x86 code. x86 Docker images will also not work.

Homebrew itself will probably be ported to ARM by then. However, there will likely be a long tail of packages that won't have ARM builds for some time.

PeterisP 5 years ago | |

Virtualization not working will require a big change of habits, at least for me. On my current macbook, all the compatibility issues of needing a particular piece of weird software for some client project have been easily solvable by keeping a bunch of VMs with various Windows and Linux versions. You don't want to pollute your host with various short-lived installations of different (often incompatible) versions of various tools anyway, having separate virtual environments (with revertable snapshots!) for separate tool needs is quite convenient.

Hopefully we'll have ARM versions of Linux working as virtualization guests on Apple hardware soon, but losing Windows compatibility will be a pain for me, it will require either ignoring the new Mac hardware, or keeping a separate Windows laptop, which is a pain.

Perhaps having a remotely accessible cloud Windows machine will be the way to go; last time I tried it, it was a pain to use the GUI remotely doe to stutter but perhaps now neworks and machines are faster and this might work better.

yryan 5 years ago | |

Homebrew works under Rosetta 2. Homebrew on ARM has partial functionality. https://brew.sh/2020/12/01/homebrew-2.6.0/

wmf 5 years ago | |

You can run x86 VMs and Docker containers (slowly) using QEMU.

patrickaljord 5 years ago |

If you rely on docker you won't be able to use it until at least February unless they use a pre-release of go which they haven't say they would do. VM are a no-go too. My guess is that it should be runnable by March/May but still buggy enough to be a pain to work on until the end of the year. So maybe you'd be better off waiting for M2 if it gets released by the end of 2021.

benbusby 5 years ago |

I'll add to the recommendations to steer clear of the 16" MBP. It runs uncomfortably hot for rather menial tasks, and the fan noise is bothersome if you're like me and are used to previous generations that were an order of magnitude quieter (I upgraded from a 2015 MBP whose fans were seldom activated). I also almost always use an external display, and just connecting the monitor (1440p ultrawide) causes the fans to spin up to an audible level every time.

As for the M1 issues, nobody knows except for Apple, but I would expect that most will be solved within the next year. There's a lot of core functionality in that article you posted that I can't imagine staying broken for more than a year.

mamcx 5 years ago |

I think the major pain point is virtualization and/or the need to run Windows. This is my case, so instead of pay full for 16" Macbook Pro, I get a M1 Air and coupled with a small mini-desktop (https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops-and-all-in-ones/thinkc...) that I could access remotely (more cheap for me in the long run that have a cloud instance) I think is a good partial solution.

soulnothing 5 years ago | |

Side question, is there a better remote desktop/spice client than Microsoft Remote Desktop via the app store? I've found it's performance lagging compared to MS RDP client, or Remmina on Linux?

isoblvck 5 years ago | |

Idk most people don't buy a mac if they need a windows... Virtualization has been announced but there's no timeline

runjake 5 years ago |

Yes. The performance/power usage from the M1 is amazing. Developers are jumping to the devices and this will spur dev tools to support the new platform more quickly.

I have a new personal MBP 16” and a work MBP 16”. They are great devices but they run really hot and the fans seem like they’re almost always on.

So, I’m taking a few hundred dollar hit and trading in my MBP 16” for an M1 MBP.

If you do go for the MBP 16”, don’t worry too much. It’s a great device with compatibles lot of expansion options port-wise.

brundolf 5 years ago |

Is this for work or personal projects?

For work I couldn't do without Docker, but for personal projects I don't use it and I'm 100% regretting the MBP 16 I bought in January (which in a vacuum is still a great laptop), because I could now do everything I'm doing on it on a machine that costs half as much and has several times the battery life.

egsmi 5 years ago |

Do you really need all those tools or just a subset? Of those that you need and don’t work yet, have you considered reaching out to the developers for an ETA or priority of the port? People can reply however they want but if the developers of the tools you happen to need don’t write the code, a forum comment won’t amount to much.

navjack27 5 years ago |

With how much that has happened so far so quickly I think basically anything in active development will be working at the least and native at the most in less then a year.

perrohunter 5 years ago |

I think the M1 based MBP 16" is going to be very fast, most dev tools will probably catch up by then.

wmf 5 years ago |

I expect everything to be fixed as well as it can be but Intel will still be more compatible (although slower).