20fifty talks about the developer experience on a Mac M1. Now that Apple has revealed its racy M2 chip, the budget-conscious Apple fan club is applauding with glee. M1 Chip Macs have dropped significantly in price, and that’s great news for those of us who keep a close watch on our wallets. Our Front-End Lead details his experience of Flutter development on an M1 Chip MacBook. At 20fifty, we like to think thrifty, but we’re also smiling at the new M2. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly Mac for development, it may be your time to make the M1 shine.
Moving to Mac
When I started at 20fifty, I had just moved on from a position where all my hardware was provided for me. That meant I’d been a little spoiled on the Mac front, and although 20fifty does provide us with the hardware we need, I had my eye on setting up a personal MacBook just for me. I’m a comfortable Mac user, and comparatively, setting up a superb developer quality PC would have cost the same as slipping a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro 16GB into my bag. Just before I handed back my “old” work machine, I ran a quick comparison between the 15-inch I9 Pro and my shiny new 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro 16GB. The benchmarks still make me smile on every level; my new MacBook scored higher – close to the 20% higher marks you may have seen in the online reviews. Let’s fast forward a few weeks, as my 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro quickly became my daily driver for my work life.
Development on My Mac M1
I think the important part really comes down to how well it performs on a day-to-day basis with actual work. For context, the tech I work with daily is Flutter, but I also have a few side/personal projects in Node. I also use Docker as part of some of those development requirements. My IDE of choice is IntelliJ IDEA. VSCode just does not cut it for me, and I do at least think there are some very useful things I get from II that amaze people using VS, so it’s well worth the small fee. Here are 3 key things I’ve learnt about developing on my Mac M1:
- The battery life is brilliant: Whether I’m working on a mobile app or a web app, I can easily get through a busy day on a single charge. If I’m more focused on documentation or less intense tasks, I can enjoy working for up to 4 days on a single charge. That is not a typo. I really do mean 4 days, from a single charge. My verdict? You could comfortably travel with your Mac M1 and enjoy 2 full days of charge, with no worries.
- The CPU: Generally speaking, with applications running in dev mode, I seldom get the CPU above 30%. As I type right now, my CPU usage is hovering between 15 and 18%. I have Safari and Chrome running with 1 tab open in Chrome and 18 open in Safari. On top of that, IDEA is running 2 active projects. I’m also playing music, and have all my usual chat apps, terminal, and more, open.
- The screen size and keyboard: I quite enjoy the raised keys, and the smaller keyboard. The smaller screen has not bothered me in the slightest, and I haven’t felt the need to add on any external monitors, thanks to virtual desktops and the magic of gesture-based technologies. I do tend to travel a bit with the machine and it’s easy to swap from my standing and seated desk while at home.
