> What do you find lacking in the m1 to make it your dev machine?
For me, the 16GB RAM limit on the MacBook Air is the principal reason not to get one, otherwise I would have already. As soon as you go to 32GB or more with M1, it's a big price jump to the Pro range, not sub $2000 any more.
I have been looking at the M1 MBPs, but the price makes it need justification, and the 2.5 months lead time even at Apple stores for the higher models, has kept me from committing. And when I tried the MBP keyboard in store, it felt not as good as the old <= 2015 keyboards.
Firefox in daily use is constantly swapping on my older MBP that has 16GB RAM, and when I used Safari, it wasn't any better. (It was the trigger that made me go back to Firefox, as it used less memory than Safari when I switched). It quickly rises from 10GB to using 30GB after a little browsing; I've seen it go up to 67GB. Some sites will do that with just one tab open. It took me a long time to realise that's why browsing was so janky and pausing a lot, and back when I used Safari everything else paused often too. So I'd not be eager to buy a new laptop with the same problem.
Perhaps the Linux dev VM and several Electron-based communication apps that have to be running constantly add up, but it always seems to be the browser that grows to use much more memory than there is available.
With Firefox it seems to be a fixable software problem, because when it's triggered to release memory it will drop as fast as it can swap in, with no apparent affect except a long pause. I expect it's all cache. The memory statistics fluctuate very rapidly sometimes, gaining several GB in seconds, even when just clicking around text-only sites like HN.
But it's not realistically going to be fixed, so I think it best to get at least 32GB RAM for the next machine, whether it's a Macbook or not.
67GB won't help your 32GB machine either. The problem is that many websites are full of memory leaks.
I had similar issues about 5-7 years ago. I then installed "the great suspender" to suspend tabs that weren't really used. That became spyware or something.. But chrome is pretty good at handling all the tabs.
I'm on M1 since it came out and couldn't be happier
It's unlikely to be website memory leaks. If it was, on "memory flush" it wouldn't drop to about the same amount every time that fits comfortably in RAM, with no visible effect except the pause. This event does not unload tabs.
With the numbers I'm seeing, think it's too risky to commit to 16GB non-upgradeable RAM for a laptop that must last many years to justify the cost. The ask HN author wants their sub-$2000 laptop to last for a long time, and I'd worry that even if browsing is smooth in 2022 brand new, what about 2025 and 2028, with more dev and comms apps running as well?
Usually it climbs to 20-30GB or so then triggers the flushing, with many annoying freezes on the way, but yes I've wondered if there's really an upper limit. Given any amount of RAM, will it use all of it and then try to swap even more? Could more RAM even be worse due to some accounting-ratio bug? (67GB is rare, only seen with Telegram which does have a severe leak.)
Like you I'm auto-suspending inactive tabs, and their size certainly isn't a problem after restarting.
Yet I see large RAM fluctuation even on text-only HN tabs. Just now, a new HN tab used 2.5GB more RAM in a few seconds before settling down to 1.2GB. Later the flush event happened and dropped 9GB. The new tab is still open. It wouldn't be a problem if it was just vm stats, but it does cause too many annoying freezes.
So what I think I'm seeing is that bloat has accrued over time, and optimising memory, or perhaps doing it right on MacOS, is not a priority for FF devs (or Safari in my experience with many tabs or windows), and won't be any time soon. If someone has usage similar to me, they should at least look whether RAM usage is borderline now before assuming 16GB (non-upgradable) will be enough over the years they want to keep using the laptop.
Storage maybe, RAM less clear. Some web apps use more RAM (in the browser) compared with the equivalent native app, and on a laptop people like to run multiple apps at the same time, whether web or native.
For me, the 16GB RAM limit on the MacBook Air is the principal reason not to get one, otherwise I would have already. As soon as you go to 32GB or more with M1, it's a big price jump to the Pro range, not sub $2000 any more.
I have been looking at the M1 MBPs, but the price makes it need justification, and the 2.5 months lead time even at Apple stores for the higher models, has kept me from committing. And when I tried the MBP keyboard in store, it felt not as good as the old <= 2015 keyboards.
Firefox in daily use is constantly swapping on my older MBP that has 16GB RAM, and when I used Safari, it wasn't any better. (It was the trigger that made me go back to Firefox, as it used less memory than Safari when I switched). It quickly rises from 10GB to using 30GB after a little browsing; I've seen it go up to 67GB. Some sites will do that with just one tab open. It took me a long time to realise that's why browsing was so janky and pausing a lot, and back when I used Safari everything else paused often too. So I'd not be eager to buy a new laptop with the same problem.
Perhaps the Linux dev VM and several Electron-based communication apps that have to be running constantly add up, but it always seems to be the browser that grows to use much more memory than there is available.
With Firefox it seems to be a fixable software problem, because when it's triggered to release memory it will drop as fast as it can swap in, with no apparent affect except a long pause. I expect it's all cache. The memory statistics fluctuate very rapidly sometimes, gaining several GB in seconds, even when just clicking around text-only sites like HN.
But it's not realistically going to be fixed, so I think it best to get at least 32GB RAM for the next machine, whether it's a Macbook or not.