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99% of reviews of M1 talk about video editing and music production. As a programmer I care more about RAM , storage, no reflections display , lightweight lapto

99% of reviews of M1 talk about video editing and music production. As a programmer I care more about RAM , storage, no reflections display , lightweight laptop long lasting replaceable battery great keyboard trackpad and self service repair. Give me mediocre cpu with all these call it Z1 and I'm happy programmer.

grapeskin 5y ago
Video editors and music producers are using far more ram and storage than virtually any programmer out there, and loads of them are traveling with their work and draining batteries faster than anyone else. Asking them whether a laptop’s hardware is good is like asking a power lifter whether a gym has good equipment.
- timc3 5y ago
  Not a lot of music producers do use that much RAM (speaking as someone that has run multi-machine music making setup before). Its only the large sample libraries that do and you need multiple instances running to really eat it up. All our devs need than my current music making setup, and I am thinking of going to 128Gb because I do dev work around video.
- rfoo 5y ago
  The point is M1 is extremely fast at video editing because it has DSAs designed for these workloads. So using them as a general purpose workload proxy is just bad.
- ungamedplayer 5y ago
  The powerlifter only cares about the squat rack. They don't give a hoot about your leg press machine. Very good analogy.
  - matwood 5y ago
    > only cares about the squat rack This is all anyone should care about, but I digress...
- oblio 5y ago
  Does music actually require that much RAM? How big is an uncompressed music stream? Bigger than 1 or several VMs running at the same time, a Java IDE, a database browser, etc.?
  - madisp 5y ago
    sound samples are often loaded into RAM and can easily cross into 10+GB
dangus 5y ago
I would argue that from a technical perspective a programmer would actually care less about most of those features than a video editor or music producer. The reason you care about those features isn’t because you’re a programmer specifically, it’s because you happen to have a personal preference for those things. - Why should a programmer care about the display really at all? Text can easily be displayed with very high contrast. Matte or glossy shouldn’t matter very much. - Why would a programmer ever need more RAM than an Adobe Creative Suite or Blender user? I do all my programming on a system with 8GB of RAM and my biggest memory bottleneck is Chrome. - What would a programmer need a lot of storage for? Text? - Everyone needs long battery life, and the M1 is industry-leading in that regard for basically all tasks. Why does a programmer need to remove the battery if it lasts beyond a full work day? - Self-service repair is important for people who know how to do that. While I agree that computers should be built with repairability in mind, and that Apple scores poorly in that regard, programming itself is a software skill, not hardware. You don’t have to know how to repair or build a computer to be a programmer, and if you don’t know how to do it then your ability to do your own repair is less important. I.e., if you have to pay someone a labor cost make upgrades and repairs, you might not prioritize that aspect of the system. One of the best programmer laptops on the market is the MacBook Air. You can regularly buy it for under $1000, the battery goes for 12+ hours real world usage, it has no fan and stays cool, it’s got a great keyboard and trackpad, it’s faster than laptops that cost hundreds more, and it’s very light and portable with a small power brick.
- Panzer04 5y ago
  Reading text on a low-res screen sucks. I agree, color isn't that important though. Depends on your workload, compiling a large program can chew a lot of RAM.
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    Can confirm, have professional compile passes that need 10GB. Parallel compilation alone can eat basically arbitrary amounts of memory.
- pjmlp 5y ago

grapeskin 5y ago

Video editors and music producers are using far more ram and storage than virtually any programmer out there, and loads of them are traveling with their work and draining batteries faster than anyone else. Asking them whether a laptop’s hardware is good is like asking a power lifter whether a gym has good equipment.

timc3 5y ago
Not a lot of music producers do use that much RAM (speaking as someone that has run multi-machine music making setup before). Its only the large sample libraries that do and you need multiple instances running to really eat it up. All our devs need than my current music making setup, and I am thinking of going to 128Gb because I do dev work around video.
rfoo 5y ago
The point is M1 is extremely fast at video editing because it has DSAs designed for these workloads. So using them as a general purpose workload proxy is just bad.
ungamedplayer 5y ago
The powerlifter only cares about the squat rack. They don't give a hoot about your leg press machine. Very good analogy.
- matwood 5y ago
  > only cares about the squat rack This is all anyone should care about, but I digress...
oblio 5y ago
Does music actually require that much RAM? How big is an uncompressed music stream? Bigger than 1 or several VMs running at the same time, a Java IDE, a database browser, etc.?
- madisp 5y ago
  sound samples are often loaded into RAM and can easily cross into 10+GB

dangus 5y ago

I would argue that from a technical perspective a programmer would actually care less about most of those features than a video editor or music producer. The reason you care about those features isn’t because you’re a programmer specifically, it’s because you happen to have a personal preference for those things. - Why should a programmer care about the display really at all? Text can easily be displayed with very high contrast. Matte or glossy shouldn’t matter very much. - Why would a programmer ever need more RAM than an Adobe Creative Suite or Blender user? I do all my programming on a system with 8GB of RAM and my biggest memory bottleneck is Chrome. - What would a programmer need a lot of storage for? Text? - Everyone needs long battery life, and the M1 is industry-leading in that regard for basically all tasks. Why does a programmer need to remove the battery if it lasts beyond a full work day? - Self-service repair is important for people who know how to do that. While I agree that computers should be built with repairability in mind, and that Apple scores poorly in that regard, programming itself is a software skill, not hardware. You don’t have to know how to repair or build a computer to be a programmer, and if you don’t know how to do it then your ability to do your own repair is less important. I.e., if you have to pay someone a labor cost make upgrades and repairs, you might not prioritize that aspect of the system. One of the best programmer laptops on the market is the MacBook Air. You can regularly buy it for under $1000, the battery goes for 12+ hours real world usage, it has no fan and stays cool, it’s got a great keyboard and trackpad, it’s faster than laptops that cost hundreds more, and it’s very light and portable with a small power brick.

Panzer04 5y ago
Reading text on a low-res screen sucks. I agree, color isn't that important though. Depends on your workload, compiling a large program can chew a lot of RAM.
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  Can confirm, have professional compile passes that need 10GB. Parallel compilation alone can eat basically arbitrary amounts of memory.
pjmlp 5y ago