M1 MacBook Air For Development (A Student Review)

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I have been using M1 MacBook Air for last 15 days and my development experience is quite good. I have used python modules like numpy, pandas and selenium and my experience is quite good , though numpy and pandas don't work natively on m1 but it can be used with rosetta2. I have also tried the browser automation on Safari using selenium with python and it runs completely smooth and also work natively on m1 Mac.

I have also tried Visual Studio Code on  m1 Mac though initially when I was testing visual studio code for web development it was not available for m1 Mac but still the experience was quite smooth , Now Vs code is available natively for m1 Mac but I haven't tested the new arm based Vs Code.

If you love the terminal package manager then there is good news for you home brew the Mac package manager is natively available for m1 Mac but it's not completely functional but soon the home brew will be available for m1 Mac.

Before Purchasing the M1 Mac  I was using a intel i5 4 th gen laptop with ubuntu as my os and my usual task was to open multiple tabs on Firefox upto 23 tabs and a little bit of web development, competitive programming and little bit of web scrapping with python. The shift from i5 4th gen to M1 Macbook Air was quite good , Now I can do much more on my m1 MacBook Air. My highest CPU utilisation was 14 percent and ram usage at same time  was 7 gb. Below is the list of tasks I was doing 

  • 20 + tabs on safari
  • One Youtube video at 1080p
  • Visual studio code with rosetta2(With 2 Terminals and multiple tabs opened )
  • IMusic opened(Without any music playing)
  • Some Native apps opened in Background 

Ram consumption was quite high during  the entire process but the fun fact is that the Macbook Air does not slow down a single time , thanks to the swap area and the faster ssd.

The battery life is quite awesome with heavy tasking like browsing with multiple tabs and imusic , Macbook Air can easily work for 1 to 1.4 day. If you are using the 15 inch or 16 inch laptop then moving to Macbook Air can cause you some difficulties initially but with time you will be use to of 13.3 inches. 

I think the Macbook Air with the m1 is perfect for students who want to do heavy development tasks , though it's true that many app's or packages don't support m1 natively but you can run them using rosetta2 and there is nearly no issues with performance and speed of apps with rosetta2. The incredible performance of the m1 chip and support for ios and ipad apps on the the m1 Macbook Air open gates for those students also who loves to play games and want a laptop which can meet their development needs and also support gaming. If you are student and have a budget of  nearly 80k , then the fan less Macbook Air is the best choice for you.

 For any queries or suggestions feel free to write it in comment section.

Location: India

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