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Developers: Mac Mini M1 for iOS / iPadOS programming?
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The thing you are probably most secure in using the new M1 based machines is for iPad and iPhone development. Those tools are going to work. The other main tool I end up using for dev work for iOS is Affinity Designer. That one is also ready to go.
I don't really have a feel for how much RAM will be required. Arm tends to be better than x86 in this regard in my experience. But, it isn't going to hurt (other than the price) to have the 16GB. Personally, I wouldn't pay Apple's price for the storage though. For a mini, I'd go with an external thunderbolt drive. I've got a 1TB thunderbolt drive on my iMac and it is blazing fast. I built it out of a cheap enclosure from Amazon and an M.2 drive. Total cost was around $150US at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do an NVME raid box from OWC for the price of Apple's internal storage.
I would, and I am actually, waiting a couple of weeks to decide though. I need to hear how it does in practice and see if I'd rather wait until they do the next machines based on the new processors.
An explanation of how good the M1 macs are:
https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs
Seems to play across reviews I have seen elsewhere. 16GB is probably enough and like @NeonSilicon said, I would go for less storage and prop it up externally.
Are you sure you'll always want so sit down at the same desk for development?
I would always prefer a Macbook for development, you can take it with you and read or write code wherever you like.
M1 currently supports no more than 2 external monitors and also no external gpu. If you don’t care about that this Mac Mini is as fine for development as the ones before. Support for the M1 will outlast support for the Intel versions of course.
He is. He's a fairly balanced one though and is usually pretty accurate in his predictions and analysis of Apple.
I usually like laptops for development. But, when doing audio and especially stuff with iOS, I end up needing two audio interfaces involved, MIDI stuff all over the place, multiple good studio monitors and headphone amplifiers, ... I'm tied to a desktop anyway. Having a huge display helps when you are doing dev stuff for iPads too.
I've recently been doing more dev for embedded devices too. That ties you even more to the desktop.
I've been tracking the reviews as they come out. It's looking good to me. They've done close to what I expected and the performance is certainly good enough. The most telling thing is the comparisons to Intel's Tiger Lake processors. These are the chips that Apple would have been using in these devices. Tests and benchmarks comparing the M1 through Rosetta 2 to the Tiger Lake CPU's have the M1 winning running x86 applications. Apple basically had to make this move.
Apple originally released the Mini as the "switcher" machine. Basically, a machine to get developers and content creators that already had monitors and keyboards etc an easy cheap path onto the Apple platforms. The new M1 mini serves that purpose even better now. The only thing that has me wondering right now is, why didn't they release a low end 21" iMac? Could just be timing. It could be something unrelated to the M1 like miniLED display to something like that. I'm expecting that then next round of releases will just be more cores, 6 big four little, and then 8.4 with bigger GPU and that would be it for the next round up to the 27" iMac and 16" macBook. But why is that higher end Mac mini slot not filled and why no 21" iMac. Maybe they have more coming in the CPU department than I think?
Bottom line is that these three that have been released are good and they will certainly be able to handle the job developing iOS apps. Oh, and the battery life of the Air is insane! Perfect machine to have setup on stage for running synths and stuff in live settings as long as the synths will run within the thermal limits and you don't hit thermal throttling it's going to be perfect for live audio stuff.
From my perspective, the Mac mini is portable. I always have an iPad and an Apple keyboard and a Logitech mouse
No external GPU support, does that include Macbook pro M1 too?
There seems nothing pro about Macbook pro anymore
Yeah they're trying to simply everything, for them and their consumers. But this won't work for a lot of Pro users, but will work for the majority of their customers, they're hoping.
If that classifies as portable for you then fair enough 😅
The original Mac Plus had a handle. It was portable. Do you remember the Compaq "portable?"
I was stuck in the same loop earlier this year, and while I’ll write a long essay below, my thoughts are this - The Mac Mini is currently the best value out of the three.
Depends on your workflow though, but here’s the ones i got stuck at.
Definitely the 16GB model though, especially if you’re planning on using it for a while. 256GB is great, although if you’re planning on downloading iOS apps, as well as Mac apps, I’d personally opt for the 512GB model mainly because of the improved speed, easier optimization, and less reliance on an external dongle. Then you can get like a 4TB external drive for backups and whatnot.
Which one would I go for? Currently, the first option. I feel if I get a Macbook Air, I’d be stuck using Desktop apps because I’d be frustrated with the current implementation of iOS apps. Yet, the possibility of doing something like running 7 iOS apps without it crashing is super tempting.
Plus, I’m designing my workflow to be incredibly mobile. Having to rely on a keyboard and trackpad when I can easily touch the app I need is a bit restrictive.
Interested in this too. How easy and reliable is it?.. do you need external apps?
He's got an interesting perspective on how he wants to use his devices to do what he wants. For some people's workflows, the iPad is still going to be a much better device than these new Macs and there is absolutely no reason to change just because these Macs are better than the old Macs. But, I'm not expecting Logic to come to the iPad as a full on Logic any time soon. There are some real technical limitations in hardware to get the efficiency that the iPads have memory wise that the Macs don't have. These conflict with a Logic level application. Apple also has a point of wanting the iPad to be a more secure device. That has some real implications for a Logic like application too. Sandboxing every plugin has some major performance costs and they won't easily scale up to really big -- Logic level -- sessions.
I'm getting really interested in using the iPad to control other audio devices, including the new M1 Macs. I think the Air would be just killer for this kind of thing in a live setting. The Mini would be great in a studio like setting.
It's all looking pretty good right now to me.
You mean the 8086 with that cool plasma display?
Green CRT on the one I used. I'll never forget lugging that sucker home on the train for a weekend. I still think my right arm is longer than my left from that.
Later on I got a Toshiba that had a plasma screen. I think that one was under 15 lbs.
I used one of those too! Did you ever forget to clip the keyboard in properly and have the embarrassment of it crashing to the floor on your way out?
Then I got a rather expensive upgrade to an SLT, 286 based CPU. Had a blue display - fancy!
yep.
Don't use homebrew, please. They have been breaking security for years now and I just can't understand why. Use MacPorts. They do the same job and do it better.
I don't think it is available yet either, but expect it will be soon. Virtualization is built-in to Big Sur, but it's going to be Arm virtualization natively. This won't be a problem for most Linux/BSD type apps since they support Arm and lots of other CPU's already.
Where I'm really going to be stuck for some time is with the embedded dev stuff I do. All the CLI based tools will already work, but there is going to be some lag on IDE's getting out in the pipeline.
Music production wise, the wait is probably going to be long for the DAWs and plugin companies. They still haven't even got Big Sur for Intel supported.
That's the one. I wanted to build one of the lunchbox type portables, but didn't have the money while in school. By the time I had the cash, I was running Linux on PowerPC based Mac laptops and the idea of a DIY lunchbox wasn't so appealing anymore.