Uber, Twitter among companies giving engineers 'fully loaded' M1 Max MacBook Pro

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in macOS
A number of technology companies are giving their engineers and programmers new M1 Max MacBook Pros with maxed-out specifications, likely because of the time-saving performance of the new models.

Credit: Apple
Credit: Apple


Uber, for example, is giving 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M1 Max chips and 64GB of RAM to all of its active iOS engineers. Twitter too is giving "fully loaded" MacBook Pros to its iOS and Android engineers.

Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer also noted earlier in November that Shopify was making similar M1 Max-powered upgrades to its engineers' toolkits. Additionally, Orosz explained the thinking about why companies are moving toward maxed-out MacBook Pros.

"Why and how are they doing it? The scoop: They obsess about developer productivity, and the M1 is such a big, measurable step-up that it's an instant buy. Not just for them, but any other company who cares about engineers similar to how they do," Orosz wrote.

Orosz went on to explain that when new hardware hits the market, teams benchmark build times and crunch the numbers to figure out if the investment would be worthwhile.

"How much time would a $4,000, top-of-the market machine like the M1 shave off from each build? How much total time over 2 years? How much 'value' does this time mean per engineer?" He wrote. "With the M1, the answer is a no-brainier."

Read on AppleInsider
williamlondon

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    sconosciutosconosciuto Posts: 262member
    Lucky folks, that machine is SWEET
    dk49watto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    There's a channel here that tests some development workflows, docker, Java etc and the build times and temperature are way better than the i9:



    https://www.youtube.com/c/D3VTec/videos

    There's a test on that channel running multiple mobile simulators and being able to do that with no fan noise would just make working with the laptop so much better.

    There's a Unity game engine test here:



    Again, everything runs much smoother without the fan noise. The real-time view was running at 120FPS vs around 30FPS on the Intel model. The native version glitched a few times as it's in beta so like the guy says in the video, it will take time for the bugs in the native versions to be resolved but even on the Rosetta version the performance is way better than before.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 8
    sandorsandor Posts: 658member
    And, like all of Apple's non-upgradeable machines, buying maxed out is typically better for longevity.

    We've been about to upgrade 2012 base Mac minis to large SSDs & 16 GB of RAM to keep them in service for almost a decade.
    We've built our 2012 Mac Pro up to running with 128 GB of RAM 48 TB of SSD & 200 TB of fibre over the same time period.

    With the newer machines, specifically the laptops, we need to spec them out for the future (and pay the premium for that)
    We pay today's costs for higher specs, even though we are buying them for (hopefully) 5 years down the road.
    edited November 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 8
    xbitxbit Posts: 390member
    This is a great recruitment tool but it's a bit of a waste in terms of productivity. The 10-core M1 Pro seems to be the sweet spot for the vast majority of developers. That extra graphical power isn't going to help.
    williamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 8
    beowulfschmidtbeowulfschmidt Posts: 2,130member
    Based on a couple of friends' experiences there, I don't think even a tricked out MacBook Pro would make it worthwhile to work for a company like Twitter.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 8
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Wait. What? I thought we were just told the new Intel chips (Alder Lake) blow the M1 Max out of the water. 
    williamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 8
    kurai_kagekurai_kage Posts: 104member
    lkrupp said:
    Wait. What? I thought we were just told the new Intel chips (Alder Lake) blow the M1 Max out of the water. 
    I think I read a /s in that comment.  The mobile Alder Lake is marginally faster, running hotter and using significantly more power.  Much of the news was comparing desktop Alder Lake benchmark scores to Apple's mobile offerings.  I'm excited to see the desktop Apple will craft as the Mac Pro successor.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 8
    beowulfschmidtbeowulfschmidt Posts: 2,130member
    lkrupp said:
    Wait. What? I thought we were just told the new Intel chips (Alder Lake) blow the M1 Max out of the water. 
    The Hardware Unboxed YouTube channel just did some performance metrics between The M1 Pro and some other mostly equivalent chips.  The results are, unsurprisingly, largely in Apple's favor there, with the exception of games and a few productivity apps that either don't have a native M1 version, or aren't optimized for the M1.  There are lots of caveats in the presentation, and they go over why their comparison isn't perfect, but it's a start, and informative.
Sign In or Register to comment.