M1 Macbook Air For Programming

The M1 is Just Fine for Coding and Writing (Even as a Windows User)

Let's talk about what changed since launch

I am mostly a Windows user and software developer, one of those Mac-curious ones who always dabbled with the thought of buying one. I wanted a secondary device that allows me to write text and code whenever I feel like it, right now I'm a bit locked into my powerful desktop PC.

A couple weeks ago I decided that this new generation of M1 Macs was exciting enough to throw some money at it and ended up buying the M1 MacBook Air that I believe is the best in the lineup for my purposes.

Since then I have experimented with it, both for coding and writing and I have found that my initial expectations turned out exactly true:

Even as a Windows user those MacBooks are just fine.
They are not mythical creatures of unknown capabilities — at the end of the day you get the same device with more speed, no fans, long battery life.

It doesn't do anything that the old one couldn't, but it does what it does really well.

All my programming tools work natively now

A lot of the first reviews had issues and struggles — there is even a guy here who sent his M1 back — and all those issues seem resolved a couple weeks later. I have never in my life worked with Macs before and it took me just a day to understand all that I need to work with.

I could install Homebrew just fine, it's native now
Homebrew made installing natively running Python a breeze (thanks to a YouTube tutorial)
VS Code works fine and is native with the latest update
Github desktop is very useful and works on MacOS just the same as I'm used to.

To me this already gives me a perfectly usable development environment for everything that I do in my private life. Depending on how you run and test your code you might have different workflows but my usual programming is pretty much centered around those tools — and they work great, no issues, plenty power.

That thing is always there when you need it or want it

I don't want to harp on about the same stuff everyone's talking about — so let me summarize by saying that the M1 Macs are perfectly fine devices even if you come from Windows.

The build quality is nice, the instant-on when you open the lid is cool, the battery life is just as stellar as everyone says it is. I feel like the MacBook Air is the device in the new lineup, all the others don't interest me at all compared to this one. It is least expensive, plenty powerful, completely silent due to not having or needing fans. And yet it has plenty of fans, hah.

I find nothing to complain on a day-to-day basis, the only thing I dislike is the missing delete key (hidden behind FN-Backspace) and everything else is actually fine. It's a good device, a great one even if you manage to wrap your head around it.

Most workflows from Windows work the same on MacOS

I keep thinking "I wonder if this works" and then it usually does. You can drag files from the download folder, you can right-click the navigation bar in Safari to get a list of your recently opened URLs — it's all there where you think it will be.

The start-menu search is now Command-Space instead of the WindowsKey, there are shortcuts for switching tabs and alt-tab switches between windows just like your muscle memory remembers.

I will say that I struggle with some of the shortcuts and the way some keys are mapped differently (backslash is on top of the slash, the @ sign is on L rather than Q for some reason) — but those are minor issues.

Apart from that these two systems are super similar with individual quirks and things I like or love. I keep smiling at those cute little animations when you download a file or minimize a window — it's nice.

But on a productivity level I have just one tool that I dearly miss: AutoHotkey. I am currently working on a Python implementation that does the same thing and translates my AHK scripts to native Python, close to a finished and usable version there. Everything else works similar or is completely the same even. To go from never-before-Mac to working on it productively in under a week surprised me to be honest, I expected more struggles after my attempts of working with iPadOS.

For writing there is just nothing wrong with them

Everything that I use for writing just works on M1 as you would expect. Scrivener, Ulysses, those are the only real tools that we expect to use anymore anyway and they work perfectly. I do most of my writing inside VS Code or here in the Medium editor and those of course did not change one bit either.

I find that a lot of this whole "distraction-free" marketing that my vocal coworkers trumpet out whether you ask them or not is a bit of a facade: It's true, but also just as true for Windows. Distractions don't happen on either machine unless you bring them in willingly so I enjoy the luxury of my MacBook as a secondary device that has no chat apps, no notifications, no shared logins other than my Google Drive so that I can access and shift files around.

It's just great for that, no issues at all when it comes to writing. As you would expect.

Summary: The M1 Macs are probably just fine for what you use them for

I feel that there was a bit of a hectic launch where a lot of things did not originally work or at least not natively but now, just a couple weeks after release there have been rapid changes, recompiles, updates from third-party developers across the board and everything seems to work now.

I did not notice much difference in speed between my powerful Windows workstation and the M1 MacBook which in itself is pretty good to say about a folding device — but then the tools I use and write don't exactly max out either of those on a routine basis. We live in great times where computing power has kind of lost its importance in many regards, it's been a while since I hit any actual bottlenecks on either Windows or Mac. Also been a long time since I last saw a bluescreen by the way, what happened to those cute annoyances?