Job blessed me with a new M4 Macbook Pro, just had to ask. What’s everyone hardware look like?

Posted by Icantstopreading@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 60 comments

A good lesson to try and always ask for what you need. I floated a simple “it would be nice to have” question to my manager recently and he quickly got me upgraded to the new M4 MacBook Pro, and it’s been a game-changer so far. The performance is impressive, and it’s handling my development workloads like a champ. But I’m curious—what are you all using for your development setups? Do you have a preferred machine or specs that you swear by?

Would love to hear about your go-to dev environments, any accessories you find essential, or tips you have for optimizing a setup. Looking forward to seeing what everyone’s working with!

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Disastrous_Fee5953@reddit

Full stack dev here. Working with M2 Pro with 32GB. I’m super happy with it. It makes me more productive and feels premium too even though I use it mostly in clam shell mode. My only gripes are the RAM which is barely enough for my use case (7+ docker containers running in the background) and some niche use cases in which arm compatibility is still poor.

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kayakyakr@reddit

My previous job gave me my m1 pro during layoffs.

My current job set me up with an M2 pro when I was hired.

Then I got an m3 max when they transitioned us to internal devices.

So I've got an m1, M2, and m3 all running on my desk right now.

There isn't really much difference between the three in my day to day

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ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit

Rule 8: No Surveys/Advertisements

If you think this shouldn't apply to you, get approval from moderators first.

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waterkip@reddit

I have an intel nuc with 64gb ram, 6 tb storage and works just fine.

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AdamBGraham@reddit

Dell. Maybe 7500 series? It is a dev spec tho which is good.

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aqjo@reddit

Data Science/ML Engineer

Intel i9-13900K, ASUS Z790-Creator ProArt WiFi, NVIDIA RTX A4500, Intel Arc A380, 128GB RAM, 56TB WD GOLD HDD, 6 TB P5 NVMe, Fractal Design Define 7, Lumen S36 AIO, Seasonic Focus GX-1000, 2x LG 27” 4k, 1x 28” LG DualUp, Keychron K11 Pro Alice, Mx Master, Apple Touchpad, Bluefin-dx-stable Linux

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khedoros@reddit

Just started a new job. The laptop has 16 cores, 22 threads, 32GB of RAM. The usual development pattern is to use the laptop to run a browser, and connect to a remote VM (running on a fairly powerful vSphere host) through VSCode. We've got a choice of 2 24" monitors or one 30" one.

Last job, I had some variety of Dell XPS 15 from 2019. Something like 8 cores, 32GB of RAM. They gave me a peripherals budget that fit 2x 24" 1440p monitors. When we went remote, I used one of those, and used my own 27" for the third display (so, 24", 27", and the 15" laptop display).

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LongUsername@reddit

They're replacing our machines over the next year.

I've currently got a Surface Book 3. The replacement ones are POS Dell laptops. The guys who already have one say the battery doesn't last through a 1 hr meeting unplugged, much worse screen. Haven't heard about processor and RAM yet.

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time-lord@reddit

I have a Thinkpad. It's not that great, but it gets the job done. It's more than good enough for remote desktops and a zillion SharePoint and Azure tabs in Firefox.

The biggest issues I have with it are the single USB-A port and the keyboard that's off center due to a number pad.

If I had smaller hands (and could use the logitech mouse and keyboard combo they gave us) and lived in Excel, I'd probably love it.

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moreVCAs@reddit

Desktop plus m1 mbp ssh+browser machine. Crazy how well these ARM macbooks perform when you don’t run hardly any software on them or put anything on the SSD really. 💪

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i_exaggerated@reddit

I have an EC2 instance and a crappy dell branded ssh machine.

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Empty_Geologist9645@reddit

Joined this similar great setup no so far ago.

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thisismyfavoritename@reddit

all anyone needs!

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i_exaggerated@reddit

Honestly it’s totally fine 99% of the time. Sure, there are a lot of tools I can’t use, but the basics always work.

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jenkinsleroi@reddit

But how big is your monitor?

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i_exaggerated@reddit

Which one?

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Irish_and_idiotic@reddit

Ah shoot… that’s nightmare fuel

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i_exaggerated@reddit

Gov work, nightmare fuel, what’s the difference

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levelworm@reddit

I had a M2 pro 32GB and it has been a blast. Unfortunately I switched job later and now I have a M3 pro 24GB, still good but OOM comes out once for a while.

BTW the Databricks console REALLY eats up memory, like a few GBs per tab sometimes.

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LightShadow@reddit

I work in video streaming software, my workstation is a 7950X3D, 64gb of RAM, 2x A4000 and tiered NVMe and SATA SSDs. My laptop is an i9 something with a 3080, 64gb of RAM and a couple TB of NVMe.

I've also got a few servers with 7900s. Lots of encoding going on over here.

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Ynkwmh@reddit

I have a 5000$ or so pc laptop. 🤷

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JovanMusketer@reddit

M1 pro

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RelevantJackWhite@reddit

I have an M3 Air, it's pretty sick

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rlbond86@reddit

M3 Max but most of our dev stuff requires x86 so I only use it for Zoom :/

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asakurasol@reddit

I have a chromebook

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eightslipsandagully@reddit

I started just over a year ago and I got a m2 MacBook Air. The thing sucks for dev work, I'm constantly running out of RAM and lagging and I even had to buy a dock to use both my external monitors at once

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rickyraken@reddit

I've got your standard Dell work laptop with an external ultrawide monitor. My lines can be at least 80 characters long.

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quypro_daica@reddit

we are moving to Macbook pro here and the experienced ones detest it cause setting up projects on it is a nightmare

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ogscarlettjohansson@reddit

It really shouldn’t be for most things.

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loctastic@reddit

M2 24GB. it’s fine

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Irish_and_idiotic@reddit

I have a M1 Pro with 16 GB of ram and it’s an absolute beast for everything I need.

I think the fan is broken because I can’t get it to spin even with 5 docker containers going

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false79@reddit

M1 is no joke even in 2024. Battery life is so good.

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invictus08@reddit

For work, in 2022 Sep, after they conducted a thorough security review on Apple silicon I was finally able to upgrade from my 2017 mbp 15” w/ 16G ram to 16” m1 pro w/ 32G ram. Other people are getting assigned m3 pros nowadays, but mine seems absolutely fine, no hiccups so far. My 2017 one became a sluggish mess since end of 2020. The fans were so loud I feared it might take off anytime!

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DM_Ur_Tits_Thanx@reddit

I dont know

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Brief_Spring233@reddit

A Dell POS with 8G RAM and a 1366x768 screen lol. It’s almost enough for me to load that web version of Outlook to check my email. Almost!

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ShoulderIllustrious@reddit

Got a typical hp z book that comes from corporate. On the side my boss got us m1 mbp 96gb ram and 4tb SSD a while back.

Honestly I wish I could just install pop os and work. I am confused AF with Mac OS and Windows...well it's Windows.

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salmix21@reddit

Intel MacBook Pro from 2019 as I need the old chip to run the software which powers our application. Recently we did the update for M Chips but our latest customer will upgrade their application version next year so I still need the old macbook in case something happens.

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CrankFlash@reddit

Working in game dev. Typical good workstations are ryzen 7950x, or even Threadripper if your studio has got the funds, paired with 128 GB of ram and 12+ TB of nvme, as well as a RTX 4080 or above.

They do give workstation laptops when on the move, but they're bricks and are very noisy with 1:30 battery life, if that, and they have tiny screens anyway :)

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donalmacc@reddit

I went from a threadripper to an i9 when i changed jobs. The i9 is faster for everything except a full rebuild, (incremental builds are probably 30-40% quicker on the i9), cheaper to run (I pay my own power bills with WFH), quieter and cooler.

I’d take the i9 any day of the week

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Icantstopreading@reddit (OP)

Oh man, I’d love to checkout the performance on that kind of setup

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grumblefap@reddit

We’re still on 14 inch M1 Pros with 16GB ram. I’m running about 11 docker containers and a billion microservices and it’s taking it like a beast.

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dfltr@reddit

I like that the Venn diagram of experienced devs and proper fuck-off beastly specced M2/3/4 machines has significant overlap.

It’s like we’ve paid in decades worth of sanity and grey hairs, the least they can do is give us some horsepower.

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engineered_academic@reddit

J1 is a M3. J2 is a M2 J3 is a M1 I furnished myself.

My biggest contribution has been a 49" doublewide. The built in KVM on the Dell 4924dw has been a gamechanger.

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Revision2000@reddit

Any M-series MacBook Pro will do. Windows machines and particularly those with VDI are horrendous, I really dislike the OS, its best use is booting up Steam. I’ll only temporarily accept those machines if my client demands it and the pay or job is good.

I’m currently on M3 Pro with 64 Gb, client had BYOD policy so everything is peachy.

For MacBook development work you’ll pretty likely want to install Homebrew and SDKMAN if you haven’t yet.

Also, I’m a Java/Kotlin dev so IntelliJ is my cup of tea. Along with some Docker stuff.

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ziksy9@reddit

Wait.. M4s are out? Hired last month and got a M3. They had to order it. Not complaining, it handles my dev environment and it's got extra ram, but damn man. Nice.

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a_reply_to_a_post@reddit

got an upgrade this year to the M3 pro, but was on an older but beefy i7 machine from when i started

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PlateletsAtWork@reddit

M3 Pro, remotely connected to a pretty generously sized box.

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Attila_22@reddit

M2 Pro. Loaded with a ton of company spyware though so it evens out.

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alaksion@reddit

M3 pro, very good hardware

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atrx90@reddit

m3 max, what a beast

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effectivescarequotes@reddit

I mostly work on frontend stuff, so I can get by with anything that has a decent screen (although, working with a crap HP at my last job helped me talk the customers out of a couple of dumb design decisions), but I love working on a Mac with Webstorm.

At my current job, the customer doesn't Jetbrains products for dumb reasons, so I'm using Vs Code. At least the Dell laptop they gave me is decent.

As for accessories, at least one nice monitor and mouse and keyboard that I don't hate.

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AcrIsss@reddit

I got a Dell PC with i9 and 64 GB of RAM. Never had any issue with my local environments

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PickleLips64151@reddit

I'm slated for a MacBook replacement tomorrow. I have no idea what I'm getting. I would assume at least an M3 or better.

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Icantstopreading@reddit (OP)

🤞🏽

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Pbd1194@reddit

you gotta thank both job abd jobs

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DasHumble@reddit

Nice of your manager to do that. My work gave me an Acer Nitro 5 four years ago, and now it's just become a paperweight, I have already ask for new one but, until now nothing

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Icantstopreading@reddit (OP)

Yeah it was, I didn’t even realize how slow my other machine had gotten, guess I just got use to it. You should push for a new one, pretty easy to build a competitive argument as to why it’s a must to have a proper machine.

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