Wappler on Mac Mini with Apple Silicon M1 - Day 1

[George]

Unboxing

Well there you go - we just got our brand new Mac Mini with Apple Silicon M1 delivered!

So we were very exciting and did some unboxing of course

The Mac Mini was bigger than anticipated! It is definitely not a mini pc!

Great connectivity:

Big Sur

Big Sur 11.0 comes preinstalled. Updated later to 11.0.1

Done!

Wapper Installation

Downloaded and installed Wappler! On first start it asked about running under Rosetta - but that is all fine.

And there you have Wappler up and running in no time!

Installing NodeJS

Next stop - installing NodeJS, downloaded the LTS version:

After running the install it asked again for Rosetta and after confirming it all ran smooth as well:

System Check in Wappler ran just fine:

We also checked Git Manager and did some commits, with instant result. It happened so fast that we even doubted if it was executed - but it was!

Docker Desktop

All smooth till now so we went to install Docker Desktop.
Unfortunately here we hit a wall

Seems Docker is not ready yet for Apple Silicon … and it is challenging as docker plugs-in on a lower system level! But the guys at docker are working hard to make it happen and we should soon expect an update:

Apple Silicon M1 Chips and Docker - Docker Blog

Conclusion

Speed, speed, speed - everything is so fast on the new M1 that all the UI interface appears really instantly.

Wappler is also super fast and responsive! Even if it is running under Rosetta - the intel emulator, it doesn’t really matter because the M1 is already twice as fast as the latest intel MacBook Pro!

Of course we hope soon to have Wappler completely native for Apple Silicon - but it is already mighty fast - so you probably won’t notice the difference.

So stay tuned for more!

[MH2ag]

I will get mine next week. Happy to hear that everything works great! I‘m not using Docker at the moment.

[JonL]

Thanks for the review! Once docker is supported I will get the mini also. Seems like the best choice to get started with M1.

[George]

Google just released Chrome native for Apple Silicon.

It is fast but naturally we want to compare it with Safari!
Seems like Safari makes much better use of the Apple Silicon

[JonL]

It was to be expected of course.

I saw you already got in touch with nwjs author to ask him about Apple Silicon. Glad he is already looking into it!

[updates]

WTF guys! I don t need it but you make me want to buy it!!!

[George]

Yes - and if you are not convinced yet, AnandTech published some good benchmarks about how the new M1 chip blows everything away even the most expensive Intel based MacBook Pro!
and its embedded GPU equals to a Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested

[sitestreet]

Glad I bought the 16" MCP less than a year ago! The new 16" will likely come early 2021 and I’ll be envious again!

[JonL]

Even in Rosetta2 it performs as a Ryzen 9 3950X. Amazing.

Check this macbook air M1 running Team Fortress 2 through wine and rosetta2.

In other words, a 32-bit windows app made for Intel translated to a 64-bit app via Wine emulation that’s running Rosetta2 x86 emulation on a fanless and low-consumption laptop.

Apple Silicon TF2 CrossOver

[sitestreet]

So the M1 is an OK chip?!

I innitially thought it would have all kinds of incompatibilities and it would be safe to stick with Intel for at least a year or so but I’ve not heard anything negative yet.

[Teodor]

@JonL

Check this macbook air M1 running Team Fortress 2 through wine and rosetta2.

In other words, a 32-bit windows app made for Intel translated to a 64-bit app via Wine emulation that’s running Rosetta2 x86 emulation on a fanless and low-consumption laptop.

Then there’s hope for CS:GO running on an M1 chip …

[George]

You can run natively all the iPhone and iPad apps and games on Mac M1!

So all those mobile games will run natively super fast. Not sure if they will be very useful without touch but with just mouse and keyboard …

[George]

Seems Docker is getting there

Dave Scott (mugofsoup)

[mgaussie]

@George did you get the 8gb or 16gb?

[JonL]

Great news. Some progress.
Any news on homebrew?

[George]

8gb is plenty - this is not a hungry windows pc!

So unless you are using unoptimized Adobe products like Lightroom processing huge raw photos you should be fine

[mgaussie]

I was thinking the 16gb just for future proofing - but there is a big wait on any 16gb’s… glad to hear you think 8 is fine

[George]

Well the memory is baked on the M1 chip and that makes it super fast to communicate with the CPU and GPU. It seems to also help using much less memory because of this.

Also probably next year, by the time you might think you need more memory - you will be getting an M2

[Teodor]

I was watching some reviews and even the Lightroom editing and exporting RAW files does a good job with 8GB RAM - even if it needs more, it will use the swap file on the SSD which is pretty fast as well.

[George]

I also heard that MacBook Pro 16” with new M1X are already coming begin next year.