Docker, a popular cross-platform application used by software developers, has released a native version running on Apple Silicon hardware, including Macs launched with the custom Apple M1 chip.
The M1 chip uses the ARM instruction set and cannot natively run software that was designed to run on the x86 architecture used by Intel processors on previously released Macs. Although the previous version of Docker worked through the Apple Rosetta solution, the introduction of a native version of Docker’s M1 contributes to a closing gap for developers concerned with running their entire suite of tools in an optimal way.
The release of M1 versions of Homebrew, Visual Studio Code and other developer tools and applications follows. But some gaps remain – for example, the Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 IDE (which is distinct from the relatively easy Visual Studio code) has not been updated.
Docker gained popularity among developers because it allowed the relatively easy use of containers, in which several applications could be developed and tested on a single machine, sharing the core of the operating system without interfering with each other.
The public release of the Apple Silicon version of Docker Desktop for Mac has been installed 45,000 times in a technical preview, and Docker’s press release says that the developers who participated in that preview said the app ran “faster and faster. silent ”than before the M1 update. The press release included the following statement by Captain Docker Ajeet Singh Raina:
For many developers eager to know if they can use the latest Macs as a dev machine with Docker, the wait is over … Docker Desktop for Mac [Apple Silicon] it will allow you to do everything you could already do on a Mac and you will be able to do it faster and with less noise.
A blog post on the Docker website says that the M1 support “quickly became by far the most appreciated article in the roadmap ever” after it was first requested.
That being said, Apple has only released a few Macs that include the M1 and all of these are lower-end machines with limitations such as low maximum RAM configurations, support for a single external monitor at a time, and fewer than high-end Thunderbolt ports. cars that still have Intel chips – that is, most Apple Silicon Mac computers that would be most suitable for developers have not yet been released.
When they are, they may not have M1, but may instead have performance-related chips or performance enhancements over M1. There’s no reason to expect that the changes made to Docker and other native M1 software won’t work as well on that new chip, if they do.
Full release notes for Docker Desktop 3.3.1 with Apple Silicon support can be found on the Docker Docs website.