Mac Mini/Air M1 - Any worth?

[sam_des]

Hello,

I have been Windows user all my life because of availability, upgradibilty & pricing of both software & hardware.
But with M1, Apple have substantially reduced cost the entry into Mac-World at least for base-models. With various festival offers these days both M1 Mac Mini & M1 Macbook Air, have become even more enticing.

My primary work is Embedded System Design(AVR, PIC, ARM, Embedded Linux etc), including PCB Layout(Kicad, Eagle, Orcad, Cadstar) and occasional Desktop App development(wxWidgets C++, Qt C++ & Python).
Can anyone shade some light how much useful M1 Macs can be for this workflow natively or otherwise? Is it possible to run Windows apps if equivalent are not available natively?
Is base model of 8GB RAM+256GB SSD at least somewhat suitable for this work? Can Apps be installed on external SSDs?

Please note, I am complete noob for Mac, in fact have never handled one ever.

Thanks for any info in advance.

sam_des

[kripton2035]

you won't be able to virtualize windows app wit ha M1 mac
it's working at least with parallel, but you can only install an arm version of windows.
then all current apps for electronic or dev work will not install on an arm windows.
at least now.
may be major app editors will switch to arm version of their apps... once microsoft will officially support arm windows.

the M1 (and the awaited M1X) are wonderful machines, but you have to re-think all your work schedule with them.

[token0]

New M1(X) is the most powerful ARM chips, because *fruit cumpony* invested a huge lot of money in it. If I had to choose from performance-per-watt side and for "it's native OS" or linux-based distros, I would even choose this one. But if I wanted to support the fair tech world, I'd chose something another. I.e. there's RISC V, ARM, MIPS, etc. Pity that there is not much architectures to choose to run Windows.

[kripton2035]

well it's not M1X it's M1 Pro and M1 Max chips... amazing perf/power ratio...