I can’t speak about orbstack, but I’ve worked with docker desktop and podman desktop for years on macOS. Those programs start up a virtual machine that consistently eats ram regardless of whether or not you are running containers in it. Apple container looks lighter weight. In the age of ridiculous ram costs, you gotta save resources.
In addition to memory saver that another person replied about, Docker Desktop also has an MCP server functionality and marketplace (almost all free) and huge AI focus. You can hardly compare it to the others at this point.
I was doing the following at the same time on my MBP this week:
* running a bunch of containers + MCP servers for Claude and Codex on Docker Desktop
* heavily using Claude Code with Fable and packer to build cloud marketplace images
* having Codex write some tests and git flows and reviewing the work in vscode
* automating a character in a Wine-based 1st party RPG in the background running at full resolution
* watching anime on Plex in between Claude Code prompts
It's all about your machine. Docker Desktop is not my worry and if you're a Dev you should have a nice laptop with 32-64GB or more, Apple Silicon Max CPU, etc. This goes for Fusion or UTM also if you want to run a Linux Desktop.
I use docker CE with all container/tui interfaces on all of my Linux systems, but Docker Desktop is nice for macOS or Windows. I almost forgot about Docker Desktop's Gordon, and the AI assistant will do things like analyze your Dockerfile or compose.yml. Super handy.
Docker Desktop's memory saver shuts down VM when containers are not running.
Additionally, Docker/Podman/Orbstack start a single VM, where memory is shared between containers.
On the other hand, Apple Containers create a separate VM for each container, which results in higher memory usage due to Linux kernel overhead, as well as the fact that kernel will try to use most of the available memory for file caching.
I can’t speak about orbstack, but I’ve worked with docker desktop and podman desktop for years on macOS. Those programs start up a virtual machine that consistently eats ram regardless of whether or not you are running containers in it. Apple container looks lighter weight. In the age of ridiculous ram costs, you gotta save resources.
In addition to memory saver that another person replied about, Docker Desktop also has an MCP server functionality and marketplace (almost all free) and huge AI focus. You can hardly compare it to the others at this point.
I was doing the following at the same time on my MBP this week:
* running a bunch of containers + MCP servers for Claude and Codex on Docker Desktop
* heavily using Claude Code with Fable and packer to build cloud marketplace images
* having Codex write some tests and git flows and reviewing the work in vscode
* automating a character in a Wine-based 1st party RPG in the background running at full resolution
* watching anime on Plex in between Claude Code prompts
It's all about your machine. Docker Desktop is not my worry and if you're a Dev you should have a nice laptop with 32-64GB or more, Apple Silicon Max CPU, etc. This goes for Fusion or UTM also if you want to run a Linux Desktop.
I use docker CE with all container/tui interfaces on all of my Linux systems, but Docker Desktop is nice for macOS or Windows. I almost forgot about Docker Desktop's Gordon, and the AI assistant will do things like analyze your Dockerfile or compose.yml. Super handy.
> if you're a Dev you should have a nice laptop with 32-64GB or more, Apple Silicon Max CPU, etc.
Really depends on what you're building, to be honest.
Docker Desktop's memory saver shuts down VM when containers are not running.
Additionally, Docker/Podman/Orbstack start a single VM, where memory is shared between containers.
On the other hand, Apple Containers create a separate VM for each container, which results in higher memory usage due to Linux kernel overhead, as well as the fact that kernel will try to use most of the available memory for file caching.