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What’s the difference between running natively and in a container, really?


On Linux, not much. On a Mac, quite a bit.


Like mostly apple services such as iMessage? I’m asking honestly, not snarky! I don’t think performance is a big factor for agentic hyjinx.


Apple APIs yes. But there’s also an overhead when running containers like docker on Mac (and windows). Only Linux has near-zero overhead.


Right, because on Mac (and windows) you’re running a VM rather than just setting up kernel namespaces. How cpu and network intensive are these pets? Or is it more of a principle thing, which I totally understand?

I prefer containerization because it gives me a repeatable environment that I know works, where on my system things can change as the os updates and applications evolve.

But I can understand the benefit of sandboxing for sure! Thank you.


very roughly: not that bad but not zero. I see docker taking a continuous 1/2% CPU on MacOS when running its host, where sandbox-exec or containers on linux are zero unless used.

If you prefer containers, use containers.


Yes, anything Apple platform development




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