In terms of coding, macOS and Linux each have their own strengths:
A victory lies in ease of use, exquisite tools, and enjoyable coding; A victory lies in standards, a well-developed ecosystem, and enjoyable code running.
But now, programmers don’t have to make any choices and can simply run Linux on Apple computers.
At WWDC, Apple recently opened sourced Container Machine: a highly integrated Linux environment that can run seamlessly on Apple computers.
The official workflow set by Apple is Aunt Jiang’s:
Edit on Mac, build and run in Linux environment. Enable developers’ families to experience full load from writing code to running code.
Well, the goal is quite clear, which is to use native containers to make Mac a more attractive developer’s main machine.
Not to mention, Apple has really captured the hearts of developers, and the related discussions on Hacker News are second only to Claude Fable 5 in popularity.
Apple native Linux container
At last year’s WWDC, Apple open-source Containerization – the Swift framework used to run Linux containers on macOS.
Container machine is built on this framework, with a focus on fast, lightweight, and easy management, making the switch between macOS and Linux simple and smooth.
Unlike regular containers, regular containers are more inclined towards one-time use applications and their status may not be retained for a long time. And the Container machine is more like a “Linux workspace” that can be accessed repeatedly, with tools, environments… that can be used up today and resumed tomorrow from where they stopped.
Officially, Container Machine is a Linux environment that runs on a standalone lightweight virtual machine and uses the same OCI image as the container.
It retains the lightweight and mirror ecosystem of containers, while also adding state persistence for virtual machines.
The experience is like this:
From macOS to Linux, the working directory is shared. For example, the code repository can be accessed in both the $HOME and container machines of macOS.
MacOS native tools, such as performance analyzers, screenshot tools, browsers, can also directly view things built on Linux without the need to copy files.
Apple extends olive branch to developers
This wave of Apple’s operation really has a bit of the intention behind Microsoft’s promotion of Microsoft’s Azure.
The first reaction of many netizens is also, isn’t this WSLs for macOS?
Of course, there are still many issues, such as the lack of common containerization capabilities in the initial version, limitations on memory release to macOS, and developers who are used to Docker, do they really need a container machine?
But no matter what, Container machine can be said to be an olive branch thrown by Apple to developers, and it has indeed touched the hearts of everyone:
Writing code on Mac is indeed comfortable, but running services, deploying, and aligning online environments, Linux is still the standard answer.
Although there may not be many lines of code written by oneself now, the development experience is still very important when it comes to programming.
Reference link:
[1] https://github.com/apple/container/blob/main/docs/container-machine.md
[2] https://developer.apple.com/cn/videos/play/wwdc2026/389/
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