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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always found the 13” Pros to be the “worst of both worlds” compromise. You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air, or the generous desktop or raw power of the big boy. Whatever your priority is, it’s just not there. A 14” screen would have at least differentiated the product.

I think a lot of these are bought by corporate bean counters and people who assume that Airs must be awful if they’re the most affordable.

(Yes, I’ve used them, my current “burner” is a ‘17 escape key model)

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Having used a '15 (I think) 13" Pro for two internships, I actually found it met my needs really well. I personally can't stand any 14"+ laptop, so the 13" Pro hit a great spot for me of being:

* Svelte enough to watch Netflix in bed with or throw in my bag to take on a commute

* Powerful enough that I never had major performance issues when plugged in at my desk at work, driving an external monitor

I look back on that machine and those internships fondly, and I could see myself going for a 13" MBP (or 14", if they ever release it) when I next need to upgrade my laptop - after I finish undergrad :)

right, but have you used the Air? It's much nicer for similar performance.

I have owned two Airs. Macbook Pros are so thin and light these days that I don't understand what Air brings to the table anymore. I mean, a 13" Macbook Pro is 3 lbs.

Ideally Macbook Pros would be thicker and heavier for better thermals and performance, and then Airs would have a purpose again.

We are talking about a 3.1 lb MBP versus a 2.8 lb MBA with basically the same dimensions. In addition, the Air has a dimmer screen, fewer ports, inferior display color space, and from what I've read, inferior thermal headroom. The two things the MBA has going for itself is better price and price to performance ratio. It also has a longer battery, but the gap is thinner than it once was (11 hours vs 10 hours).

I'm still using a 2014 13'' MBP as my secondary machine and for web dev it's fine. It would be great if it was a bit faster, but being a 6 year old machine I'm surprised it's still so usable.

For me the 13'' is the perfect balance between mobility and performance. At least for web dev, obviously not for video editing or gaming.

I also love my 2014 13" Pro and have been desperately waiting for them to add the 32GB RAM option and physical esc key to upgrade. I think GP underestimates how many people find the 13" Pro to be the perfect sweet spot to balance power with portability.

An advantage of the 13” is the lack of discrete GPU.

If you don’t need one, you won’t have to care about tweaking for power consumption (like adding utilities to force disable it) and your laptop will be less likely to take off like a jet engine.

I had to take the 15” to get the 32G RAM on the previous iteration, and it made me wish I could have had a 13” option at that time.

> You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air

The Pro is barely any thicker and barely any heavier.

The Air is not smaller nor thinner than the Pro, it just weights a bit less. On the other hand performance and thermals are just a joke

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