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Comment by silverlake | Hacker News Reader

The weight of the 13" Air vs 15" Air vs 14" Pro is 2.7 > 3.3 > 3.4 lbs. For developers who do development on remote machines, weight and form factor are more important. I would pay top dollar for a 12" Macbook with M processor because I do my focused editing on a big screen. Other people use their laptop for everything so a 15" screen is preferred. Also, different strokes for different folks.

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The 14 inch is already so light imo its probably worth it to splurge just to get things like the non gimped screen

To me the 14" Pro feels like a brick, the 16" is a veritable paving slab. I want something I can toss in a backpack and not feel it's there, which the Air is still just about light enough for. That may be because I live in a very walkable and bike-able area in Europe, and I do lots of both, I'm sure the trade-offs are different if you drive everywhere.

As for the screen, I think "gimped" is not doing it justice. I regularly use both, the Air's is a very nice screen in its own right and while there is a difference, it feels more like a relatively small increment on something already very solid, at least to me (I don't do any pro photo/video work). Same for the other differences, the Air's speakers are already pretty good, connectivity is fine (for me), I like not having a fan, it's way powerful enough for what I do.

Well if you had a fan you could always turn it off too. On the other hand once it is throttling its over. I used an air in the old case without the notch but with the black bezel and I gave it to the parents. Couldn’t stand throttling and how it affects the performance of my use cases. Like every five seconds a stutter like a scratched up CD. Two fan macbook pro for me. Even going all out its quieter than the 2012 era mac fans I am used to, but thats only when I push the cpu. Most of the time the fan is off entirely not even by my own doing.

I have an M2 13" air for a personal computer and a 14" pro for work.

The Air is noticeably lighter and much easier to throw in a bag without thinking about managing weight. The Pro is a fine weight for commuting, but for traveling longer distances, the weight definitely makes a difference. To the point where I'm seriously considering setting up a work partition on my personal machine so I don't need to lug the pro around on an upcoming trip.

Probably depends how big and muscular are you. I don't feel 14' PRO in my backpack at all, 16 PRO barely. Its not a flex but it definitely matters if you are a 5'1 female or 6'2 male.

If a seventh of a pound is the straw that breaks the camels back there are larger problems than the macbooks weight

Well, a macbook is not the only thing in my bag. If you want to keep down the weight of your pack, you shave off the ounces where you can.

> For developers who do development on remote machines

Gosh having started program on 286s in the 1980s, my M1 air feels blazingly opulently fast. What sort of local development are people doing that requires heavier compute than an M1 air, but doesn't require a full on cluster?

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