Air: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-2022

vs

https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-15-inch-retin...

Working in IntelliJ on a few Java projects (40k LOC) and a few Docker containers, works great. I've never seen it throttle outside of video games and when it does throttle it's by 5-10% so not much but then I'm just building web apps.

If your projects are bigger or if you have a front end open in say VSCode or WebStorm at the same time and more than quite a few Docker containers then I'd recommend the Pro - basically any Macbook with a fan.

I would say the MacBook Air M2 is superior to the X1 Nano in most categories, except (1) weight (it's lighter than my iPad, which since I got the Nano leave at home) and (2) keyboard quality (which is very important to me for working longer periods).

Macs cases and screens look more sturdy but when dropped seem to break more easily than the Lenovo cases and screens, despite the latter being made from plastic (sadly, this is reporting from personal experience, sample size N=3).

Agree on the portability, it's great, but Lenovo still only offer 16GB RAM, the CPU is a low power Intel one, which are improving but 10nm (X1 Nano Gen 3?) vs 5nm means the M2 has a huge advantage... One good point is you can replace the SSD though.

Dare I say it, you're comparing apples to oranges here.

I recently made the switch from a laptop with a modern Intel chip to an M1 and can tell you the difference is night and day. It can compile LLVM in half the time and you won’t even notice that the laptop is busy.

As alternative, from a review I read that new AMD chips are also pretty steady. Also no throttling in laptops.

My theory is that Intel has optimized for short benchmarks at all costs.

My 2018 15" MacBook Pro is only a 16GB model and would have no issues performing these tasks. I would suggest removing the bottom panel of your MacBook and cleaning the exhaust vents. Being an Intel model, it is at least 3 years old, and dust can certainly buildup in that time.

If that does not fix the problem, something else is wrong. Yes, the intel MacBooks run hot, but even today they should be able to perform well, especially with 64GB of RAM.

Many people in our company use M1 or M2 Air with 16GB RAM for iOS, Android or Flutter development. No one mentioned any productivity issues as such.

As for your throttling, I experienced massive throttling issues on a 2018 macbook pro 15”. Started out of the blue, and was so bad that I couldn’t even do 15 minutes of video meetings before audio and video lag and break ups set in. Lived with it for weeks, until I tried resetting the SMC - which worked like magic! Machine returned to its former glory. Worth a shot in your case as well.

Other things to try if the machine is aging, is to open it up, clean all the dust, and reapply thermal paste. It might be all clogged up depending on where you’ve used it. Aging thick thermal paste can be pretty bad as well.

I experienced precisely the same issue. Will try resetting the SMC - and see how it works. I cleaned a while back the dust, but will do it again.

I also disconnect the charging cable during the night because that stresses the battery.

That's also the reason why EV manufacturers set charge limits to similar numbers.

BUT, you have to disconnect the charger when not using the laptop, for example when you're going to sleep.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...

I doubt there isn't already enough information and options online and via HN search about M2 Mac's used for development.

I use Docker with multiple containers running almost all the time. Local PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I use from time to time Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.

I mostly use now VScode, sometimes Rubymine.

Video calls: Mostly Zoom, some Google Meet, rarely something else.

1: https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-two-o...

But it seems not to be the case.

Because RAM is the hard cap (if you ignore SWAP) while here's infinite number of CPU cycles. With a slow CPU things will just take a bit longer, but with not enough RAM then that's it, it's game over for your workloads (again if you ignore SWAP which I don't want to rely on, especially on a system where SSD is soldered).

Maybe I run 20VMs at once or 200 Chrome tabs or 3 electron instances.

You buy as little as you need let others buy how much they need.

One issue I experience is that "Virtual Machine Service for Docker" is consistently sitting at 6gb ram. I am running in "linux/amd64" mode as I had some compatibility issues.

Another issue is that for some reason WebStorm sometimes works much worse than on linux which I used before the mac. As if WebStorm completely turns off some features (highlight, typechecking...) from time to time.

we were having the same issue at work, and one of the solutions was move as many images to arm64 as possible.

so, things like postgresql, rabbitmq, redis are quite safe. it made development a lot faster and it was using a lot less memory.

the other thing was doing work on making sure our microservices were also arm64 compatible, which was not that hard given we mainly use python.

However a good friend of mine uses the latest M2 powered Air with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD (the 24GB upgrade so a stretch too far for him) and I have to say it is a damn good machine and I could use it without much trouble. It doesn't throttle nearly as much as you would think for a fanless unit. Obviously it isn't as fast and he does hit swap when under a heavy workload whereas I am yet to hit swap but I also have 64GB vs his 16GB.

So to answer your question. Yes I think the Air is an excellent development machine for 'up-to and maybe a little over' a "heavy-medium" development workload. If you're doing a lot on the machine then you will hit its limits for sure but if you're just running Xcode and a simulator or two, etc. or PyCharm and docker, etc. you will be just fine.

If you're doing anything GPU heavy it isn't a great option but other than that I highly recommend it.

However I suggest you look at the total price once you add in 24GB RAM and more SSD storage (at least 1TB imho) vs the 14" MacBook Pro. There isn't a huge difference between them yet the 14" Pro is basically as good as my 16" for most things. Especially if you can find a good returned unit on sale cheap via the Apple Refurb store. The machines are as good as new, same warranty, etc. Well worth checking out.

I run docker, usually with local supabase, affinity designer, framer, many many open tabs on chrome, usually two open vscode projects with some js builder and tests running, TablePlus, gitkraken, slack and some other smaller apps. On top of that I do video calls with zoom.

No issue. It’s fast. Ram does get full, but don’t notice it. It gets warm but not hot, unless you really push it.

Not having fans is really amazing.

So I can recommend the M2. The things I miss are more than 2 USB ports and to a little extent an HDR screen (the screen is good, but it's not as good as, say, an iPhone Pro or the MacBook Pro). I also haven't tried using it with more than one monitor, and I've heard that's not possible. I'm also not a fan of magsafe and would have much rather been given a USB-C cable to charge. I hope the new EU legislation kills magsafe but I doubt it (hot take, I know).

If you're looking at the 16" MBP, then you should probably go to an Apple Store and just try lifting it up first. It's super heavy. I wouldn't want to carry that thing around.

This is why I was thinking about Air. Really having a light laptop to carry does a big difference.

Have you checked activity monitor to see what the biggest culprit is?

[I now have M1 max, 64gb 14 inch - and don't have any issues. But previously I had Intel i7 mac, 13inch, 16gb ram - no dedicated graphics card and I never had issues with development, i upgraded for video editing]

2.3 GHz 8-core Intel i9

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB

64 GB 2667 MHZ DDR4

1 TB HDD

16 Inch Monitor

Currently running macOS Sonoma

1. Remove the bottom panel and clean the fans. Here is a guide to remove the lower panel. Then take a look at the small gap between the fans and the heatsink fins. I suspect there is dust clogging the heatsink fins.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Lower+...

2. Reset the SMC. Follow the steps here. You would use the steps for "Laptop Computer with T2 Chip" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

I did not yet reset the SMC! Hope this will work well!

If you care about new models coming out soon, you can check https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

(There’s a chance the M3 is about to be released)

I looked at the new air, drooled over it really, but when I found this deal I couldn’t justify spending about the same to get a fraction of the power.

When I bought the last intel mbp, i actually initially bought an m1, but at the time it was too tough to set things up. This was mid 2021. This time around it was a lot easier, though my stack might be a tad simpler these days.

Only 2 weeks in but I’m really loving this thing so far. Might be worth checking for some deals on m1 models if you can find them, I think there are still some new models circulating, though from what I saw of the airs it was mostly 8gb ram.

I do backend and frontend, most of my dev time is spent in terminal and browser. Before buying it, I was worried about being fanless and was considering the Pro. I'm so happy I went with the Air. It's light, the battery lasts all day with no problem: when I go for an all day out of office work, I simple don't even think about bringing the charger with me. And if I really need to charge it (didn't happen yet), USB-C works.

Docker is always on, occasional ffmpeg transcoding, some Rust compiling... the machine does not care.

The only issue is that I have to sometimes fiddle about with some Docker images that don’t like ARM. Rosetta takes care of most of them, but there’s a few that are bothersome. Other than that, it’s basically perfect. That said, I’m doing web development. Nothing like 3D graphics or machine learning.

However, at this point I’d wait for M3. They should be coming in a few months. Guessing early next year.

I have a dock & external monitor to switch between my Air and M1 MBP and I don't notice a difference in performance when doing the same tasks that I normally do, but games run smoother.

I was looking for a solution to switch between two machines (one personal and one from work) while having one single monitor so that I don't need to change the monitor cable between them (monitor is LG Ultrafine 4K)

I did eventually move to an M1 Max MBP with 64 GB of RAM, but that was mostly from severely underestimating the uselessness (for my purposes) of locally hosted LLMs: as you said, 24 GBs is plenty for most usecases

I have the M1 Air 16GB, and if I'm bimbling around in NodeJS and VSCode it runs fine, but if I need to do mobile work, the Xcode UI previews and Jetbrains IDEs cause it to run warm and throttle.

It's not slowing me down, but it does make it a bit uncomfortable to use on my lap.

I mostly use either VScode or Rubymine while working with Ruby (mainly using Rails) while running multiple docker containers (some setups required multiple projects to run in the same time)

If I don't do video calls or screen sharing the actual development works fine - with an external fan under the laptop. But in general it gets warm even if I don't do video calls.

M2 chip itself is very, very fast and requires little power (and thus is cool), so I don't think performance or cooling will be an issue.

YMMV.

The only downside, if you drown it in the rain, you'd need ti replace it.

I'm back to 16" 2019 intel with 64gb of ram, and it's very noticeably worse.

On a side note for back pain - have you tried acupuncture?

Did not try that.

Currently, I am doing it twice per year kinetotherapy, and in the last 6 months, I lost around 10 kg - making the pain a bit more supportable. I even have days without feeling any pain at all.

I'd much prefer 16GB, but the Apple Tax on that is insane.

I have a MBP M2 8GB and do both Rails and Flutter development running multiple containers, still I have barely reached the full usage of my ram.

What would people need 20+ GB ram for? LLMs?

I think a lot of us techies have also become too used to just having as many programs open at once as possible, and that of course can be quite demanding in terms of resources when you have a lot of day-to-day as well as work tools open.