> and any development work that doesn’t require an IDE Probably depends on the IDE and the language. My impression is that newer computers (especially in the "

> and any development work that doesn’t require an IDE Probably depends on the IDE and the language. My impression is that newer computers (especially in the "consumer" / "general public" market) have especially improved efficiency. They're not much faster, but they last longer on smaller batteries. My late 2013 15" (2.3 GHz / 16 GB RAM) works great with Pycharm for moderately sized projects. It's even usable for personal Rust projects (with the intellij-rust plugin). For Rust it's somewhat slower than my i5-8500 desktop but not by much. For incremental compiles, I don't feel like I'm waiting around more. The i5 mainly wins when it can use all six cores. It's however quite a bit faster than my work HP ProBook with an i5-8250U which is a much newer machine (2018 I'd say). Aside from battery life, which is somewhat lesser, all in all the mac is a much, much better machine than the HP, especially for "creature comforts": gorgeous screen, no misaligned panels rubbing against my wrists, great trackpad, no random coil whine, inaudible fans unless it starts compiling for a while, no background noise on the headphone out, integrated optical output when I want to use my home stereo.