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I bought a MBP 14 (max 32, 32GB, 2TB) Dec 2021 and I mostly don't regret it (probably should've only gotten 24 GPU cores and gone silver). Here are some pros an

I bought a MBP 14 (max 32, 32GB, 2TB) Dec 2021 and I mostly don't regret it (probably should've only gotten 24 GPU cores and gone silver). Here are some pros and cons I don't think get enough play: - Turning on "Low Power Mode" when on Battery gives me roughly 10h of battery life. Functionally this is more than good enough for me. - Backlight leakage around the keys feels janky - It's pretty hard to pick it up unless you get it by the back vent, also yeah, it's heavy - The resolution is pretty weird. I wish it were really 4k, then bumping it down to FHD with an integer scale would make sense. As it is, the integer scale is 1512x982, which many websites think (including some you might build!) is a tablet. - Viewing angles on the screen are not at IPS levels. At regular usage distances you can definitely see a difference around the outer 1/3 of the screen. - Dark text on a light background is different than light text on a dark background. When I do `set bg=light` in Vim I usually need to use a thicker font or turn on antialiasing. I think most people should get the M2 Air (or the M1 even). I have a couple of reasons that going 14 max makes sense for me: I moved abroad and my brother and I keep in touch via gaming (a lot of Steam games, etc. work pretty well on it), and I'm planning on getting back into music. Otherwise, I would argue that: - the IPS screen on the Air is better for text - the Air's battery life is another class - the Air is much lighter - the Air's resolution is more mainstream and usable Some Air things are dealbreakers. M1 tops out at 16GB, M2 at 24, and they only do 1 external monitor. But w/e.

tomaskafka 4y ago
Yes, M1 Air still kills it. I use one for app development, and the gains of Pro just aren't worth it. Plus it's superlight and fanless, and can easily drive 1440p screen at 165hz, so I don't even miss the high fps screen.
- metaltyphoon 4y ago
  Not for me. The M1 Pros were on discount for $1499 not too long ago. The screen alone vs the air is worth a it, if you use a lot for reading.
  - tomaskafka 4y ago
    Everyone has a different criteria - for me, the Pro just feels too heavy, I love how I almost don't know if I have the air in the backpack.
nfriedly 4y ago
Another reason the Air is a good choice for most people is that it doesn't have a fan. I've cleaned quite a bit of dust/lint/etc. out of various laptops. Without a fan, that's much less likely to be an issue. In one recent case, a family member was about to buy an entire new laptop because their old one was feeling very sluggish. I checked it out and realized that the fan had completely died and the system was constantly thermally throttling. A $12 replacement fan (and a thorough cleaning and CPU repaste) allowed them to put off a $1k+ purchase for at least a couple more years.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Ha ha, in my experience you are a downer. Sometimes I like to find a reason for a new purchase. ;-) (I suppose having fixed the fan though means I could get a little more for it on eBay.)
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  How do you know this stuff? My old 2014 MacBook Pro has the battery swelling up. I can’t afford more than a few hundred to fix everything. It’s a 2nd comp I use for a remote coworking Zoom session all day. I could have the same problems. I’ve never cleaned the laptop either..heh. I am a programmer so I am not afraid of hardware.
  - raincom 4y ago
    Battery swelling = battery replacement. I suggest you replace the battery. Don't wait, as swollen batteries can explode. Apple will charge $200 to replace, or try a local authorized dealer. You can try install the battery yourself by ordering from iFixit. If I were you, I would just get a refurbished M1 MacBook Air from Apple, instead of spending $200 on the battery.
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      Thanks I honestly didn't know. Spending a few hundred isn't a problem thankfully.
  - 4y ago
machiaweliczny 4y ago
Yep, I am using MBP Air M1 16GB and it's great for typical web dev work. I use it with external 4K LG monitor.
orangecat 4y ago
As it is, the integer scale is 1512x982, which many websites think (including some you might build!) is a tablet. That's odd, I've never noticed that on my 14". Websites usually choose layouts according to width and 1512 is well into desktop territory. the Air's resolution is more mainstream and usable The Air is 2560x1664, and at the default (non-integer, so less sharp) scaling it presents as 1470x956 which is also non-standard and lower than the MBP.
- camgunz 4y ago
  It's pretty rare; usually it's in the form of a sidebar defaulting to collapsed or a hamburger instead of nav buttons. The main thing is you can't have anything else taking up horizontal space.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    (Outside the edit window) Edit: I wrote this elsewhere but the DPI is low enough that native is usable for me. I might bump it down a notch, but dunno.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    Ah yeah, here [0] MUI's xl breakpoint is 1536px, which is 24px wider than the integer scaled width (1512px). You'd also ideally like a little margin too, so really 1600px is kind of a bare minimum for web dev work IMO, so I imagine most people are scaling up to (the non-integer) 1800x1169. [0]: https://mui.com/material-ui/customization/breakpoints/ https://mui.com/material-ui/customization/breakpoints/
blehn 4y ago
I had an M2 Air and ended up swapping for the 14 M1 Pro. The Air was plenty powerful and I loved the weight and battery life, but: - The 14" Pro's native resolution is 3024x1964, which means at 1512w you're getting perfect doubling of the pixels. The M2 air is natively 2560x1664 but it defaults to 1470x956, so you don't get that clean doubling and the sharpness suffers IMO. You can drop it down to 1280w to increase sharpness but the cost in screen real estate is significant. I'm not sure understand your point about the Air's resolution being more mainstream or usable - The black levels on the MPB's mini-LED LCD screen are vastly better than the M2 Air. - As someone who's only used MPBs over the last 10 years, the speakers on the Air sound truly awful — tinny, harsh, low volume. Not just for music, but I found listening to a podcast or watching a TV show to be fatiguing and unsatisfying. - I upgraded my Air's SSD because the default SSD is slow, so the price was $1500+tax; Best Buy was running a sale on MBP 14" that put it at $1600+tax, so all told the significant price gap was almost entirely negated.
- camgunz 4y ago
  Those are good points; I will say in particular the speakers on my MBP are amazing and have provided the music for lots of occasions, and video calls are great. But my partner has an M1 Air and they're totally fine to me. Maybe if you're sensitive you should beware, but then you should beware of all non-MBP laptop speakers. I use the incredible SwitchResX [0] so you can get the res and refresh rate you want. I wear contacts so I tend to use screens at native resolution, and I'd probably either have the Air at native or one tick down. Native on the 14" is too small even for me (this is less font size and more low-contrast UIs though), but I had my 2018 MBP 16" at native and it was pretty good, so maybe what I'm complaining about doesn't apply to that size. Black levels are good, but I suspect the blooming is responsible for the difference between dark on light and light on dark. If I were in video or photography this might be a good tradeoff, but for Vim it's not ideal--I'd prefer an IPS. I'll also say my MBP was $3,700, so jumping down to the M2 Air (24GB, 2TB) is a $1,200 savings. There's a lot you can do with configurations, but higher end MBPs are just in their own class. I justify it by saying "well of course I would spend $5/day to use a computer, which is about 2 years, and if I stretch it out to 3 it's a pretty good upgrade cycle (plus resale maybe). [0]: https://www.madrau.com/ https://www.madrau.com/

tomaskafka 4y ago

Yes, M1 Air still kills it. I use one for app development, and the gains of Pro just aren't worth it. Plus it's superlight and fanless, and can easily drive 1440p screen at 165hz, so I don't even miss the high fps screen.

metaltyphoon 4y ago
Not for me. The M1 Pros were on discount for $1499 not too long ago. The screen alone vs the air is worth a it, if you use a lot for reading.
- tomaskafka 4y ago
  Everyone has a different criteria - for me, the Pro just feels too heavy, I love how I almost don't know if I have the air in the backpack.

nfriedly 4y ago

Another reason the Air is a good choice for most people is that it doesn't have a fan. I've cleaned quite a bit of dust/lint/etc. out of various laptops. Without a fan, that's much less likely to be an issue. In one recent case, a family member was about to buy an entire new laptop because their old one was feeling very sluggish. I checked it out and realized that the fan had completely died and the system was constantly thermally throttling. A $12 replacement fan (and a thorough cleaning and CPU repaste) allowed them to put off a $1k+ purchase for at least a couple more years.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Ha ha, in my experience you are a downer. Sometimes I like to find a reason for a new purchase. ;-) (I suppose having fixed the fan though means I could get a little more for it on eBay.)
skinnymuch 4y ago
How do you know this stuff? My old 2014 MacBook Pro has the battery swelling up. I can’t afford more than a few hundred to fix everything. It’s a 2nd comp I use for a remote coworking Zoom session all day. I could have the same problems. I’ve never cleaned the laptop either..heh. I am a programmer so I am not afraid of hardware.
- raincom 4y ago
  Battery swelling = battery replacement. I suggest you replace the battery. Don't wait, as swollen batteries can explode. Apple will charge $200 to replace, or try a local authorized dealer. You can try install the battery yourself by ordering from iFixit. If I were you, I would just get a refurbished M1 MacBook Air from Apple, instead of spending $200 on the battery.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    Thanks I honestly didn't know. Spending a few hundred isn't a problem thankfully.
- 4y ago

machiaweliczny 4y ago

Yep, I am using MBP Air M1 16GB and it's great for typical web dev work. I use it with external 4K LG monitor.

orangecat 4y ago

As it is, the integer scale is 1512x982, which many websites think (including some you might build!) is a tablet. That's odd, I've never noticed that on my 14". Websites usually choose layouts according to width and 1512 is well into desktop territory. the Air's resolution is more mainstream and usable The Air is 2560x1664, and at the default (non-integer, so less sharp) scaling it presents as 1470x956 which is also non-standard and lower than the MBP.

camgunz 4y ago
It's pretty rare; usually it's in the form of a sidebar defaulting to collapsed or a hamburger instead of nav buttons. The main thing is you can't have anything else taking up horizontal space.
- camgunz 4y ago
  (Outside the edit window) Edit: I wrote this elsewhere but the DPI is low enough that native is usable for me. I might bump it down a notch, but dunno.
- camgunz 4y ago
  Ah yeah, here [0] MUI's xl breakpoint is 1536px, which is 24px wider than the integer scaled width (1512px). You'd also ideally like a little margin too, so really 1600px is kind of a bare minimum for web dev work IMO, so I imagine most people are scaling up to (the non-integer) 1800x1169. [0]: https://mui.com/material-ui/customization/breakpoints/ https://mui.com/material-ui/customization/breakpoints/

blehn 4y ago

I had an M2 Air and ended up swapping for the 14 M1 Pro. The Air was plenty powerful and I loved the weight and battery life, but: - The 14" Pro's native resolution is 3024x1964, which means at 1512w you're getting perfect doubling of the pixels. The M2 air is natively 2560x1664 but it defaults to 1470x956, so you don't get that clean doubling and the sharpness suffers IMO. You can drop it down to 1280w to increase sharpness but the cost in screen real estate is significant. I'm not sure understand your point about the Air's resolution being more mainstream or usable - The black levels on the MPB's mini-LED LCD screen are vastly better than the M2 Air. - As someone who's only used MPBs over the last 10 years, the speakers on the Air sound truly awful — tinny, harsh, low volume. Not just for music, but I found listening to a podcast or watching a TV show to be fatiguing and unsatisfying. - I upgraded my Air's SSD because the default SSD is slow, so the price was $1500+tax; Best Buy was running a sale on MBP 14" that put it at $1600+tax, so all told the significant price gap was almost entirely negated.

camgunz 4y ago
Those are good points; I will say in particular the speakers on my MBP are amazing and have provided the music for lots of occasions, and video calls are great. But my partner has an M1 Air and they're totally fine to me. Maybe if you're sensitive you should beware, but then you should beware of all non-MBP laptop speakers. I use the incredible SwitchResX [0] so you can get the res and refresh rate you want. I wear contacts so I tend to use screens at native resolution, and I'd probably either have the Air at native or one tick down. Native on the 14" is too small even for me (this is less font size and more low-contrast UIs though), but I had my 2018 MBP 16" at native and it was pretty good, so maybe what I'm complaining about doesn't apply to that size. Black levels are good, but I suspect the blooming is responsible for the difference between dark on light and light on dark. If I were in video or photography this might be a good tradeoff, but for Vim it's not ideal--I'd prefer an IPS. I'll also say my MBP was $3,700, so jumping down to the M2 Air (24GB, 2TB) is a $1,200 savings. There's a lot you can do with configurations, but higher end MBPs are just in their own class. I justify it by saying "well of course I would spend $5/day to use a computer, which is about 2 years, and if I stretch it out to 3 it's a pretty good upgrade cycle (plus resale maybe). [0]: https://www.madrau.com/ https://www.madrau.com/