Can the MacBook Air perform under heavy workloads in Professional Applications?

[trevpimp]

For both Intel and M1 MacBook Airs, can the MBA perform under heavy workloads for Professional Use?

I have a MBA but I only use it for basic use, Journaling, Safari, Games, I never thought to use it for Developing Apps or anything in the professional field just curious to see if MBA's are relied on for professional use

uses for CAD, Engineering Softwares, XCode, Photoshop, Heavy 4K Video Editing, ?

 

[Apple_Robert]

If would help if you listed the apps you would want to run on the M1, so that the responders could give a cogent answer.

 

[velocityg4]

Since you already own it. You may as well try out your software and see how well it runs.

I expect it can do all the tasks you mentioned. Although some will be much slower than a properly equipped workstation.

 

[jdb8167]

For both Intel and M1 MacBook Airs, can the MBA perform under heavy workloads for Professional Use?

I have a MBA but I only use it for basic use, Journaling, Safari, Games, I never thought to use it for Developing Apps or anything in the professional field just curious to see if MBA's are relied on for professional use

uses for CAD, Engineering Softwares, XCode, Photoshop, Heavy 4K Video Editing, ?

M1 more than Intel. I've used older Intel MacBook Airs for programming though. I used a 2013 i7 for years developing for Java enterprise back-ends. I'm doing development on the M1 MacBook Air and it seems to work well. I imagine in some cases a M1 MacBook Pro would be better but I haven't really noticed any slowdowns.

 

[coachingguy]

As a prosumer photographer who's added some drone videos to my portfolio. I had to give up on a 2017 MBA 8 gigs, 512 SSD... Once I started editing RAW pictures... 4-5 pictures in... Spinning ball of death that would last minutes per edit, per picture... I upgraded to a used late 2018 MBP (last one before the 16") with 32 gigs, 1 TB SSD... I haven't seen a spinning ball since...

So, I haven't use the M1 MBA yet, we're getting them for work this fall... But the intel version wasn't able to handle moderately heavy photo/video editing... But the initial reviews/impression of the M1 MBA have been excellent, so...

Just my .02¢. YMMV

Coachingguy

 

[playtech1]

Judging by reviews it's certainly capable of doing all of those things, so long as the specific piece of software works well on M1.

If the software works on M1 some workloads may go a bit quicker on a different M1 Mac to the MBA due to their using a fan to cool the chip, but overall it's a very powerful CPU no matter what chassis it's in.

 

[Phil A.]

I often use mine (16GB / 1TB) for software development - primarily using JetBrains Rider but also IntelliJ and DataGrid and it works flawlessly (I replaced the JBR runtime folder in Rider with the M1 native one from IntelliJ which makes it work far better than under Rosetta). I also use Lightroom (CC, not classic as my main library is on my Mac Pro), Visual Studio Code and Fusion 360. I've not seen any issues at all with it and it's very quick