Why do people still say that MacBook Air is not good for serious work?

[bearinthetown]

I observe this phenomenon of people thinking in relative categories, being unable to judge absolutely. It happens in many areas, one of them being MacBooks.

So MacBooks Air of today are stronger than MacBooks Pro from just several years back. Yet, we still hear from most reviewers how Air is not suitable for professional work. That's actually interesting, since I'm able to work on my Intel MacBook Air 2018. I'm doing serious senior-level web development and some iOS development. I consider my MacBook Air good enough for most of my work, but not perfect at all, since some things like virtual machines require a little more juice to work comfortably. But hey, it's not the case with even Air M1, as it's light years ahead of my Intel-based friend.

Of course some tasks like editing 8K will be painful from time to time because of the throttling, but it's way too generic to say that these MacBooks are not good enough for most "professional work" (whatever that means).

I have a theory that our minds are faulty when it comes to relative judgement. Even if next year's Air was like today's M1 Pro, most people would still call Air too weak, because they'd only be speaking by comparison with stronger Pro device. I feel weird when reviewers compare machines and make it seem as if compilation time improvement from 1 minute to 55 seconds on the M1 Pro was a big deal. Yes, it is better, but is it worth bulkier body and significantly higher price?

To be honest I hate this phenomenon, it's very misleading. Do you guys agree?

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Weird that they do. As a matter of fact, I have just implemented a new process at work, where we order MBA's and, if you want a MBP, you have to present a case...

 

[Shirasaki]

Here are some programs I am running on my M1 MacBook Pro right now:
Discord. Textedit. Word. Excel. Team. Safari. Edge. Chrome. Photos. Mail. Music. Calendar. Messenger. Splashtop Business. VSCode. Notes. Adobe Acrobat. Photoshop. CCC. In the background, Onedrive and Google drive is also running.

The machine comfortably sits at 60-75C, and CPU is either 50-65% or 10-15% usage. RAM is in yellow in terms of the pressure and 3GB swap. (Mine has 16GB of RAM) The palm resting area can feel warm.

Beachball can be triggered easily while using Safari visiting some working sites or just click around in Word/Excel. Or just use photoshop.

While in a more video-editing-focused workflow and/or programming, MacBook Air can do them nicely on the go for hours without breaking a sweat, in a more "jack-of-all-trade" scenario, MacBook Air would struggle harder than MacBook Pro that has a fan, and you will feel the warmth coming to the palm resting area. I said it before, Apple Silicon is better optimised for specific workloads than others, while x86 is better at jack-of-all-trade at the cost of lower efficiency and worse battery life. Is M1/M2 great? Yes they are. Is M1/M2 as great as youtube videos and Apple and some people on the forum telling you? Not really.

 

[throAU]

Can you do serious work on one? Sure

A more powerful machine will do it faster.

If you are on the clock it makes sense to buy a faster machine If you can justify the cost and don’t need the extreme portability.

 

[bearinthetown]

Can you do serious work on one? Sure

A more powerful machine will do it faster.

If you are on the clock it makes sense to buy a faster machine If you can justify the cost and don’t need the extreme portability.

Of course. But stating that "it's not good for this work" is just a lie and I'm raising the concern about thinking pattern here.

 

[Wokis]

Back when the 13" models, both Air and Pro, only came with intel iGPUs and mostly dual cores then you could talk about this form factor not being good enough for "serious work". As more productivity apps started leveraging GPU compute those machines just became terrible. I could not in any satisfactory capacity run DaVinci Resolve on my 2015 13" MBP.

Now even if you, like me, make the choice to have the slimmest possible Mac in 2022, you can still launch and run Resolve like if it was no big deal. Indeed times have changed. I don't really care that the M1 ProMaxius can do it faster if mine can do it fast enough.

 

[throAU]

Of course. But stating that "it's not good for this work" is just a lie and I'm raising the concern about thinking pattern here.

It’s not ideal for it. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Just means that if it’s what you do, you’re probably better off with the more powerful machines.

 

[bearinthetown]

It’s not ideal for it. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Just means that if it’s what you do, you’re probably better off with the more powerful machines.

MacBook Pro is not ideal neither. It's bulky and battery life is worse. Why are you "probably better off with more powerful machines"? If today's Airs are not ideal, then Pros from 4 years ago never were neither. Not sure if you get what I mean. Why would existence of something more powerful make what we have weaker?

 

[Shirasaki]

MacBook Pro is not ideal neither.

For your 13" 2015 MacBook Pro yes. For M1/M2 MacBook Pro? No. And definitely not for M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro.

 

[theluggage]

So MacBooks Air of today are stronger than MacBooks Pro from just several years back. Yet, we still hear from most reviewers how Air is not suitable for professional work. That's actually interesting, since I'm able to work on my Intel MacBook Air 2018. I'm doing serious senior-level web development and some iOS development.

...and you're illustrating the real problem: everybody assumes that "professional work" is whatever they mean by "professional work" and nothing else. A lot of Mac reviewers have (or their primary audiences have) day jobs in video/audio production , so their benchmark is how fast it can transcode 4k or better video, or render animations from Blender....

Your "benchmark" is "web/iOS development" - which is actually pretty undemanding on computing power. The limiting factor is likely to be whether the latest versions of safari/xcode/chrome are supported and how many browser tabs you want to have open for documentation etc.

Folks, without further details, "professional" means either (a) you earn a living from it, (b) you reckon you're really good at it or (c) you have some sort of relevant professional qualification for the job. It tells you absolutely nothing about how many GPU cores or how much RAM you need for it,

Ultimately, you can't expect a useful, one-size-fits-all answer to "is this suitable for serious/professional work" without going into considerable detail about what your personal needs are.


As for the relative/absolute issue - If you're happily using a 2018 Air, and given that it's pretty well established that the M2 outperforms any 2018-era Intel mobile processor or integrated GPU why would you even be thinking of upgrading to a 14/16" MB Pro? You know that - as long as the software you need is supported & you don't need that second external display - the M1/M2 Air will be better than the 2018 one. If you already know the answer for your specific needs then why worry about some reviewer's attempt to give a one-size-fits-all answer?

However, if you are pondering whether to buy a M1/M2 MacBook Air vs an M1 Pro/max MacBook Pro - maybe you're new to Mac or maybe you have an Intel MacBook Pro/iMac and want to know if you can safely "downgrade" to an M1/M2 Air then it is the "relative" judgement that you want. You shouldn't need telling that a 2022 entry-level machine is as fast as a 5+ year-old "Pro" machine - the issue is what's on offer today.

If you're doing 4k+ video or 3D rendering then, yes, it's pretty incredible that you can now "do" that on a MacBook Air - but if you're buying a new Mac specifically for those things then a M1 Pro/Max machine (possibly with more RAM) will most likely be able to "do" them considerably faster - not to mention other factors like being able to support more external displays, having more TB3/4 ports (plus extra magsafe/HDMI ports that can potentially free up TB ports) and - of course - larger/better built-in displays.

I think one issue is that we went through a 10 month period where there were no "pro-class" M1 Macs - and the 14/16" are still lagging behind in the product cycle - so "pro" users who wanted a new computer were attracted to the "entry level" M1 machines which - while they had the CPU legs to cope - really weren't up to it in terms of RAM capacity and connectivity.

 

[Pugly]

It’s basically people taking Apple’s marketing and segmentation to heart without looking at actual performance.

It’s not a big deal, but it builds in the expectation that an Air is just scraping by and can’t even touch any “Pro” work.

I try to simplify it down in my head. A base M1 is in the same performance range as the 16inch intel MacBook Pro. And the M1 pro and up can be twice as fast, but only in specific work that takes time to render or compile something. It needs to leverage faster multi core performance. All M1 macs have the same single core, so for a large majority of uses it’s exactly the same.

Outside of needing more than 16GB(24 now) or more gpu, the air can do anything the pros can do. But if you wait on the computer a lot and time is money for you and your work than the pro is available.

In the end the Air and Pro names are just words with no representation of reality. The last intel Air was really slow and incapable of advanced things without lagging. The M1 Air does not, and is in a different category. Both are good enough to check your email. Or edit your home movies.

 

[theluggage]

MacBook Pro is not ideal neither. It's bulky and battery life is worse.

That is, always has been, and always will be, the trade-off for more power and (duh!!) a larger screen.

For some people, the extra screen area will make all the difference and justify the extra bulk. For others, the extra weight will be the deal-breaker.

E.g. Some people only have to move their computer to & from the trunk of their car a few times a week, Others cycle around with the computer in a backpack. They're going to have different opinions on the bulk vs. power trade-off. Meanwhile, those of us who used to carry PowerBook G3s around (...and we thought that those were really sleek and modern at the time) can just wonder why people are complaining...

You can't expect a one-size-fits-all declaration of suitable/not suitable for "professional" work - or even something like "web development" - that takes into account your every preference and special need.

 

[DSTOFEL]

It’s basically people taking Apple’s marketing and segmentation to heart without looking at actual performance.

It’s not a big deal, but it builds in the expectation that an Air is just scraping by and can’t even touch any “Pro” work.

I try to simplify it down in my head. A base M1 is in the same performance range as the 16inch intel MacBook Pro. And the M1 pro and up can be twice as fast, but only in specific work that takes time to render or compile something. It needs to leverage faster multi core performance. All M1 macs have the same single core, so for a large majority of uses it’s exactly the same.

Outside of needing more than 16GB(24 now) or more gpu, the air can do anything the pros can do. But if you wait on the computer a lot and time is money for you and your work than the pro is available.

In the end the Air and Pro names are just words with no representation of reality. The last intel Air was really slow and incapable of advanced things without lagging. The M1 Air does not, and is in a different category. Both are good enough to check your email. Or edit your home movies.

….and for those who have a relatively “light” use case, the M1 Air base model (8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 8 core CPU, 7 core GPU) can be had new from MicroCenter (an authorized Apple dealer) for $829. That’s lower than the Apple refurbished site ($849).

 

[chrono1081]

Is M1/M2 as great as youtube videos and Apple and some people on the forum telling you? Not really.

Hard disagree. I have an M2 Air and this thing is an utter beast. Some things I did on it include:

-Running simulations in Houdini for hours.
-Animating and rendering in Blender (which mind you, isn't optimized for M series at least when I tested).
-Edited and rendered out 4k video.
-Made music in Logic. I had 20 tracks loaded and it handled playback without breaking a sweat. I only stopped at 20 because I got bored.
-Made graphics in Motion.
-Did a ton of programming in Xcode.
-Played some video games.

This thing handled it all and far better than my end of 2019 16" $4500 MacBook Pro with an Intel i9 and 64 gigs ram. The only thing the 16" did faster was render and my Air wasn't far behind (and again, the version of Blender I was running wasn't optimized for M series yet).

This machine is a beast.

 

[Shirasaki]

-Running simulations in Houdini for hours.
-Animating and rendering in Blender (which mind you, isn't optimized for M series at least when I tested).
-Edited and rendered out 4k video.
-Made music in Logic. I had 20 tracks loaded and it handled playback without breaking a sweat. I only stopped at 20 because I got bored.
-Made graphics in Motion.
-Did a ton of programming in Xcode.
-Played some video games.

Again, M1/M2 MacBook Air/Pro (and other variant) are very powerful. But not as powerful as many people suggest unless workload lines up great with hardware.

So out of all of these tasks, only “video game” doesnt have Apple’s “special touch” on hardware.
Simulation - it seems that’s 3D procedural software for film/TV etc. Definitely can benefit from much better GPU.
Blender - media engine and optimised GPU core for those.
4K video - this is what media engine is for and one area M2/M1 Pro/Max shine over M1.
Make music in Logic - as a traditional go-to platform choice, Apple certainly does lots of Optimisation for those tasks.
Make graphics in Motion - I suspect better GPU architecture helps here over always-weak Intel integrated graphics.
Programming in Xcode - if Xcode doesnt run well on M1/M2 Mac, well, that’s just a slap in Apple’s face. So no surprise.

Compared to my tasks
Browse the web - CPU and RAM. Little to no GPU touch and very limited media engine use for maybe streaming.
Excel/Word/PowerPoint - CPU and RAM. I dont think it really uses much GPU.
Do work inside browser - CPU and RAM.
Listen to music - very little CPU usage nowadays.
Remote connection - I dunno if it ever uses GPU but I doubt it. Heavily uses CPU.
Light photoshop - CPU and RAM, LOTS OF RAM. (I am forced to use an older version of Photoshop because newer Apple Silicon native version uses 4GB minimum and it runs SLOW)
Text editing - CPU.
Gaming - macOS gaming? Nah. I just do it on iPad Pro or Windows PC.

As you can see, your workflow uses Apple Silicon hardware more complete than me, thus benefit a lot more as a result. Instead, my M1 MacBook Pro is running at 65-75C constant with no sign of slowing down and fan noise is audible. Yes, the MacBook Pro is MUCH faster than my old 11” MacBook Air, but I just can’t agree with people claiming it is a beast without knowing their workflow.

 

[decafjava]

Hard disagree. I have an M2 Air and this thing is an utter beast. Some things I did on it include:

-Running simulations in Houdini for hours.
-Animating and rendering in Blender (which mind you, isn't optimized for M series at least when I tested).
-Edited and rendered out 4k video.
-Made music in Logic. I had 20 tracks loaded and it handled playback without breaking a sweat. I only stopped at 20 because I got bored.
-Made graphics in Motion.
-Did a ton of programming in Xcode.
-Played some video games.

This thing handled it all and far better than my end of 2019 16" $4500 MacBook Pro with an Intel i9 and 64 gigs ram. The only thing the 16" did faster was render and my Air wasn't far behind (and again, the version of Blender I was running wasn't optimized for M series yet).

This machine is a beast.

Wow, this is on my wish list then after replacing my iMac 2015 model. If I could persuade my work to get one. 😁

 

[Mainsail]

The term "serious work" is totally subjective. Also, it leaves a connotation of relative importance or consequence, which is of course absurd. For example, without breaking a sweat, a base MacBook Air is probably capable of doing everything a school superintendent needs for his job. This is a consequential job with significant responsibilities, and the work is serious. A guy doing 3D anime for adult entertainment might need more computing power. But, that doesn't mean he is doing serious work. I am probably getting hung up on the words, but the term "serious work" is not a very good way of making a distinction about the kind of technology required for a job or task.

 

[Toutou]

So out of all of these tasks, only “video game” doesnt have Apple’s “special touch” on hardware.
Simulation - it seems that’s 3D procedural software for film/TV etc. Definitely can benefit from much better GPU.
Blender - media engine and optimised GPU core for those.
4K video - this is what media engine is for and one area M2/M1 Pro/Max shine over M1.
Make music in Logic - as a traditional go-to platform choice, Apple certainly does lots of Optimisation for those tasks.
Make graphics in Motion - I suspect better GPU architecture helps here over always-weak Intel integrated graphics.
Programming in Xcode - if Xcode doesnt run well on M1/M2 Mac, well, that’s just a slap in Apple’s face. So no surprise.

Actually the Media Engine is the only “special touch” found among these workflows. The rest is general purpose computing using general purpose hardware, just like your workflows that you present like they were something entirely different.

There are no special Blender or Logic cores, it’s just pretty fast software running on pretty fast hardware.

 

[Shirasaki]

Actually the Media Engine is the only “special touch” found among these workflows. The rest is general purpose computing using general purpose hardware, just like your workflows that you present like they were something entirely different.

There are no special Blender or Logic cores, it’s just pretty fast software running on pretty fast hardware.

I suspect that media engine can do more to accelerate his workflow than on mine, which means he still uses hardware more complete than me anyways. For my use case, the general performance of CPU and RAM is way more important than GPU performance and media engine performance.

 

[Technerd108]

I have been saying this for a while. The M2 MBA can do serious work flows.

It is an amazing device.

Think what future iterations of M series processors will bring in the future?

Apple was very smart to develop their own chips and ditch Intel.

A lot of people on these forums have blinders on and say things like M2 is just an overclocked M1 without actually using an M2 device for a period of time enough to understand what it can do.

The new M2 Pro/Max chips are going to push that gap between professional even farther and M3 will probably mean that only really specialized work flows will actually need a "Pro" device.

 

[hirsthirst]

Weird that they do. As a matter of fact, I have just implemented a new process at work, where we order MBA's and, if you want a MBP, you have to present a case...

the entry-level computer at my firm is now a 14" MacBook Pro, with 16" for Tech Sales

as I (and most everyone else) only do very light MS Office & browser-based SaaS apps - plus Teams & Zoom calls - I asked for an M1 MBA but it's a no ...

 

[jdb8167]

the entry-level computer at my firm is now a 14" MacBook Pro, with 16" for Tech Sales

as I (and most everyone else) only do very light MS Office & browser-based SaaS apps - plus Teams & Zoom calls - I asked for an M1 MBA but it's a no ...

It makes sense for an IT department to limit the number of models to a reasonable count. Expecting to keep the computer for at least 3 years, the cost difference between the Air and the Pro is negligible compared to the costs associated with a full-time professional employee.

On the other hand they should respect their professional employees’ requests. It’s not like the IT department is keeping spare parts for MacBooks. It is only a small inconvenience to special purchase a slightly different notebook.

 

[hans1972]

Compared to my tasks
Browse the web - CPU and RAM. Little to no GPU touch and very limited media engine use for maybe streaming.
Excel/Word/PowerPoint - CPU and RAM. I dont think it really uses much GPU.
Do work inside browser - CPU and RAM.
Listen to music - very little CPU usage nowadays.
Remote connection - I dunno if it ever uses GPU but I doubt it. Heavily uses CPU.
Silicon native version uses 4GB minimum and it runs SLOW)
Text editing - CPU.

I'm doing all that on 12" MacBook (2015), 13" MacBook Air and 13" M2 MacBook Air and none if it are taxing the CPU, GPU on my machine with the exception of some huge Excel spreadsheets although the M2 Air handles them pretty good. We're talking 100 000 rows.

I Remote Desktop into about 20 servers regularly and it's CPU usage almost doesn't register. It's just transferring screen images.

In addition, I run a Windows virtual machine in which I use an Eclipse based (Java) IDE for programming. I just limit the VM to 1 vCPU and 2Gb RAM and so it doesn't affect the Air's performance.

The only time the two old MacBook Airs get warm is if some website is misbehaving badly or I'm running some very disk intensive tasks in the VM.

I haven't been able to get my M2 MacBook Air warm at all with the same tasks.

 

[hans1972]

To me the 14"/16" MacBook Pros are so horrible machines due their large size and weight.

I would rather pay full price for a MacBook Air even if I got the 14"/16" for free.

That's how bad I consider them.

 

[Technerd108]

To me the 14"/16" MacBook Pros are so horrible machines due their large size and weight.

I would rather pay full price for a MacBook Air even if I got the 14"/16" for free.

That's how bad I consider them.

I think people tend to put things into extremes. Either the MacBook air is too thin and light without a fan to do any "real" work or MacBook Pros are too bulky, thick and heavy.

I don't think either extreme is particularly true or at least both are exaggerated.

Then when cost comes into play these exaggerations are used as justifications for what is better.

When cost is an important factor it is not being used in a manner that is objective but more conflated to say one thing is better or worse than the other when cost is one factor of consideration not the only factor and if you are buying a Mac you already understand you are paying a premium for it.

So a lot of times people will say just buy the M1 MBP instead of the M2 MBA because it is "better" and costs the same but those people are ignoring a lot of facts and differences that a person may consider "better" to do so.

Specs and cost alone do not equate into better if what you prioritize are not just those things in a vacuum.

A MacBook is going through a sort of transformation in what is possible due to the new Apple silicon chips. The old paradigm that Intel experience gave people was that you can only do certain tasks with a particular type of device are being redefined with Apple silicon.

There are certain workloads that can only be done with a "Pro" machine but those workloads are now blurring into machines not considered "Pro" and this will continue as Apple silicon chips get more powerful and efficient. In other words what we used to only consider possible on a "Pro" level device is becoming more and more possible on no "Pro" machines than ever before.

This is a great thing for consumers as it means more and more people can do more and more of their work on less expensive devices.

The entire idea of a laptop or mobile device is to make it as light and low a footprint as possible while still giving enough performance to satisfy the user.

All that being said the idea that a small footprint is not a huge consideration for people that trumps cost or other features is somewhat of a forum specific idea because most people on these forums prioritize performance over everything else even when other factors may be as important or even more important when the new advances of Apple silicon come into play.

It seems nuance is lost on a lot of people who can only see things in terms of ultimate performance being the only consideration and when cost of older devices comes down that automatically makes them "better" no matter the context.