Are you comparing the base model M4 MBP to the M4 Air? If so, performance is going to be nearly identical.

The MBP M4 Pro on the other hand is a beast and well worth the extra money

The highest drain application in your OP is Docker.

For me whether or not you go for the Pro mostly depends on your Docker usage but your Node/React usage will also have an effect here especially in more complex build jobs or local compilation.

My advice is generally to get the best laptop you can with the money you have. As budget is less of an issue for you I’d suggest a 16gb or 32gb RAM Pro.

I think you should also look at the M3 or M2 models of the same Pros. I own an M1 and it’s still going strong 3 years later, I have no idea when I’ll need to upgrade it and no part of using it has ever felt slow.

M-Series chips are extreme powerful and it turns out you don’t always need the latest one, even for longevity.

Air

For the dev use cases you just mentioned, Air suffices..I am also a dev, and 16 GB of RAM works fine. Currently have 25 Chrome tabs open, and other Chromium-based applications running like VS Code, Telegram.

https://preview.redd.it/tiaqn82ypw1f1.png?width=1180&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e230d050ca1a9eb15ab995fab8a325e791325a9

But if in need of more power for unforeseen edge cases, go pro..

I use my m2 for R and python and it’s snappy, so you’ll prob face no problem with m4

I don't really think there's a point to getting an Air unless you value the lightest thinnest laptop over everything else. It's the entry-level Macbook laptop. Macbook Air has a worse display/thermals/speakers and Macbook Pro has a superior resale/trade-in over an upgraded to 512GB Macbook Air. Worse thermals mean more wear and tear on the battery and the laptop in general.

Wonder too

Data scientist here - I've been using the base M2 for about 2 years without any issues. Most of my development locally runs flawlessly (classic ML models like trees, basic regressions, etc.). I think most people underestimate that with heavy workflows (neural nets), you'll probably utilize cloud providers like AWS and GCP. It's not expected that you solve everything locally but know when to utilize tools that bring you out of your local machine. That being said, never had an issue with my M2 that's 8GB and 256GB. I do have a MacBook Pro M3 Pro as well for my job but even with that, everything is on cloud.

I have an M3 air 16gb. It works great 95% of the time. The other 5% I wish I had upgraded to 24gb. I think an m4 with 24gb would be perfect for dev work.

I mainly have intellij, vs code, dbeaver, and chrome open at all times. It's cool to the touch and the battery lasts forever.

I have been happy with my M4 Air this far as my development machine at least. I say try it, if it does not work out you can probably resell it for very little loss and get the pro instead. For me i have an external monitor pretty much always so the better screen on the pro was irrelevant, but if you use the screen a lot then perhaps that makes it worth it.

I would get the Pro. I bought the Air, work flawlessly for casual coding but occasionally do get hot as I live in a warm climate. Then, decided to upgrade to Pro, should have done that sooner. The screen alone is worth considering upgrading. The screen on Air is meh, my 4 year old Thinkpad X13 had better screen.

An Air won’t have the same sustained performance as an M2 Pro, but you would have to run it pretty hard to have any problems. Most development work, as you know, is very bursty and not something that really relies on raw CPU. There are exceptions, of course, and if you were heavy into ML, NLP, game dev, etc. I bet you wouldn’t have asked your original question. If you rely on running VMs, you want to get more memory than you think minimally necessary. Otherwise, I think an Air will be fine.

MacBook Pro.

There’s an apple event tomorrow, they might or might not announce something relevant to your question.

Not sure what experience others here have with the new pro/air, but apples M chips have been a game changer performance-wise. With that said, I’m skeptical about any laptop that doesn’t have active cooling if you’re doing anything more than browsing and such. Also 8GB ram could be causing you pain regardless of your cpu.

macbooks are not upgradable. do not get anything below 16 gb ram. not only that macbook air has no fan and is passively cooled. i will consider using a window based laptop over apple laptop because if apple's closed system. That system is not worth it bros. if you want a slim design consider asus zeprus g14. both ram as well as storage is upgradable.

depends on your workflow.. for web development most of the packages are already ported to their new chip, system level programing like rust, c and other nieche softwares are also available. if you want to know if compiling software is better than its definitely better if you do gpu rendering. the cpu is also considered pretty fast compared to any chips in the market. so whats the complaint? my only complaint is apple's closed system. (too lazy to write a proper reply from my phone)

Yes very effecient for development but buy 16/512 minimum configuration

Get 16 GB ram

better specs better windows laptop for sql servers...

Go see one for yourself in Costco. As far as the screen is concerned, I could tell no difference and chose to go with MBA. But I also intend to use it for light personal consumption and nothing too crazy. If your intended purpose is for professional use then you should go for MBP.

The pro models are more expensive than the air but really are built far superior to the air models.

The pro models have far better display, 120hz, better keyboard, mousepad, speakers and cooling.

No matter what people are Saying about the display of the MacBook Air, it is a very good ips panel, good colors but only 60hz

60Hz will not feel that different. In fact, both will feel equally snappy at office tasks, streaming media, messaging, and light photo editing. However, under load, the Pro will retain its performance longer vs. the Air will throttle up to 20%. Keep in mind it takes literally minutes of full power runs for this to happen and when it does, the loss of 20% isn't that much.

I'd get the Pro if:

1. You need a brighter screen (120hz is nice, but far from necessary for most people)
2. You plan on frequently loading the machine (exporting video, running LLMs, VMs)
3. You need more ports like SD card
4. You need more external monitor support

Otherwise, the Air is just fine. I'd personally rather have a 24gb Air than a 16GB base Pro

I went 14 mbp over the 15 air. The screen and speakers are significantly better. Both are still very portable. If the software you are developing is very intensive I’d go pro. My MacBook is just for recording my guitar and using Logic Pro.

I also bought my MacBook Pro m4 when they were 300 bucks off and the 15 air was only 50 bucks off. It was worth an extra 50 bucks then and after using it for the last couple months I’d say it’s worth full msrp now.

Mbp

Performance wise it will be more that fine for this use. That said having a 13” myself and also having a lot of hands on experience with the 15” I’d strongly argue in favor of the 15”. You have so much more usable screen real estate.

It will work - period :) I have been running a cpu and memory hog like Logic Pro X on the Macbook air M1 for the last few years, M4 will perform even better - go for it.

I have M1 air 16 gb and doing web dev / software testing. editing photos with Lightroom (doing photography as a hobby). So I would say you won't go wrong with the air. Just decide you want the bigger or smaller screen. Personally I carry 13 air cuz I am a digital nomad and it is much lighter, but I feel sometimes the screen is not enough but it is what it is.

All new Airs, even M3 ones have 16 GB of RAM. That said, being web dev myself using Docker a lot, you'll need to get 32 GB version. At that point, rather consider Macbook Pro with M3 Pro or, if money allows, M4 Pro. 14" version, 16 GB is huge and quite heavy. If you don't need to be mobile, get Mac mini M4.

I've been using MBPs from work for the last 5 years. Recently, I spent ~3 months on an M2 Air with 32GB RAM, and it surprised me quite a bit. I've moved on to an M4 MBP with 48GB - the only significant difference is that my Xcode/Next.js build times are a bit faster.

Compute wasn't really the bottleneck for me on the Air; memory was a bigger issue when trying to run multiple apps locally (Xcode Simulator + Next.js server + Docker images).

Apple has a generous return policy in most places. It wouldn't hurt to check your country's return policy and try it for a week first. Most allow you to return within 15 days.

It's not enough RAM.

For the same price as an M4 with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD, you can get a certified refurbished M3 with 24 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD, direct from Apple. That'd be my vote.

On average, you should expect the M4 to be maybe 10% faster than the M3.

In comparison, not having enough RAM will make everything you do 10x slower.

I would say 32gb ram is mandatory if you use a idea like intellij and use docker and similar. I would probably request 64gb ram for my next because it is dieing with m2 pro and 32gb ram. I am A user of cline/claude code tho

You need more RAM. Open your activity monitor/task manager right now and see how much memory your web browser alone is using, and then imagine how much VS Code is going to use once you load up your code in it, and then when you are actually running jvm apps.

256GB is tight. Get 512GB. Xcode alone takes up to 60GB with simulators and SDKs and often you want two versions installed.

For light development it is good but i would recommend you the 512SSD so you have some breathing space cuz even on light development those programs take up to 120GB of storage and who knows if you may use it for some heavy stuff too in future