A colleague is working on the same project with an Air 16GB and doesn't complain. It's crazy that it doesn't even have active cooling and can be used for serious CPU intensive work. The 16" model was a big Apple failure. I had to use it in clamshell mode with an external monitor because having the macbook open with an external monitor would make the macbook run a lot hotter and the fans would spin much louder all the time. That was a pretty well known problem with the GPU and they never fixed it (probably some HW issue).